Re: generators, etc....

["Patrick J. Chicas" <pjc () off-road com>]

On Sat, 12 Oct 1996, Zachary DeAquila wrote:

>   Sure, Mike, but how do you protect against an airplane falling out of the 
> sky?  or having the building that houses your generators flattened by
> a runaway semi?  Or the ever present possibility that the building next
> door will have a gas leak and explode?  And what about that house-sized
> meteor that could come hurtling down?  

You should not be working in a production, 24x7 environment.

>   Give me a break.  Hindsight is 20/20, it's easy to see how things could
> have been avoided, but excessive paranoia can and does get in the way of
> getting real work done.  Any engineer worth his salt will tell you that
> 100% reliability is unattainable - IMHO, these days with the technology
> we work with daily as young as it is, I'm impressed with 90% uptime...

Any Operations Manager should curb any engineer that does not understand
or display a comittment to 24x7 uptime. 

> For all the effort you put into saying how you could have done better,
> I sure hope you check the fuel quality on your generator and hide it
> (and the rest of your ISP) in a flood-proof well ventilated bomb shelter.

I don't expect a small or medium sized ISP to take such precautions. I do
expect a BBN, ANS, SPrint, MCI, UUNET *to take such precautions*.

> I hear the goverment has an installation that might meet your standards
> somewhere under Cheyenne Mountain....

Your off..

Take a visit to any wireless office, PCS or Cellular for an understanding 
of how equipment quarters are built to wihtstand disaster situations..

Many of these companies are smaller endeavors than the larger ISP's and
IAP's and, have dealt with comparible growth periods. If they can do it,
so can people like BBN.


Regards

pjc

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -