Best practice for network configuration

[Robert Brockway]

On Thu, 30 Jun 2011, Anthony de Boer wrote:

> Although you _can_ pull a "simple" P2V migration, and escape from dusty
> failing hardware, or the need to free up the power or space it was using
> in the datacentre, having a crufty old "scared to touch it" server is an
> invitation to a really long downtime when something eventually breaks and
> you don't have it running as a reference for how it's supposed to work
> anymore.  Periodically shifting a service to a fresh node is a way of
> proving you understand that service and that you can actually support it.

True but virtualising it means that it's pretty hard to find yourself in a 
situation in which you cannot restore it to a known working state.  As 
long as you take backups/snapshots of your VM and it is in any of the 
common and pseudo-open/open standard formats for VMs then being able to 
restart it even following the destruction of the hardware on which it 
lived is fairly easy.

Indeed when I've designed DR plans in recent years I've relied on the 
ability to recover VMs even when the original hardware is a smoudering 
ruin.

The downside of this is that it means a system can reliably live well past 
what should have been its used by date.

Cheers,

Rob

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