Posts categorized as: sre

How Third Grade Arithmetic Can Sink Your Software Architecture

Published by Matt Stine

Do you really understand single points of failure? A Single Point of Failure (SPOF) will cause an entire system to fail, even if it’s the only broken component. The Power of Multiplying By Zero is a mental model we can use to better understand SPOFs. Consider these two expressions: 865309 x 42 x 1984 x 221 x 0 865309 + 42 + 1984 + 221 + 0 Assuming you have beyond a third-grade education (or your country’s equivalent), the second expression may take you a moment, but the first expression should evaluate itself.