Don't forget for the many years that NT based systems had abysmal uptime
that was primarily due to software issues. In many cases it wasn't
necessarily due to NT itself. You could blame NT's architecture because
a lot of instability was due to device drivers and the acquisition of
off the shelf hardware. Not that the hardware itself failed but that it
did not work well in people's environments. Now this kind of ****
occurs a lot in our desktop environment but not that much in server
world. Over years this has improved.
Michael Crump
Manager, Computing Services
Saint-Gobain Containers, Inc.
1509 S. Macedonia Ave.
Muncie, IN 47302
765.741.7696
765.741.7012 f
"Push to test." <click> "Release to detonate."
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-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-nontech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-nontech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Lukas Beeler
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 11:47 AM
To: Non-Technical Discussion about the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: Re: i5 Youngsters
On 1/15/08, Jones, John (US) <John.Jones@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'll agree that all servers have the _potential_ to go down for
unplanned reasons in addition to planned reasons. But I'd still argue
that a System i will have fewer unplanned outages than a Windows
server.
Why?
Hardware quality is, assuming you purchase a decent Windows server, the
same.
Software quality is the topic right now. Our internal Systems have
been running without unplanned downtime since i'm working here (3
years). That's one production System i (270 for long, now a 515) and
three production System x (330, 346, 3650) running Windows Server 2003
R2, and two production System x (306m, 3250) running Debian Linux.
All of them had downtime due to software upgrades or hardware
upgrades. Not a single one crashed in these three years. None of them
require attention - i get mails from all of them about backup
completion, and they run fine when unattended (which happens when i'm
overloaded with more important work - which is currently not the case
;).
load balance. To achieve similar uptime we've added 4 new vendors to
the mix, 2 new operating systems, a front-end processor, an additional
rack in the data center, more networking gear (new firewalls & more
switch capacity), a backup appliance, and so on. And we'll have to
replicate this in our DR center eventually.
No. This is a "better" setup than a single System i running
everything. First, you have hardware redundancy - a server fails? No
problem, just swap it out. If your System i fails, you'll have to
switch to your DR site.
You need more processing power? Just add a few front end servers. With
the System i, you'd need to buy a new CEC and replace the current one
(which would probably never happen, far too expensive).
midrange.com
