Re: Ammunition needed to defend OpenBSD/pf

[chefren <chefren_(_at_)_pi_(_dot_)_net>]

On 08/03/05 22:48, Jesper Louis Andersen wrote:

..

> So you forget the last term by saying ''twice as much''. You have to 
> deduct the probability that both events occur (or it would have been 
> ''counted'' twice).

Mathematically correct, but not realistic if one power supply fails in the 
serial case it might be the other fails during the failure or repair but that's 
insignificant.

As a manufacturer we always look carefully at failures, if it's a "time-bomb" 
capacitor we look at other equipment with the same age and see if we have to 
replace the whole series of products at all customers with maintenance 
contracts. If there is =any= sign of a "series failure" we replace all 
capacitors (or whole units) everywhere. We have done so a few times. Scheduled 
downtime is always better and far les costly for all parties than unscheduled 
downtime. Because of these kind of policies we experience very few breakdowns in 
the field and have a quite peaceful life...

> > Two equal power supplies in parallel: Half the risk of a brakedown of 
> > the system but still two times as much failures of power supplies and 
> > twice the support effort for the power supplies.
>
>
> Now in this case, we still have independence, but now both has to fail. 
> In other words
>
> P(intersection(X = 1, Y = 1)) = P(X = 1) * P(Y = 1)
>
> This is theory. In practice a failing power supply will be changed as 
> soon as it shows an error. Especially in the serial case. This means 
> that in practice, one has to do a more heavyweight probability analysis. 
>  One needs the probabilities after one month, after 2, 3, 4, etc to do 
> the discrete case. I can assure you the probabilities are not as easy as 
> you are taking them to be.

Mathematically you are correct, in practice it doensn't matter. For the parallel 
case you seem to forget that the system might still be up but the broken power 
supply still needs maintenance. 2 times the maintenance (replacing, traveling, 
etc) because of 2 times as much power supplies is not unrealistic.

The same applies for hard disks. And like with power supplies, if they are of 
the same manufacturer and manufacturing date there is a big chance all power 
supplies/drives will fail unexpectedly within a short timeframe because of "time 
bombs" like capacitors or unexpected faster diffusion processes in integrated 
circuits.

+++chefren