Off Topic: Single Point of Failure - When Your Primary Machine Goes Down

Dan York, who does a regular tech correspondent piece on For Immediate Release (one of my favorite podcasts) always brings up the idea of a single point of failure. Mostly he does that when Twitter goes down. He warns listeners again and again to have multiple ways of doing things, just in case!

I’ve been thinking about that the past two weeks. My stalwart primary machine, my MacBook lost part of its brain the day before I was heading to San Diego for the Esri User Conference.

I thought it was ok when I left for the airport, but once on the plane I realized it was not happy and would make my work at that event challenging, to say the least, if I tried to use it as is. So I schemed to get it fixed once I landed. After a chat with Apple Care (yes I have the extended service plan) suggested it was probably an OS glitch and an upgrade to Snow Leopard should cure it, I arranged to pick up a copy at the local Apple retailer in Old Town. While they didn’t have one when I called, they managed to get me one before the close of business. I literally ran there (after picking up my UC materials at the Convention Center). Nope, it didn’t seem to work. So, another call to Apple Care. They set me up with an appointment at the Fashion Valley Mall Apple Store on Sunday. (That’s why I only had a brief appearance at Ed UC which I regret; I love hanging with those folks!) They diagnosed the problem (it needed a new logic board) but didn’t have the part in store. So, it’d be Tuesday before they could get it fixed. I’d explained my situation and the Genius patiently explained my best bet was to use it as it (“around” its problems) and then to get it fixed up once I got home. That’s what I did, unbeknownst to readers I hope!

So, I got home and immediately backed up the machine via Time Machine, the Apple backup program. Then I headed to my Apple Store (I’d made the appointment online while in San Diego) and they confirmed the diagnosis and decided I should get a new hard drive too. It would take a full week. And that included sending it to Texas! They were so busy (iPhone 4 stuff I suspect) it was faster to send it to Texas.

So, that meant a week without my machine. Question: Could you work if your main machine died right now? Those in big corporations I hope are saying, “Sure, IT would pull a backup and recreate my machine from yesterday.” My friend at IBM said just that after she spilled a drink on her laptop keyboard. What about those of you who run tiny businesses, like mine?

I was really ok thanks to things: (1) my life is in the cloud and (2) I have two other machines in the house. My life really is in the cloud: all my Directions Media stuff is held on our servers. The only glitch I had there was that I did not have FTP access to one spot on one machine and had a colleague upload something on my behalf. The other half of my working life, teaching at Penn State is online. Except for the few lessons I have yet to put online for this semester. Luckily, I had a few weeks before that became an issue. My other machines, interestingly and perhaps misguidedly are not Macs. If one was, I could have accessed that Time Machine backup directly. It turns out I could have done that via my housemate’s Mac, but I really would not have wanted to do that. My Windows box, which I got to match the required PSU configuration back in the day, had access to all my school stuff and Directions Media stuff. What I used most however was my old Sony Vaio running Ubuntu Linux. I call that my “downstairs” machine since it lives in the living room. I use it to check mail and do light work while watching TV. But, it had everything bookmarked from my Directions Media e-mail account (Web mail) to my company e-mail (accessible thanks to Web.com via Web mail) to all the admin tools for Directions and school. The only thing that really changed during the week that I didn’t have the Mac? I didn’t edit the podcast in my favorite coffee shop. I didn’t want to lug the Vaio and its power cord (it’s battery is dead) there.

As promised the Mac returned exactly seven days after it left. I quizzed the Genius about restoring from Time Machine. She assured me when I booted up, as I walked through the prompts, it’d ask me if I wanted to restore from Time Machine and then all I had to do was point to the Time Machine drive. (I use an external hard drive formatted half for Time Machine and half for the giant audio files for the podcast.) Indeed in 11 minutes my Mac was exactly as it was when I backed it up. Phew.

In that two week period my machine was upgraded to Snow Leopard, got a new optical drive, a new top cover due to a crack, a new logic board and a new hard drive. There are not too many other things they can replace!

So, what did I learn? A few things, some of which were good reminders of things I already knew:
1) Backing up is good.
2) Having a “hot spare” machine is good. And, like running shoes, it’s probably good to switch between the two machines regularly.
3) While Apple may be a walled garden and you pay a premium, everything for me, “just worked.”
4) You can get to the Fashion Valley Mall for $2.25 on the bus from Old Town. Oh, and you can spend a lot of money on clothes at the mall while your Mac gets examined!