[danengel]

like a big web store a company depends on, a space shuttle, or for the military? Systems which must not fail in any case?

[subego]

Originally posted by danengel:
like a big web store a company depends on, a space shuttle, or for the military? Systems which must not fail in any case?

1) Maybe
2) No
3) Sometimes

[mism]

if you read the Licence Agreement when you install OS 10.whatever it lists the environments it should not be used in. It makes for an interesting and entertaining read, not for use in Nuclear Installations and the like.

[danengel]

So what do the big guys use then? How is a nuclear plant run, or the U.S.'s BFGs?

BFG = big f***ing gun, for those who never played Doom before

[sniffer]

www.apple.com have used os x server for years haven't they?

[subego]

Originally posted by danengel:
So what do the big guys use then?

From what little I know, old stuff.

One of the great ruses of the cold war was that NORAD really had a handle on things (thanks in no small part to the movie War Games). Not surprisingly to anyone who uses computers, the sucker was obsolete even before it came on-line. Since it was all "mission critical" it was a real bitch to upgrade. It was in regard to this I first heard the "like replacing the wings of an airplane while it's in flight" analogy. (I read all this in Wired magazine about 5-6 years ago, so please forgive lapses my memory)

Likewise, during the whole Y2K thing, I remember the doom and gloom types talking about how lots of power plant controls are written in Fortran, and most Fortran programmers are either dead or too successful to care about trawling through a half-million lines of code. Alan Greenspan used to be a programmer for instance.

[C.J. Moof]

Originally posted by sniffer:
www.apple.com have used os x server for years haven't they?

Yes, but fortunately, if OS X server or WebObjects goes wonky, it's not going to cause direct loss of life. Maybe indirect, when Steve Jobs gets his hands on you, but not direct.

You don't run the space shuttle or a nuclear power plant on an operating system you can go buy at CompUSA. I'd guess you use a proven base of unix with code that does no more than the functions it has to, and not one line extra.

[ZackS]

OS X server is good enough for a company website and OS X client is a far better choice than windows for most military operations. As for space shuttles though... I say we let NASA decide what is ok when lives are on the line.

[vas]

Originally posted by ZackS:
... I say we let NASA decide what is ok when lives are on the line.

You're kidding, right??

[danengel]

Originally posted by vas:
You're kidding, right??

Why would he?

[Scarpa]

I think the QNX operating system is generally the one to use when It-Must-Not-Fail.

Nobody in their right mind would use a consumer OS for systems that protect lives. For ecommerce it's not such a big deal. A big website might be 'mission-critical' to the company but it won't kill anyone if it goes down. In those cases you calculate how much you can pay for reliability vs how much reliability you need.

[Scarpa]

Originally posted by danengel:
Why would he?

Because after the Challenger blew up it was business as usual until they got called on it when Columbia blew up? Because a bunch of people responsible for quality assurance resigned after a damning report on their processes?

[Brazuca]

The Space Shuttle has its own home-created software

…
But how much work the software does is not what makes it remarkable. What makes it remarkable is how well the software works. This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have achieved. Consider these stats : the last three versions of the program -- each 420,000 lines long-had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors. Commercial programs of equivalent complexity would have 5,000 errors.

This software is the work of 260 women and men based in an anonymous office building across the street from the Johnson Space Center in Clear Lake, Texas, southeast of Houston. They work for the "on-board shuttle group," a branch of Lockheed Martin Corps space mission systems division, and their prowess is world renowned: the shuttle software group is one of just four outfits in the world to win the coveted Level 5 ranking of the federal governments Software Engineering Institute (SEI) a measure of the sophistication and reliability of the way they do their work. In fact, the SEI based it standards in part from watching the on-board shuttle group do its work.
…

[diamondsw]

Originally posted by Scarpa:
Because after the Challenger blew up it was business as usual until they got called on it when Columbia blew up? Because a bunch of people responsible for quality assurance resigned after a damning report on their processes?

Because their funding has been cut every year (or maintained without inflation adjustments, which amounts to the same thing)? Yeah, NASA has a lot of organizational problems, but lack of funding and pressure to deliver more with less was given equal standing in the Columbia report. Congress (Democrat and Republican ones) and NASA management are at fault.

But back to mission-critical stuff. Agreed, OS X is not there.

[danengel]

Originally posted by diamondsw:
But back to mission-critical stuff. Agreed, OS X is not there.

OpenBSD would be there, I've heard. It should be better than Linux. Also, I once read something about an OS from Boeing.

[parsec_kadets]

I'd just like to remind everyone that the U.S. Navy uses Windows to run most of their ships these days. Remember that snafu when Windows NT crashed and left the USS Yorktown dead in the water? They had to tow the ship back to Nofolk, VA. The story can be seen here. Heck, I found out my local ATM uses Windows NT when it crashed. Talk about a bad decision when it comes to mission critical systems. Also remember that the Navy bought a couple hundred Xserves that run Yellow Dog Linux. That information can be found here

[[APi]TheMan]

Originally posted by danengel:
like a big web store a company depends on, a space shuttle, or for the military? Systems which must not fail in any case?

Ahem:

Code:
tiglon% telnet www.army.mil 80
Trying 140.183.234.10...
Connected to www.army.mil.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 22:21:47 GMT
Server: 4D_WebSTAR_S/5.3.0 (MacOS X)

[Gul Banana]

We use OS X Server at work, which is mission critical in that nobody can get any work done without it - it runs email and centralized file storage, as well as our website. It does occasionally have problems, but that's because of the hardware (an old blue&white G3 being asked to handle all the load of a small to medium business, ouch, good thing we've got an XServe on order). It's never actually crashed, and web/file serving have never gone down; email has, but that's been due to ISP problems.

[ambush]

I'd use OSXserver with apps you KNOW wont crash.

[danengel]

Originally posted by [APi]TheMan:

Code:
tiglon% telnet www.army.mil 80
Trying 140.183.234.10...
Connected to www.army.mil.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 22:21:47 GMT
Server: 4D_WebSTAR_S/5.3.0 (MacOS X)

That's their web server running OS X. I strongly believe their war simulators and nuclear weapon controllers do not run on the same machine. At least let's hope so.

[Xeo]

Let's hope all mission-critical work is done w/ completely custom OSes and software. Everyday OSes are made to be flexible and therefore have more problems. If an OS is designed for a specific purpose, it can be honed in to run as perfectly as possible on the given hardware. I would expect nothing less from something that important.

God help us all if they use Windows.

[[APi]TheMan]

Originally posted by danengel:
That's their web server running OS X. I strongly believe their war simulators and nuclear weapon controllers do not run on the same machine. At least let's hope so.

Hey, I'll take it.

[ph0ust]

Originally posted by diamondsw:
But back to mission-critical stuff. Agreed, OS X is not there.

well, i would say that os x is more than viable anywhere that windows is used, and i have seen windows used in a lot of surprising environments not limited to huge mission critical environments. it is unix after all........

[Morenix]

the big problem about the using of Mac OS X Server on critical systems are the system updates. Newer versions of windows server allows the system to update their base without restarting.

[pcp_ip]

The big problem I see with apple's updates is that they don't warn you that they're wiping out all of your config files (samba, sendmail, apache, etc.) that's not good for non-stop 5 nines computing. A mission critical system needs to be updated while it's running and not have critical services and daemons go offline and have their configurations wiped out.

Also- built-in clustering would help. It should be able to to have multiple nodes go down while the system keeps chugging away. I'm talking about service clustering (ie. databases)- not VT supercomputer clustering.

You want to talk about mission critical uptime- the Tandem servers that Compaq used to sell could take a shotgun blast in the the side of them and keep running. The NYSE's Tandems fell 6 floors through the WTC after the first bombing and were still running. That's 99.999 24/7/365 computing. Real mission critical hardware runs ATM networks, stock exchanges, google, ebay, yahoo. I don't think OSX is there yet.

Here's what a second of critical system downtime meant in '99 (warning flash). I'm sure it's worth ALOT more now.

[RayX]

Originally posted by danengel:
like a big web store a company depends on, a space shuttle, or for the military? Systems which must not fail in any case?

No.

[rlmorel]

There is no such thing as a bulletproof OS.

However, some are more bulletproof than others...

[ZackS]

I made an OS that doesn't do anything. It doesn't even boot the machine. It's bulletproof.