Very Computer

Here's an interesting idea for you: a pair of Suns.
Not the usual sort of fault-tolerant system, and not as bulletproof a
solution as a Tandem or Stratus, but probably cheaper. I configured a
system like this as the primary output spooler for a newspaper; they
can afford small amounts of downtime, but need to be back up in a very
few minutes. They have two identically configured Sparc 20s with two
Fast SCSI/Buffered Ethernet (FSBE) cards and two external 1MB drives.
All the important data (including the root partition) is on the
external drives; each drive is connected to its own FSBE, and the
drives are mirrored using Sun's Online:DiskSuite software. If a drive
fails, the mirror will continue running with no downtime. Likewise for
one of the FSBE's. If the system itself fails, the monitor, keyboard
and disks get plugged into the second system, which boots while they
place a service call.

We can shout "Fire!" in a crowded Central America.
        - Ian Shoales

Quote:>This is posted for a friend who dosn't have a net connection.
>You can send replies through me.

>    I am in the process of selecting hardware for a 7x24, mission
>    critical application (I hope you like jargon). I am evaluating
>    A Tandem Fault-Tolerant UNIX-based system, a pair of Data General
>    Aviions, and a pair of DEC Alphas. I would like any feedback about
>    the reliability of any of these systems. We will be running oracle7
>    in a realtime enviroment. Basically, I can not afford for the system
>    to be down for more then 3 minutes at any given time. I am
>    expecially interested in horror stories.

I am the UNIX administrator for Trade Service Corporation.  We are an
information publisher using Oracle7 on an AT&T/GIS 3525 UNIX cluster.
We have two servers, each with two Pentium processors, 10 GB
internal storage and 256 MB RAM.  Both systems can simultaneously
access a 30 GB SCSI subsystem which contains our Oracle7 database.  The
software that makes this possible is Oracle7 Parallel Server and a
package written by AT&T called LifeKeeper Distributed Lock Manager.  If
one of our servers crashes, the other can take over 100% of the load in
a matter of a few minutes.

Our server is scaleable two 8 Pentium processors and 2 GB RAM (I think).
We are very pleased with its performance.  Check it out!

Vince Sherart
UNIX Administrator

Davide,

Has your Friend considered a Stratus Computer.  I think you and he will find
that we have better scalablility than the Tandem Integrity line and greater
availablity than a pair of conventional systems strapped together.

The Stratus line runs SVR4 MP with up to 6 way SMP.  Currently we are running
on Intel I860 RISC chips but that will be changing.

Joe Galietto
SE New York Financial District
Stratus Computers, Inc.