The US repository runs on two virtual machines (VMs) in a VMWare cluster with four physical nodes configured to use the High Availability support in VMWare. Despite having multiple levels of fault-tolerance, recovery from a misconfiguration or other catastrophic failure still requires a DNS update to a standby IP to restore Maven Central. This DNS change requires time: time to make the change and then an often unpredictable time for DNS changes to propagate over the entire Internet.