on March 1, 2012
Whenever I see system drawings, a server is always represented by a standing rectangle– it’s taller than it is wide. It seems to represent the kind of tower server that’s left sitting under someone’s desk.
You know what happens to that server? Someone designs a small web application (COUGH *hack*) on it that solves a small business problem. It’s a real problem, though, so the use of this app spreads, and spreads, and spreads.
Then the app designer leaves their job, gets the flu, or goes on the wrong kind of weekend trip to Vegas. The next thing you know the server’s been accidentally unplugged, and none of the users are even sure where the web application was running. Chaos ensues.
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Wouldn’t it make more sense to draw rack mount style servers in our diagrams? The kind which are in datacenters, with backup power supplies and proper cooling and (hopefully) nobody vacuuming around them late at night?
Or have we been using the tower style icon so long that nobody would know what those are?