Comment by normie3000
7 days ago
> But what's clear is that failure isn't less likely as the machine gets older, it's more likely.
Is this true? Doesn't most hardware have a dip in failure rate in the middle of its average lifespan?
7 days ago
> But what's clear is that failure isn't less likely as the machine gets older, it's more likely.
Is this true? Doesn't most hardware have a dip in failure rate in the middle of its average lifespan?
It depends on the components. The bathtub curve applies the most manufactured equipment in some way. But specific kinds of hardware are more prone to it than others. Hard drives, fans, power supplies, dedicated controllers, RAM and CPU modules, etc all fail at different rates. Combine that with the varying failure rates of different grades of components, with manufacturer/model differences, environmental differences, and load differences, and it's all over the map. But in general, any one of these components is effectively a system failure, so there is always this varying degree of failure over time due to the fluctuation of all these variables.
I also believe there's a psychic component to failures. The machines know when you're close to product launch, or when someone has just discovered the servers haven't been maintained in a while and are at risk of failing. Then they'll fail for sure. Especially if there are hot-spare or backup servers, which will conveniently fail as well.