This is good advice to a point, everyone should do some basic things to have the proper level of availablity for their needs. Referencing a blog post I made about this during the BitBucket issue a couple months back: http://www.bretpiatt.com/blog/2009/10/03/availability-is-a-f...
I'm not a big fan of the DIY and this isn't because I work for a service provider (Rackspace). I fundamentally don't believe businesses should utilize resources with business specific knowledge on commodity tasks. A number of providers are capable of setting up a multi-DC configuration for customers. A number of consultancies are capable of setting up a multi-DC/multi-provider configuration. The provider or consultant can provide clear instructions and/or support through the commodity layers. Businesses will ultimately need to know the specific details of their application and how to troubleshoot it unless you're paying the provider/support team to do so.
I'm not a big fan of the DIY and this isn't because I work for a service provider (Rackspace). I fundamentally don't believe businesses should utilize resources with business specific knowledge on commodity tasks. A number of providers are capable of setting up a multi-DC configuration for customers. A number of consultancies are capable of setting up a multi-DC/multi-provider configuration. The provider or consultant can provide clear instructions and/or support through the commodity layers. Businesses will ultimately need to know the specific details of their application and how to troubleshoot it unless you're paying the provider/support team to do so.