Ludicidal Tendencies

Redundancy is a concept in flux. Originating from the Latin redundantia, an overflowing or excess, and holding a connotation of superfluous repetition for several hundred years, it has now become a critical part of our lives in a more positive sense. Redundant systems provide additional or duplicate systems in case of failure of the primary system. It is a fairly simple concept, one of brute force really, or cautious over-expenditure in order to assure safe operations or the lack of larger set-backs, financial or otherwise through wise up-front spending.

I write this note because for the second time in as many months, the Cinema mail server has "experienced a catastrophic failure," meaning that no one can get any emails until a "new server" is procured and set-up. My question is, why is there no redundancy in the Cinema email infrastructure? This is a given at all professionally hosted server farms, so if we can't do it ourselves, perhaps we should simply turn it over to those who can? Email is more important than the University phone system for most people in IMD, since we all provide our own phone services via cell phone. Perhaps some of the money going into the redundant landlines could be tasked to make sure we have an available, redundant email infrastructure.

In case you can't tell, I'm really aggravated by this.