RE: Redundancy

On Friday 7th November David J N Begley wrote....
>
>> know. That's what I call redundancy indeed !!! It's also one of the
>> reasons that banks etc like OpenVMS for 24*365 mission critical
>> applications.
>
>Without trying to start an OS war, I just couldn't let this one by without
>saying something - yes, OpenVMS is pretty good for "mission critical" apps
>(then again, many banks would say IBM's AS/400 systems are likewise pretty
>good) ... but it doesn't mean UNIX *isn't* stable. :-)

No OS war nor flames intended !!!

I have no objection to UNIX and its many variants - as my sites "Unix
guru by default", I can't really, can I ? I was only putting forward
the notion that OpenVMS has some features that it appears that UNIX does
not, namely cluster IP address sharing. The cries about Squid being
slow to restart/reload etc prompted me to make my suggestion.

One other poster also lamented that this feature is apparently not in
Linux (one of the really "open" Unix-es that might allow such a change
to be implemented. Maybe someone from Digital Equipment who is involved
in UCX and likes Linux too might be able to get this in, assuming it's
not too much of a trade-secret issue, though the chances are slim). I
believe Digital's NT clustering technology also implements the
rudimentary elements of this "cluster address" functionality too.

>Our proxy (Solaris 2.5.1) stays running 'cept when I reboot/restart either
>the process or the machine - I'd venture that many other sites see
>similar stability (yeah, I know in some environments it can be a bit
>iffy).

We run Solaris 2.5.1 on 20 CAD stations, plus our 2 Squid servers (child
and parent), and yes, their stability is great too. They just don't
offer the cluster IP functionality that OpenVMS does.

>FWIW, whilst I have no immediate need for an OpenVMS port of Squid, I'd
>like to see it happen anyway (didn't someone do an OS/2 port?) - the more
>platforms it covers, the better IMHO.

So would I. I think it just takes a dedicated group of porters to do
the job. Thankfully Squid is not at all like Apache or other programs
which are prone to lots of forking/spawning of children, which is one of
the areas that VMS process creation overhead tends to kill (or at least
degrade) performance of ported Unix server-style apps.

Maybe I will find some time to make a start on it (say about 10pm every
night ......). Anyone else care to offer a hand ?

Regards

Jason Armistead
armistej@oeca.otis.com
Received on Thu Nov 06 1997 - 16:21:56 MST