What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean
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People like to use terms like this, often while doing things that we would normally consider to be extremely risky and bad practice.
- The more important a system is, the more important following best practices is. Mission critical doesn't make something an exception to the rules, it makes the rules even more important.
- The more important a system is, the more important regular patching and maintenance are.
- The more important a system is, the more important that weekly or monthly reboots happen. Systems making millions a minute always have regular reboots.
- Avoiding planned downtime is planning for unplanned downtime.
- If an application is mission critical, then the platform on which it runs must be able to be brought down for maintenance trivially. The more important the workload is, the less dependency you can have on the OS, hypervisor, storage, server chassis, etc. * * Trivial workloads can go offline because of a chassis failure, mission critical ones need to be transparent to that level of failure.
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Since @Tim_G and I were involved in a discussion with a guy today calling systems we'd considered "silly, unimportant systems" from how they were treated, I figured a little list would make sense.
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@scottalanmiller I completely disagree with everything you say, ever and always.
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Mission critical systems shouldn't be stuck to a single piece of hardware. They have to be able to be fluid, and ran where-ever whenever.
But never should they never be brought down. That is an issue in and of it's self, built up from fear that if it goes down it will not come back up.
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Mission Critical Application = Company literally making money while running, company literally losing money while down.
Imo anyways.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
Since @Tim_G and I were involved in a discussion with a guy today calling systems we'd considered "silly, unimportant systems" from how they were treated, I figured a little list would make sense.
I understand what you are saying when you tell someone this, but normally it just comes off as snobbish and arrogant.
Instead, why not simply explain why their system is less than normal availability, possibly offer a way to get it to normal, and then if asked, provide how they can get it to HA?
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@Tim_G said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
Mission Critical Application = Company literally making money while running, company literally losing money while down.
Imo anyways.
No such application should exist in the world today, besides the stock market. . .
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@Dashrender said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
@scottalanmiller said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
Since @Tim_G and I were involved in a discussion with a guy today calling systems we'd considered "silly, unimportant systems" from how they were treated, I figured a little list would make sense.
I understand what you are saying when you tell someone this, but normally it just comes off as snobbish and arrogant.
Instead, why not simply explain why their system is less than normal availability, possibly offer a way to get it to normal, and then if asked, provide how they can get it to HA?
People never want to be questioned, it's the same issue @frodooftheshire is having on that topic about the laptops there. They just get defensive when asked questions. Usually with nothing to backup their stance or rational for being defensive.
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@DustinB3403 said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
@Tim_G said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
Mission Critical Application = Company literally making money while running, company literally losing money while down.
Imo anyways.
No such application should exist in the world today, besides the stock market. . .
Say what? Really? not one?
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@Dashrender said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
@scottalanmiller said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
Since @Tim_G and I were involved in a discussion with a guy today calling systems we'd considered "silly, unimportant systems" from how they were treated, I figured a little list would make sense.
I understand what you are saying when you tell someone this, but normally it just comes off as snobbish and arrogant.
Instead, why not simply explain why their system is less than normal availability, possibly offer a way to get it to normal, and then if asked, provide how they can get it to HA?
Because someone who feels that "good IT" is snobbish and arrogant isn't likely going to understand "availability". As we've shown in that thread already. It's not that it is arrogant, it's that it feels that way to someone who is doing things that badly.
The actual issue is that the OP in question was actually being snobbish and arrogant, trying to claim that their system was so important that they couldn't follow the normal good advice that we give. It's only then sounds arrogant to point out that this can't be true because he revealed that they had attempting to inflate their self importance and actually looked silly.
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@DustinB3403 said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
@Tim_G said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
Mission Critical Application = Company literally making money while running, company literally losing money while down.
Imo anyways.
No such application should exist in the world today, besides the stock market. . .
It doesn't have to be directly related... it can have an indirect effect on monetary loss or gain.
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@Dashrender said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
@DustinB3403 said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
@Tim_G said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
Mission Critical Application = Company literally making money while running, company literally losing money while down.
Imo anyways.
No such application should exist in the world today, besides the stock market. . .
Say what? Really? not one?
Application (software) yes. No software developed within the past few years should be less then "normal availability" by design.
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@DustinB3403 said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
@Dashrender said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
@DustinB3403 said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
@Tim_G said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
Mission Critical Application = Company literally making money while running, company literally losing money while down.
Imo anyways.
No such application should exist in the world today, besides the stock market. . .
Say what? Really? not one?
Application (software) yes. No software developed within the past few years should be less then "normal availability" by design.
Software is not really designed for uptime much at all. Mostly that comes from other components, the IT side, not the SE side.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
@Dashrender said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
@scottalanmiller said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
Since @Tim_G and I were involved in a discussion with a guy today calling systems we'd considered "silly, unimportant systems" from how they were treated, I figured a little list would make sense.
I understand what you are saying when you tell someone this, but normally it just comes off as snobbish and arrogant.
Instead, why not simply explain why their system is less than normal availability, possibly offer a way to get it to normal, and then if asked, provide how they can get it to HA?
Because someone who feels that "good IT" is snobbish and arrogant isn't likely going to understand "availability". As we've shown in that thread already. It's not that it is arrogant, it's that it feels that way to someone who is doing things that badly.
The actual issue is that the OP in question was actually being snobbish and arrogant, trying to claim that their system was so important that they couldn't follow the normal good advice that we give. It's only then sounds arrogant to point out that this can't be true because he revealed that they had attempting to inflate their self importance and actually looked silly.
If you open the statement after someone posts about their setup with - huh, that's less than the home line, then you are snobbish and arrogant.
Of course I haven't read the post, so I don't know how you opened it. -
@DustinB3403 Excuse me?
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Take a hello world example. You can whip this off in a "never fails, zero bugs" SE mode in a few minutes. It's flawless, it always works.
Now make that work in an HA mode with zero downtime... and it all falls on IT, not the coders.
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@Dashrender said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
@scottalanmiller said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
@Dashrender said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
@scottalanmiller said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
Since @Tim_G and I were involved in a discussion with a guy today calling systems we'd considered "silly, unimportant systems" from how they were treated, I figured a little list would make sense.
I understand what you are saying when you tell someone this, but normally it just comes off as snobbish and arrogant.
Instead, why not simply explain why their system is less than normal availability, possibly offer a way to get it to normal, and then if asked, provide how they can get it to HA?
Because someone who feels that "good IT" is snobbish and arrogant isn't likely going to understand "availability". As we've shown in that thread already. It's not that it is arrogant, it's that it feels that way to someone who is doing things that badly.
The actual issue is that the OP in question was actually being snobbish and arrogant, trying to claim that their system was so important that they couldn't follow the normal good advice that we give. It's only then sounds arrogant to point out that this can't be true because he revealed that they had attempting to inflate their self importance and actually looked silly.
If you open the statement after someone posts about their setup with - huh, that's less than the home line, then you are snobbish and arrogant.
Of course I haven't read the post, so I don't know how you opened it.I don't agree. Saying that something below the home line is mission critical is snobbish and arrogant. Pointing out how it is being treated can only seem arrogant if you are bringing emotional baggage to the table. Otherwise, it's just simple analysis and has no artefacts of arrogance. In most cases, workloads are supposed to be where they are. There is no arrogance in honesty.
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@frodooftheshire said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
@DustinB3403 Excuse me?
Nothing to be excused for. You can not join in on the conversation. But you are clearly trying to defend a stance, without supporting evidence of your stance.
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@Dashrender said in What Does Calling an Application Mission Critical Mean:
Of course I haven't read the post, so I don't know how you opened it.
The opening was that he claimed his system, which was not patched or maintained, was "mission critical and could have no downtime." That's a conflicting statement. If it could not go down, then it needed to be patched and it needs systems that allow it to be patched without taking the application down.
So no matter what, the opening was arrogant and came across as self righteous - the "my workload is so important that it is more important than all of the rest of IT's workloads and the rules of IT don't apply to us." He led by making claims of superiority and tying it to the excuse of "Being special."
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@DustinB3403 What stance am I defending? That maybe some people prefer different operating systems because the tools they need to use are easily accessible? You were the one who claimed I was wrong without providing any source of proof. Go to NAB - see how many of them are running Ubuntu or Mint. Talk to people who work in post production. Go on the video editing forums. I've been part of providing production/post production work flows - from the black magic design video mixers to the servers running the batch video transcoding.
