Switching gear was slower and laying new fibre wasn't an option for your average company. Particularly not point-to-point between your DB server and your replica.
So if real-time synchronization isn't practical, you are then left to do out-of-hours backups and there you start running into bandwidth issues of the time.
Plus long distance was mostly fibre already. And even regular electrical wires aren’t really much slower than fibre in term of latency. Parent probably meant bandwidth.
Copper doesn't work over these kinds of distances without powered switches, which adds latency. And laying fibre over several miles would be massively expensive. Well outside the realm of all but the largest of corporations. There's a reason buildings with high bandwidth constraints huddle near internet backbones.
What used to happen (and still does as far as I know, but I've been out of the networking game for a while now) is you'd get fibre laid between yourself and your ISP. So you're then subject to the latency of their networking stack. And that becomes a huge problem if you want to do any real-time work like DB replicas.
The only way to do automated off-site backups was via overnight snapshots. And you're then running into the bandwidth constraints of the era.
What most businesses ended up doing was tape backups and then physically driving it to another site -- ideally then storing it an fireproof safe. Only the largest companies could afford to push it over fibre.
Yes but good luck trying to get funding approval. There is a funny saying that wealthy people don't become wealthy by giving their wealth away. I think it applies to companies even more.
hnlmorg|4 months ago
So if real-time synchronization isn't practical, you are then left to do out-of-hours backups and there you start running into bandwidth issues of the time.
peteforde|4 months ago
cm2187|4 months ago
hnlmorg|4 months ago
What used to happen (and still does as far as I know, but I've been out of the networking game for a while now) is you'd get fibre laid between yourself and your ISP. So you're then subject to the latency of their networking stack. And that becomes a huge problem if you want to do any real-time work like DB replicas.
The only way to do automated off-site backups was via overnight snapshots. And you're then running into the bandwidth constraints of the era.
What most businesses ended up doing was tape backups and then physically driving it to another site -- ideally then storing it an fireproof safe. Only the largest companies could afford to push it over fibre.
mcny|4 months ago