Notable Network and Cloud Outages of 2021 
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Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) Network Failover Can Save Your Business
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, they say. You should always have a plan B. Companies spend millions on their data connections, but even the best of them can fail. And what happens when you don’t have adequate backup systems in place? Well, take a look at our survey of outages in 2018 […]
Data Backup Is Not Optional
As with most information technologies, the concept of data backup is as deep as it is broad. That is to say, there are many dimensions and facets to the backup of data, and you can spend anywhere from a few days to a few months trying to get a handle on it. A definition is […]
Can Too Much Redundancy Impact Availability?
After unabashedly extolling the virtues of redundancy in a recent article , you may be wondering why we would follow up with another post questioning whether sometimes too much (redundancy) was just too much. Credit fellow staffers for the suggestion that we revisit the issue. The problem was clearly a part of our initial research, and it deserves […]
Internet Load Balancing and Failover for Multiple ISP Links
Controlling traffic is a key facet of internet management. Sometimes primary connections will go down. Or too much traffic may cause congested links or overwhelmed devices to become unusable. We wrote about the implementation of load balancing in the cloud in a 2017 blog post. When people think of load balancing, they usually think about traffic that […]
One Summer Street Data Center Fire
Data center outages are not at all uncommon, and because of that we don’t bring your attention to them on a regular basis. However, this writer has seen firsthand the “no expense spared” architecture at Boston’s One Summer Street, so when Markley Group’s impressive flagship data center – the largest colocation facility in New England with almost […]
Redundancy: When Too Much is Just Right
Redundancy is indispensable in the world of information technology. Of course, redundancy is not welcome in every aspect of life. If your company doesn’t need you anymore and makes you “redundant”, you’ll have to look for another job. Poorly written text may be credited to the Department of Redundancy Department. The concept of redundancy is […]
Why Ransomware is a Threat to Availability
According to the FBI, ransomware became a billion dollar industry in 2016. That is right, $1 billion. If ransomware were a legitimate industry, it would be the focus of case studies in every business school in the world as its growth is unprecedented. This growth is attributed to four primary reasons. The amount of money […]
Is the TCP/IP Protocol on the way out?
“I am looking for implementations of TCP/IP for UNIX systems, including an interface for an IMP.” That was the start of the TCP/IP Digest on the ARPANET UNIX-Wizards mailing list on October 2, 1981. Mike Muuss was the researcher who got the conversation started. And look how far we have come since then. The Birth of the […]
The Essence of Uptime
Uptime is a key performance indicator (KPI). Some would say it is the key performance indicator, the sine qua non, of productive computing. If you can’t keep your system operational, you have nothing. None of the many functionalities – the bells and whistles – matter one whit if your customers can’t access your site or service. The expectation in […]
Digital Realty / Telx Atlanta Power Outage
On July 12th a major power event occurred at the prominent carrier hotel at 56 Marietta Street responsible for network interconnections for a significant portion of the southeast including over 60 carriers and over 100 telecom providers. The incident occurred during planned power distribution upgrades and created quite a number of issues for both regional […]