Alright, the Tour de France is here! (Well technically it is almost over) A phrase heard around my home every July while I take over the downstairs TV for three weeks to revel in one of sports’ most physically challenging and tactically demanding events. For those of you who are recreational cyclists like me, you know the challenges of merely participating in a local century ride. It is hard to imagine the effort required to race in an event like the Tour where the routes are longer, faster, and a lot steeper!
Fortunately for all of us, the bicycle is one of the most efficient modes of transportation. The intricate chain drive system transfers nearly 99% of the power to the rear wheel, which is a good thing for those of us who are not able to put out the 400 to 500 watts of effort the pro riders do on sustained climbs. So don’t even think about powering your data center with a bunch of bicycles and treadmills!
But for all the efficiency the chain drive delivers, and their seemingly high degree of reliability, this year’s Tour de France has taken on a new level of complexity due to a chain error. The famous Yellow Jersey of the race leader was lost for a dropped chain. That’s right; on a technical note the chain did not fail or break. It just didn’t shift properly.
When I heard that I started to think about our role in building, running, and maintaining mission critical data centers with incredibly-high demands for availability and application SLAs. I wondered if what we do in pushing for ever higher levels of efficiency may someday lead to our own equivalent of the “dropped chain”. Is it possible that one of the new high-tech wonder machines with some sort of “Green Mode” of operation won’t “shift” properly? Will that happen at an inappropriate time, potentially costing millions in revenue, not to mention a career or two?
Only Murphy knows for certain!
In the meantime I’ll stick with keep-it-simple practices that ensure system and application availability. Dual-buss power architectures and a little N+1 redundancy for cooling and back-up generators come in real handy around a data center when Murphy calls. Too bad for Andy Schlek the modern bicycle doesn’t have a redundant drive train for a little extra insurance.