Misc. Ramblings

Most private businesses do their best to hide their problems. It seems like an unwritten rule that no matter what may be going wrong with your business, never, ever, admit it to anyone. To do so it seen as giving an advantage to your competition.

Although this tactic of secrecy may work in the short term, if you don't solve your problem, denying that it exists makes it harder to fix and, in the long term, employees and customers eventually see the problem anyway.

Yet, many business continue to follow a toxic path of denial. So much so that when one deviates from that path and actually is open with its customers, it makes the headlines. Such a case seems to be a web hosting company called Dreamhost. The company has a blog and in it is this remarkable post that lays out what may have recently gone wrong in the data center that is home to its servers.

It is a fascinating look at what happens when it all goes wrong. How one problem cascades, causing multiple points of failure. Working in the dark, figuratively and actually. Trying to diagnose a problem that may be an interaction between more that one system.

The thing about is, I probably would never had heard of this company if it hadn't come clean and aired its dirty laundry. Having done that, if I ever decide to switch from pair.com to another host (instead of hosting my own servers), I will certainly look into what they have to offer because I appreciate their honesty and openess.

Aloha!