Re: We need more of these! -- MIDRANGE-L

Speaking of power outages, we had one a short while ago.  The servers, 
including the AS/400, have battery backup units.  When the power came back 
on just a few minutes later the users in the building rebooted their PCs 
and then started their AS/400 sessions without a hiccough, but then the 
users started phoning about their e-mail being dead.  We realized then 
that the PC servers had in general failed, and had not rebooted 
successfully.  Even our client/server applications built with VARPG were 
up and running even though the LAN was essentially dead in the water.

My guess is that the AS/400 people had provided us with the correct power 
back up, correctly sized and correctly monitored while the PC servers were 
just added onto battery back ups without proper design and application 
engineering and without monitoring of battery condition.  Sure the PC 
people should have done a better job but hey, with all the other stuff 
they have to learn is it reasonable to expect them to be electrical 
engineers too?  Frankly having the whole system delivered as a whole 
system is a  situation that no other company in the world can deliver at 
any level.  Excepting Apple I suppose.




_______________________
Booth Martin
Booth@MartinVT.com
http://www.MartinVT.com
_______________________




nina jones <ddi@datadesigninc.com>
Sent by: owner-midrange-l@midrange.com
07/29/2000 03:18 PM
Please respond to MIDRANGE-L

 
        To:     "MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com" <MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com>
        cc: 
        Subject:        We need more of these!

boy, that sounds like a spam, huh?

we have software for credit reporting and collection agencies, and some
of the agencies have gone to a p/c based collection system, because
that's hot in the industry now. 

1. we have several of these associations that are expressing regret now
over this decision, and last week one finally called and wanted to get
everything back on the as/400.  she expressed frustration about lockups,
reboots, and fear that the p/c based solution was not stable.  she said
with the as/400 they never have these problems. 

2. another association had the tape drive on the as/400 replaced about a
month ago, and the engineer raved to the association manager about how
the as/400 was the best machine ibm ever made, how rock solid and
reliable they were.  the manager passed this on to me, and actually
sounded a little surprised.  this association has been getting heavy
pressure to switch to a unix based product, and last year, i thought
they'd be.  the perception was that the as/400 was just too old and not
on the cutting edge of technology.  but they had a board meeting last
week, and they're staying with us.

3. i was in california last week, and they had a power outage in their
computer room. the as/400 was back up within 20 minutes, but for quite
awhile, they thought they'd lost the disk drive on the p/c server.  it
was down the better part of 1/2 a day.

nj

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