Have we ever implied that mere server inventory was sufficient for high availability? The place where our servers live—the data center—also incorporates several redundancies. Extra network lines, separate power sources, multiple generators, air conditioning and ventilation—everything a server might require—are all part of most data center guarantees.
Yet some have joked that a common backhoe is the natural enemy of the internet. There is more truth to that statement than its apparent lack of gravitas might suggest. Data centers are geographically insecure. Inclement weather, natural disasters, disrupted network backbones, power outages, and of course, accidentally damaged trunk lines (from an errant backhoe?) and simple human error can all remove a data center from the grid. When a data center vanishes from the internet, our servers...
