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Contabo's 89-day uptime vs my 4-year sourdough starter

Off Topic by Berlin1 15 replies 2.4K views
Berlin1

Member OP

#1

So here is the thing. My sourdough starter is four years old today[1]. Four. Whole. Years. I have kept this biological Culture alive through two moves, a pandemic, and one memorable Incident involving a roommate who thought it was old pancake batter.

Meanwhile my best VPS streak on Contabo is eighty nine days. Eighty nine. The server Hard Drives spin down with more Dignity than my backup scripts have ever shown anyone.

I am starting to think biological persistence is the superior engineering. At least the yeast does not send me someoneelses root password at 3 AM. At least the starter does not require me to RTFM my own cron syntax every six months because Contabo "upgraded" their control panel again.

Which is more impressive? Digital uptime or biological? I need someoneelses opinion before I start naming my servers after sourdough generations.

[1] Named it "glutenFortress" after a failed migration, obviously.

torontoeng

Member

infrastructure as code

#2

Yaml
Sourdough:
Persistence: biological
Uptime: 4y
Dependencies:
- flour
- water
- not_dying
Vps:
Persistence: digital
Uptime: 89d
Dependencies:
- Contabo_not_rebooting
- cron_working
- skill_issue: null

RTFM

- biological wins
- yeast has no virtualization tax
- your starter probably has better cgroup limits than Contabo

prague1983

Member

btw I use Arch

#3

Just use a real provider

Eighty nine days is not an uptime record, that is a cry for help. My router at home has 340 days and it cost less than your monthly Contabo invoice. Skill issue.

But fine, the starter wins. At least when yeast crashes it smells interesting instead of sending you a 3 AM alert that /var/log filled up because someoneelses docker container went rogue.

oops: 0000 [#1] SMP
FyreJun

Member

1 #4

Let us consider that your sourdough starter requires daily attention and care, whereas a server merely requires electricity and hope.

I am sorry to intrude upon this discussion, but I find it most impressive. Let us not forget that you have carried this starter through adversity. That is dedication.

I do apologize for the length of this reply. Please forgive me if I have spoken out of turn.

LO

Member

#5

Yeast has no virtualization tax made me snort coffee out my nose

PetraSuper

Member

network boot believer

#6

Eighty nine days and you call that a record?

boot anything, anywhere, anytime
craigdzir

Member

8-bit forever

#7

I had a roommate mistake my homelab for a space heater once

prague1983

Member

btw I use Arch

#8
craigdzir said:
My router at home has 340 days

Correction: my router has 340 days because I never updated OpenWrt. This is not a brag. This is a confession.

Your starter is still more reliable than my "stable" release. At least sourdough gives you bread instead of CVEs.

oops: 0000 [#1] SMP
Berlin1

Member OP

#9
prague1983 said:
Eighty nine days is not an uptime record, that is a cry for help.

I never said it was a record. I said it was my record. There is a difference between "personal best" and "good." My personal best 5K time would make a Kenyan jogger weep.

FyreJun said:
Daily attention and care

Actually once you have a mature starter it is weekly in the fridge. The server needs weekly attention because Contabo's panel changes more often than my flatmate.

I ran the numbers. Starter: 15 minutes per week. Contabo VPS: 45 minutes per week average over four years, mostly at 3 AM their time which is not a timezone humans should experience.

PetraSuper

Member

network boot believer

#10

This is why I netboot everything. My Pi cluster has no local storage to corrupt. Uptime is meaningless when your rootfs is a squashfs on a read-only NFS share three rooms away.

Sourdough starter is just biological netboot. You keep the culture central, you propagate when needed. Berlin1 has been running the same image for four years with live patching via flour and water.

I respect this.

boot anything, anywhere, anytime

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