I got bit by unnecessary complexity!
I have a motto, don't add any more redundancy that required by the business requirements. You'll live to regret it. I have regrets.
It doesn’t matter if we talk about data or network services in the public cloud or the private data center. One of the first things I ask clients is, “Are the business requirements driving the need for redundancy, or are you making assumptions.” Because you know what they say about assumptions, I failed one of my basic principles - Keep it Simple Stupid.
Our team just spent hours troubleshooting intermittent internet access in the CTO Advisor Hybrid Infrastructure data center. It turned out to be a duplicate IP address. Ironically, I’ve seen this same problem in my early networking days. A “standby” router wasn’t in standby mode. The resulting duplicate IP addresses made it challenging to find where the network failure existed.
I don’t have the business requirement for redundant internet routers. However, it was one of those things lying around, and we decided to deploy it. Why not?
I’ll tell you why. If the primary breaks, we can call remote hands to install the spare. We don’t need always-up internet connectivity. We encountered an outage due to overengineering—Rightsize your complexity - An example of when the CTO Advisor should listen to his own advice.