Re: disaster recovery

Craig O'Shannessy wrote:
> Never had a kernel panic? I've had a few. Probably flakey hardware. I
> feel safer since journalling file systems hit linux.

The only kernel panic I've ever had was when playing with a development
version of the kernel (2.3.x). Never played with development kernels
since then - I'm a user, not a developer.

All the outages I've experienced so far have been due to external
factors such as (in order of frequency):
- Colocation facility technicians repatching panels and
putting my connection "back" into the wrong port
- Colo facility power failure (we were told they had dual
redundant diesel+battery UPS, but they only had one, the
second was being installed "any time now")
- End user's machines crashing
- Client software crashing
- Colo facility techs ripping power cables or network
cables while "cleaning up" cable trays
- Hard drive failure (hard, fast and very real - one
revolution the drive was working, the next it was a
charred blackened mess of fibreglass, silicon and
aluminium)

I have to admit that in none of those cases would synchronous vs
asynchronous, journalling vs non-journalling or *any* file system
decision have made the slightest jot of a difference to the integrity of
my data.

I've yet to experience a CPU failure (touch wood!).