Reply to post: Re: Backups

Keeping your head as an entire database goes pear-shaped

C R Mudgeon Bronze badge

Re: Backups

On a somewhat related note, I read a paper about a decade ago that advocated _against_ orderly shutdowns. The author's position was that systems should be architected in such a way that an uncontrolled shutdown not do any damage, and that to test that robustness guarantee, one should always shut it down hard -- and to ensure _that_, one shouldn't even create a clean-shutdown facility in the first place.

E.g. for a desktop O/S, that would mean no "shut down" menu option, command, or whatever; a hard power-off would be the correct, documented way to bring the system down.

(I've tried searching for that paper again, but without success. Can anyone point me at it, by any chance? I'm pretty sure it was an academic paper, not a blog post or the like.)

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