AS/400 reliability vs. Microsoft

[J.Pluta]

In case anybody is following this stuff... Recently, Microsoft was indignant about all those AS/400 rumors and adamant that all of its business runs on Microsoft servers (February - Midrange Technology Showcase). Then just a couple of days ago, MS reported that their servers have a reliability of 99.999%. While this was of course met with a few giggles by those of us in the trenches, I recognize that sometimes it's hard to make points to upper management. Well, during these last several days, the following has occured: The Microsoft New Zeland site was hacked into, with a message left on the front page: "Security wuz broke'n". Nearly all of Microsoft's primary commercial (.COM) sites were down yesterday for 12-15 hours. After Microsoft explained this away as a "technician's error" in "setting up the DNS servers", Microsoft's flagship sites (MSN, MSNBC, Hotmail) have been down again today for extended periods. They are currently down, and have been for over an hour. Somebody did a calculation and figured out that in order to get back to 99.999% reliability, the servers will have to run nonstop for about 250 years. So much for hype. Joe

[nycsusan@hotmail.com]

<font color blue>Microsoft's flagship sites (MSN, MSNBC, Hotmail) have been down again today for extended periods. They are currently down, and have been for over an hour. </font> As we speak, our mail Microsoft mail server here at work is down again. We had a "total disk failure" over an hour ago, and there is no estimate as to when corporate e-mail will be available again. The 2nd (or possibly 3rd) largest employer in Dallas has no e-mail right now thanks to a Microsoft server failure. :)

[D.Handy]

Susan, <font color=blue>"We had a "total disk failure" over an hour ago, and there is ... no e-mail right now thanks to a Microsoft server failure. :)"</font> I have a hard time blaming that on MS software. Mirroring and RAID can be done on PC's too, and should have avoided the downtime in this case. Doug

[David Abramowitz]

As I understand it, MS is still using AS/400s, only their having someone else run them - Outsourcing if you will. Since the AS/400s are neither owned by, or leased by MS, MS is politically correct by saying "We ain't got no more AS/400s"! As Mark Twain once wrote "Truth is more of a stranger than fiction". Dave

[Guest.Visitor]

I would agree with Doug. Disk failure is hardly a microsoft failure.