@Pete-S said in Redundancy is building a bridge and an identical one immediately next to it:

Regarding evolution we are probably more geared towards surviving external threats than we are towards surviving internal organ failures by old age and a sedentary lifestyle.

Right, almost certainly. Partially because in the big picture, that's the bigger threat. Not in this particular moment in time, although in parts of the world that remains true. But to get to where we are, we have to be geared towards overall survival and can't change the design quickly when the situation suddenly changes.

@nerdydad said in Redundant Network Connections:

We do have dual-wan connections, but we're also connecting 3 locations together. If we only had one connection connecting all 3 locations together, and one connection died, then that location (more than likely to be a plant) will be spending the day without any productivity because they wouldn't have access to the resources that they need. We're talking 250 people working at any one time at at least $11/hr.
11x250=$2750/hr (along with the added value they make to the company) versus $100-600/month for the extra WAN connection. It only makes sense for us to have the availability here to keep people working.

The City (another job I had) had every offsite pointing via Dish to Cityhall just to get internet. Some were 3-4 jumps. Single point of failure for the entire City. Every electrical storm took our 25% of our dishes.

Okay, makes sense then. I'd lean towards XenServer with local storage then. You can migrate to CEPH when it is ready. This would get a single node up "instantly" and let you move others as the opportunity arises.

Just realized that this topic actually was missing the tags! Ugh, no wonder if rarely comes up in searches. Fixed, finally.