Auto-scaling, health checks and F1🏎️
A little dive into the recent Australian GP practice.
🏎️ - In the Australian GP practice this year, an unusual event occured, drivers were not having a view of their rivals on the track.
🏎️ - If you have seen enough F1 races, you would understand how much of a risk that poses, even for 5ms (200th of a second).
🏎️ - What might come to mind first is that the live GPS must have failed, probably due to a satellite fault or some other unplanned event.
🏎️ - However, it came to light that the root cause was a server failure, one that handles FIA tyre data distribution to live timing and graphic systems.
🏎️ - This caused a chain reaction, disrupting other data distribution systems, including the GPS systems. (we were partly right afterall)
🏎️ - This event might have beeen avoided if there was an auto-scaling health check service in place to quickly detect and replace that server.
🏎️ - The full solution might just be a little more complex but this captures the basis of how to avoid such events.
