By High availability strategies fail in two directions. Organizations that over-invest build systems so complex they cannot maintain or adapt them. Organizations that under-invest discover the true cost of downtime only after an outage. Neither failure is a cost optimization outcome.
In this interview on TFiR, Matthew Pollard, Customer Experience Software Engineer at SIOS Technology, walks through how organizations can evaluate HA solutions, providers, and configurations to meet real business needs without overspending or leaving gaps.
Guest: Matthew Pollard, Customer Experience Software Engineer at SIOS Technology
Show: TFiR
Here is what every platform engineer and IT infrastructure team needs to know.
Technical Deep Dive
Q: How can organizations find the right balance between cost and performance in their high availability strategies?
Matthew Pollard, Customer Experience Software Engineer at SIOS Technology, explains that the right balance differs for every organization because the tradeoff is not linear. Investing too heavily results in over-engineered solutions that are difficult to maintain, adapt, or operate over time. Under-investing transfers the avoided cost directly into downtime losses when the solution fails to cover all business needs.
“Any money that you save by not putting it into the high availability strategy, you’re going to spend anyway in losses when you incur a downtime because it’s not robust enough to cover all of your needs.” — Matthew Pollard, Customer Experience Software Engineer, SIOS Technology
Q: What are the risks of over-engineering a high availability solution?
Pollard notes that organizations that over-allocate resources to their HA strategy often end up with solutions that are overly complex. That complexity creates ongoing challenges: the system becomes difficult to maintain, difficult to change, and difficult to keep current as requirements evolve. Cost is also a compounding factor, as overly expensive configurations become unsustainable over time.
“You can throw everything you have at your solution, your strategy, but what results from that is often over-engineered. It’s overly complex, which makes it very hard to maintain or change or upkeep.” — Matthew Pollard, Customer Experience Software Engineer, SIOS Technology
Q: What happens when organizations underfund their high availability strategy to reduce costs?
Pollard explains that underfunding HA does not eliminate the cost. It defers it. When the solution is not robust enough to cover all business needs and a downtime event occurs, the losses incurred will typically equal or exceed what was saved. The cost does not disappear; it shifts from a planned investment into an unplanned loss.
“If you overcorrect and go too little, any money that you save by not putting it into the high availability strategy, you’re going to spend anyway in losses when you incur a downtime.” — Matthew Pollard, Customer Experience Software Engineer, SIOS Technology
Q: What process should organizations follow when evaluating high availability solutions and providers?
Pollard recommends a thorough investigation across all available options before committing to an HA strategy. That investigation should span solution types, providers, partners, strategies, and configurations. Once an HA solution or partner is selected, the configuration must be validated to confirm it actually covers all organizational needs without exceeding budget constraints.
“What you have to do is take a real thorough investigation into your options of solutions, providers, partners, strategies, configurations, once you’ve chosen your HA solution or partner, to make sure that it is actually covering all of your needs.” — Matthew Pollard, Customer Experience Software Engineer, SIOS Technology
Resources & Documentation
- SIOS Technology, high availability and disaster recovery software for business-critical workloads
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👇 Click to Read Full Raw Transcript
Swapnil Bhartiya: These days, organizations are also becoming very, very cost, kind of constant cost conscious as well. But at the same time, performance and high availability is also becoming a critical talking point. How can organizations find the right balance between cost and performance in their ETA strategies?
Matthew Pollard: Yeah, it can certainly be difficult and it’s different for everyone because like you said, it’s this balancing act because you can throw everything you have, everything you possibly can afford to, at least your solution, your strategy. But what results from that is often over engineered. It’s overly complex, which makes it very hard to maintain or change or upkeep. And like you said, the cost is becoming a greater factor every day. So anything overly expensive becomes a problem. But if you overcorrect for that and you go too little, any money that you save by not putting it into the high availability strategy, the solution you’re going to spend anyway in losses when you incur a downtime because it’s not robust enough to cover all of your needs. So what you have to do is take a real thorough investigation into your options of solutions, providers, partners, strategies, configurations, once you’ve chosen your HA solution or partner provider strategy, to make sure that it is actually covering all of your needs and that you have to get configured to cover all of your needs, but without breaking the bank.
