Solid state drives

[Simon Wilcox]

On 20/4/10 10:07, James Laver wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 09:08:10AM +0100, Richard Huxton wrote:
>> Having said that, there are clearly plenty of applications where  
>> power-failure isn't an overriding worry.
> 
> Or 'on any machine connected to a UPS that's correctly configured to 
> shut the machine down properly'?
> 
> Or 'on any machine in a datacenter with generators for backup power'.

These are not the same. Ironically, in a datacentre with generators for 
backup power, you are MORE likely to experience sudden power loss than 
on a machine with a properly configured UPS.

The infrastructure of a commercial datacentre (e.g. Telehouse/HEX etc) 
rarely has the means to send shutdown commands to servers if any 
problems are experienced with the power feeds, meaning the UPSs will 
inevitably run out of power whilst the engineers run around in circles 
and you are unlikely to find out about it in time to do an orderly 
manual shutdown.

I don't think there is any datacentre in London that has NOT had a 
sudden power loss so you really want to pay attention to that if sudden 
power loss would be a problem to your systems.

S.