> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jan Wieck [mailto:JanWieck at Yahoo.com] 
> Sent: 19 September 2006 14:22
> To: Dave Page
> Cc: Andrew Sullivan; slony1-general at gborg.postgresql.org
> Subject: Re: [Slony1-general] Migrating From gBorg
> 
> Dave, the questions I raised on -core were the result of concerns and 
> discussion of people on IRC. Fact is that the problematic point of my 
> question was simply ignored and I kept getting no answers at 
> all until 
> there was a positive answer available. Now people, who don't 
> even answer 
> questions unless they can answer them positively, aren't 
> usually those 
> who point out existing problems ahead of time.

I agree with that point, and have spoken with Marc to try and prevent
the situation occuring again. In partial defence of myself, I could only
answer when I knew for sure what was going on myself.

> Second, maybe people need to know what those provisions, that are put 
> into place, are. Right now, as I understood it, the plan is that you 
> have full access to everything. But Marc made clear that this is only 
> for emergencies and as long as he is somehow reachable, he's 
> going to do 
> the work. Which means, that the only backup person we have is 
> kept away 
> as far as possible, instead of actually making sure he/she 
> can perform 
> the task in case of emergency just as swift as the main person. This 
> strikes me as dumb of a plan as having no plan at all, sorry. 
> This isn't 
> designed to serve as a backup in case of emergency, this is 
> designed to 
> reinforce the status quo.

No, it's common sense. Marc's day job is running his servers which he
knows inside out. Mine is running Vale Housing's servers. I'll back up
Marc as far as the postgresql.org resources are concerned but neither I,
nor anyone else can be expected to know his systems as well as he does
and it is inevitable that it will remain quicker and easier for him to
fix most issues - which in almost every case he does (I woke him at 3AM
yesterday for example). Similarly I wouldn't expect anyone but a member
of my staff to be able to fix an issue on a Vale server as quickly as I
might.

> I originally asked for developing a policy or a guideline how our 
> mission critical services and people _should_ be backed up. Must have 
> been my German accent, but instead of getting anywhere into that 
> direction, everyone was explaining that others don't do 
> better either, 
> how we are doing things and then went off changing details. 
> Everyone got 
> lost in the details again, instead of thinking about the big picture.

Well your accent can be kinda hard to understand sometimes :-) but the
point I was trying to make was that whilst it might be an interesting
exercise to draw up such guidelines, we can't expect *any* of our
providers to actually guarantee anything (especially as we don't pay
them) and that our time was better spent improving our own redundancy,
server, people and software-wise.

Regards, Dave.