Anyone else find this scheme completely atrocious?
1. Relying on a home computer on the critical path for data backup and persistence for a business
2. Relying on a high latency, low quality networking path between the slave db and the 'home mac' rather than a more reliable link between two machines in a datacenter.
3. A poor persistence model for long lived backups
4. No easy way to programatically recover old backups
What's even more disturbing is that this isn't a new problem. Its not like we don't know how to backup databases. This solution seems very poorly though out.
Regarding point #1 - Marco's "Home Computer" is a Mac Pro (per other posts he's made) - it has Xeon proceesors, ECC RAM, etc. Much closer to a server than what you can pick up at Best Buy for $399.
It's not about performance nor price, but conditions in which the machine operates. Many servers used nowadays are cheaper than high-end desktop machines.
The point wasn't that his system was in some way adequate because he happened to be using one good piece of kit, but that that particular piece of kit was better than average.
Additionally, the GGP post makes some assumptions about acceptability of backup procedures that may not be correct - for example, that in Instapaper's case anything but the most current backup copy would be useful, and therefore long term storage of older copies isn't of primary concern.
1. Relying on a home computer on the critical path for data backup and persistence for a business
2. Relying on a high latency, low quality networking path between the slave db and the 'home mac' rather than a more reliable link between two machines in a datacenter.
3. A poor persistence model for long lived backups
4. No easy way to programatically recover old backups
What's even more disturbing is that this isn't a new problem. Its not like we don't know how to backup databases. This solution seems very poorly though out.