5typos.net
Pets vs Cattle
Best summary of this server/cloud analogy:
This is how we should treat our servers. If we have pet servers, we have that box in the server room. We patch it, we fix things when they break. We remote in to make changes so that it keeps running correctly.
If we have cattle servers, they are VMs. They are easy to destroy and rebuild from scratch. In the cloud, this VM process is much easier and faster to do, so we should strive to do it.
I somehow hadn’t seen this analogy before. It was mentioned off-handely on the lastest Supertop podcast, and it really got me thinking.
As with any anology, if you take it too far it breaks. But the main impresion is very educational and even mnemonic.