Whether or not a service provider chooses to deploy redundant services is a decision that is generally made as part of an overall risk-management analysis. Factors such as probability of component failure, business impact and cost are weighed in reaching a decision as to how much money a provider should (and can afford) to invest in redundant service elements. While a systemic power outage is a possibility, it may not be very probable. In fact, there is every likelihood that service elements which would be affected by such a wide outage are not all within Valve's control. We have no information regarding Valve's service infrastructure, but we might assume that it includes fault-tolerant elements (e.g. clustered servers, redundant network paths, etc.) which have been chosen to provide protection from more probable outages (for example, individual hardware failures, network outage of a given carrier).
Given the funding resources to do so, most service providers would eagerly embrace "geographic redundancy". However, no business has unlimited financial resources and in the end, Valve has to strike a balance between cost and risk, in delivering its services. Valve has an obligation to its investors to make balanced spending decisions and deliver sustainable profitability as much as it needs to deliver reasonable service levels to its customers. As well, the cost of complete redundancy would almost certainly have to be borne in the price of the product. While the end-user impact was certainly real, it is not, after all, an air traffic control system. last night, our servers were full again. I think Valve did a respectable job in restoring services in a timely fashion. No doubt they were extremely motivated to do so. It appeared to me that they followed a prioritized approach, first restoring services critical to supporting game-play. While this simply may have been a sequence imposed by the situation, versus any kind of altruistic service policy, the net effect was the same. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Scott Tuttle Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 4:23 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts Such redundancy is Networking 101 and Programming 101... You can choose to ignore it if you like... But in the real word it is fact . Valve is probably making enough money to make it reasonable for them to invest in a redundant system for that "money making" aparatus. That is Economics 101. You think it looks good to investors that the "backbone" of the system went down for the entire world because of one geological disaster? You think that's a good selling point for software developers that want to bring their product to market? 273,468 game players couldn't play because Valve had all their eggs in that one "geographical" basket. Wise business decision? You decide... Ok maybe they are 500 level courses but you still get the point :D > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 2:57 PM > To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com > Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts > > All I'm seeing is whining, pettiness, and monday morning > quarterbacking. > > Lets try this. If anyone out there has a diagram of the > Valve infrastructure, and a complete understanding of who > they contract with for what services and facilities, then lets see it. > > I only am reading people bitching about what Valve should > have done over the last 10 years, and "I could do it better", > without any reguard or perspective on what the real world > impact things may be having in the Seattle area. > > _______________________________________________ > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list > archives, please visit: > http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
