Subj : Re: Queen City BBS Power Issues
To   : Gamgee
From : tenser
Date : Fri Aug 09 2024 06:49 pm

On 08 Aug 2024 at 11:57a, Gamgee pondered and said...
 
 Ga> It's important enough to me simply to prevent hardware damage or 
 Ga> software corruption due to a power outage.  It that isn't important to 
 Ga> you, that's fine.  Not sure why you're so offended.

UPSes are not perfect; they fail.  Sometimes in pretty spectacular
fashion.  People I've worked with who had previously done IT support
in corporate environments recommended against using them because, at
scale, the failure rate was high enough and the risk of damage with a
failed UPS greater than without one at all, that in net they were a
negative. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease; YMMV.

 Ga>  Th> Mine also doesn't sit on a UPS.  If it goes down..  its down..  
 Ga>  Th> this isn't an ISP with thousands of clients PAYING for service, its a
 Ga>  Th> toy.
 Ga> 
 Ga> Yours may be a toy.

Let's be honest, here: they're all toys.  Failure to recognize that,
and the, er, "passion" that assumed is one of the big reasons BBSes
tanked once the Internet became generally available.  No one liked
dealing with the overly inflated senses of self-importance from BBS
people who didn't understand that, yes, it's a hobby.

 Ga> Some BBS operators (like me), who are 
 Ga> hubs/coordinators for FTN message networks, *DO* have other systems 
 Ga> relying on a stable uplink.

"Relying" is probably a bit of an exaggeration in this day and age.

 Ga> Are they PAYING?  No.  Can/should they have 
 Ga> an expectation of reliability upstream?  Yes.

Probably the best way to get reliability for hobby operators is to
move the infrastructure onto a VPS in the cloud, basically eliminating
hardware failure from the risk matrix.

Look, it's fine to recommend that someone use a UPS.  But doubling
down when someone tells you they don't need it is a bit much, na?

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
 * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

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