Pulling the Strands of Order from a Universe of Chaos

Posted by: Guest Author

In the western world, we've gotten pretty spoiled with our technological infrastructure, and that's a good thing. We expect to plug just about anything into our wall outlets and have it work. We expect that within a day or two of almost any kind of event, even a disaster, the roads will be clear and store shelves restocked. When we pick up our phone we expect to get dial tone, and when we dial, we expect the other end to ring, no matter what. As far as most people are concerned, it could very well run on magic: the details of all that goes on behind the scenes are irrelevant, and that is also a good thing. We just expect everything to work.

Such a robust infrastructure that meets our expectations so much of the time is a powerful enabler of commerce and community. Most of us never question who is paying the price to enable that infrastructure. But when the high expectations for that infrastructure fall to you to actually make it happen - gulp - let's just say you come to realize just how good we have it the vast majority of the time. The universe seems determined to fight us every step of the way. From inertia to the second law of thermodynamics, physics makes sure that trying to prevent things from breaking is always a losing battle in the long run. Whether it is your automobile or your favorite piece of imported china, everything breaks eventually - and ironically, the more useful you find it, the more you drive it towards the breaking point.

Maintaining order in that situation is not an easy task. You have to be a touch pedantic and a little paranoid about minor details to even have a shot. And it goes beyond the obvious "What happens when this server or disk fails" type of scenario. What about when the power goes out? What about if the backup generator doesn't work? What happens if there is a sustained power outage across a good percentage of the country? Is this more or less likely than massive levels of disk failure from a sudden infusion of dust into the ventilation systems? You have to continue down this road to the brink of pathology, all the while performing a balancing act with your limited resources to put them where they make the most difference.The good news? When you've seen enough things break in enough ways, you start to discern that patterns of where things break and why.

Once you have finally paid your dues, finally encountered enough problems to start seeing through them to causes and remedies (which only happens if you have approached every problem as an opportunity to learn something about how to beat entropy), eventually you can build systems and services that can meet and exceed people's expectations.

That's exactly what we're doing here at Aptela. We are planning to exceed your expectations with the reliability, quality and performance of our services. When the inevitable glitches do arise, we strive to learn from them, to take advantage of every opportunity to make our services even more robust - and exceed your highest expectations.