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Why eCommerce Sites collapse
Rahul Mehra writes "ZDNet has an interesting article about how eBay and other e-commerce sites collapse under heavy loads. It talks about how massive growth, incomplete planning, rising expectations (24x7 uptimes) and immature technology all contribute. " This train of thought, for me at least, leads to neo-Luddite question - what do you folks think?
At least, that's the way a lot of companies seem to treat sysadmins. A good sysadmin, who keeps systems running smoothly, *appears* to be doing nothing. Why should such a person be paid very much just to run backups and turn a few screws, they'll ask. The sysadmin is viewed as a high-tech janitor, and is given about as much respect. This often results in companies only hiring one sysadmin, or worse, foisting the sysadmins duties onto other people on a standby basis. So when the fires come, the company is suddenly understaffed. A bad sysadmin, who's always recovering from crashes, restoring backups, rerouting network traffic, looks like a busy employee. If not for him, our machines would all be down right?, they will say. So what we have here is a scenario that favors either bad sysadmins, overworked sysadmins, or standby sysadmins who are actually full-time employees with other stuff to do and worry about. Welcome to hell.