<My $.02>
As opinions go...
We're pretty small... but we have a strong policy of dedicating machines as
much as possible... and although it's cost us more up front, this approach
has saved us big-time and long since paid for itself by reducing opportunity
costs, strongly reducing the costs & risks of disaster recovery, improving
overall performance, and keeping our customers happy even when something
goes wrong...
It's REALLY nice, for example, that our web server(s) don't go down when
IMail eats itself with a load problem... And it's nice that the mail server
doesn't go down when IIS eats itself by leaking all it's memory or choking
on a DLL or ASP script, or (ghasp!) when a hard drive ditches in the mirror
and NT handles it badly (surprize!)... and don't even get me started on DNS
loads and fault tollerance...
I can think of at least 4 times in the past 2 years where we could have
easily had to consider the possibility of closing our doors if we had not
had built in redundancy and the ability to spare to another hot server... We
host mission critical services for our customers and help them drive their
businesses to use them to the fullest - which means they depend on them
working... and reliability goes directly to the quality of our advice... if
they can't count on us and our services, they are forced to look for
alternatives in all levels of their organization - and the big psychological
response is to go back to the old way of doing things when something goes
wrong - meaning entire projects (and heavy investments) can go down the
tubes for lack of an extra $3000 in server hardware.
No doubt in my mind based on experience, and living in a company that
ostensibly can't afford to double up on hardware... Not doing it is by far
the greater risk. Add it up... would you spend an extra $3000 to secure a
$50000 long term project? Hope so even at half the risk.
</My$.02>
| -----Original Message-----
| From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
| [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Daniel Donnelly
| Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2001 5:43 PM
| To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
| Subject: Re: [IMail Forum] webservice crashes can't upgrade
|
|
| Mike,
|
| I did not think Len was being condescending, just curious.
|
| Not sure I agree with you about costs of hardware and dedicated machines.
| And I think your example is sort of the other extreme! Like everything, we
| are all entitled to opinions (and we all have one!) and we usually end up
| with a more moderate solution.
|
| Like who out there doing tape backups, also has a backup tape drive?? Sort
| of like having a backup car, just to go to work! I know I don't
| have a spare
| car, just to backup my vehicle. True, my wife and son also have cars, and
| together we can work out travel when one must be in the shop. And
| if my car
| is trashed (or your tape drive dies) you just get a new one,
| because now you
| 'need' it.
|
| And I can understand the need for hot spares, backups and all the
| rest, but
| how many companies really 'need' this and can afford it. So, I do
| agree with
| you in part, too!
|
| Daniel Donnelly
| ________________________________________________________
|
|
| ----- Original Message -----
| From: "MIke Mckay" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
| To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
| Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2001 3:56 PM
| Subject: Re: [IMail Forum] webservice crashes can't upgrade
|
|
| > You have to accept that not everyone is affluent enough to dedicate an
| > entire machine solely to email, working on this model and taking service
| > redundancy, data redundancy and back-ups into account, to do
| basic hosting
| > with ( email, www, DNS & SQL ) you would need 8 servers, 8 raid
| cards, 16
| > scsi drives buckets of ram and several tape drives not to mention the
| > licensing if microsoft is the OS of choice.
| >
| > So many people will be running multiple services duplicated over fewer
| boxes
| > especially if in a co-located enviroment which may charge by
| the server or
| > by the "U" of rack space, and although imail may be austensively a ram
| based
| > product the applications it is co-existing with may not, and not paying
| > attention to things such as the swap file will mean the time between
| > complete rebuilds or image redeployment reduces significantly, increases
| > manpower costs and service downtime.
| >
| > And if a server has to be taken down because SQL has fragmented
| the drives
| > to a point where it seriously affects performance and the machine has to
| be
| > taken offline then wouldn't affect Imail if due to financial
| restrictions
| > they were both on that server ?
| >
| > I think it is slightly unfair to condescend in such a fashion towards
| > Daniel, for people on a budget I feel it is a valid and
| purposefull thread
| > that will under the aforementioned circumstances aid the
| reliability of an
| > Imail system.
| >
| > Mike A.B.S.O
| >
| > (lutely no letters after my name, wot a dunce)
| >
| >
| >
| >
| > ----- Original Message -----
| > From: "Len Conrad" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
| > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
| > Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2001 7:14 PM
| > Subject: Re: [IMail Forum] webservice crashes can't upgrade
| >
| >
| > > Daniel
| > >
| > > Can you explain this swap file business? A mail server shouldn�t be
| > > swapping at all or extremely little.
| > >
| > > What has ipswitch found in increasing the hardly used swap file to 3X
| > > memory size makes Imail work better?
| > >
| > > Len
| > >
| > > http://MenAndMice.com/DNS-training
| > > http://BIND8NT.MEIway.com : ISC BIND 8.2.4 for NT4 & W2K
| > > http://IMGate.MEIway.com : Build free, hi-perf, anti-abuse mail
| gateways
| > >
| > >
| > > Please visit http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html
| > > to be removed from this list.
| > >
| > > An Archive of this list is available at:
| > > http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/
| > >
| >
| >
| > Please visit http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html
| > to be removed from this list.
| >
| > An Archive of this list is available at:
| > http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/
| >
|
|
| Please visit http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html
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|
| An Archive of this list is available at:
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|
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