Andrew Sullivan <ajs at crankycanuck.ca> writes:
> I'm going to take this list, and expand it some, in point form.
>
> On Tue, Sep 19, 2006 at 10:27:03AM -0700, Darcy Buskermolen wrote:
>> Ok well then at this end, lets all start compiling a list of reqirements for 
>> the slony project.
>> 
>> 1) Reliable, redundent, distributed infrasctructure (manpower, hardware, 
>> bandwith)
>
> I.   On service availability
>
> A.  Reliable infrastructure
>
> 1.	Service uptime (!= individual server uptime, maybe)
>
> 2.	Network uptime
>
> 3.	In case of service failure, individuals must be available to
> solve the problem
>
> 	a.  there should always be at least two people in the project
> who know how to repair any given service
>
> 	b.  there should always be at least two such people who have the
> access rights to repair any given service
>
> 	c.  there should always be at least two such people who have
> the authority to decide to repair any given service
>
> 	d.  ideally, the "at least two people" principle above means
> "at any one time".  So when people take vacation, are offline, &c.,
> someone else should be able to step in.  

[additional material omitted...]

It seems to me that this (particularly for the later sections) may be
overkill as far as Slony-I is concerned, and that this may be better
directed as an indication of what is needed for the postgresql.org
domain.

For instance, 

  > 2. To the extent technically feasible, every project-critical
  > service should be delivered from at least two geographically and
  > topologically distributed locations.

seems less than likely to be easily accomplished when there seems to
be essentially one server on offer for Slony-I, by whichever of the
available schemes it might be hosted.

That's not to say, at all, that this is useless material; there may be
reasonable responses/actions for each of these points.

> 2.	A communication plan for failures is at least as important as
> the ability to fix problems: a well-communicated failure with
> information well-distributed to the community will cause less damage
> than one poorly acknowledged.

If someone had had a copy of the list of all subscribers to the
Slony-I mailing lists, that would have offered the opportunity for
them to at least send out a note to that list indicating the nature of
the problem.

I know David Fetter and Jan Wieck have access to that; if both were
prepared to take responsibility for periodically pulling subscriber
lists, that would be a cheap form of distributed protection against
that particular failure.  I imagine that I ought to have access to
that too; that can get fixed later :-).

No doubt the list of things like this goes on.

This material would doubtless be useful to the -www list as guidelines
as to determining reliability for the postgresql.org domain and
related places.
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Christopher Browne
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