[Discuss] Redundant array of inexpensive servers: clustering?

[richb at pioneer.ci.net (Rich Braun)]

Kent Borg wrote regarding HA:
> ... But that just saves you from losing
> your primary hardware in a flood, fire, theft, etc.
>
> There are more ways for things go go wrong. The software maybe has a
> bug that messes up your data, or a human maybe fat-fingers a command ...

For me, the use-case for HA technology really isn't just about designing
around failure.  The more-important thing for me as a weekend-hobbyist user is
being able to take something down, mess with it/upgrade it/overhaul it for a
few hours or days, and put it back online without disrupting anything else.

The same actually is true for most of us who manage data centers as part of
our work.  I compare the lack of improvement in these tools to the first
decade or two of video-editing software:  a company called Avid grabbed pretty
much all the market-share, and users of the software had no motivation to push
for consumer-level usability functions because hey, they get paid to do this
for a living in jobs paid for by movie and TV producers.  YouTube came along
circa 2007 and smashed the paradigm, by creating a mass-market for home-video
editors who needed something easier to work with than an Avid system even if
they were willing to pay for it.

-rich