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1989
16 Years of Server Uptime -- can you top that?
Long-time contributor Tommy Mikkelsen alerted us to this awesome story in Ars Technica: Epic uptime achievement unlocked. Can you beat 16 years?
On September 23, 1996, someone applied a patch to their NetWare 3.12 server (named INTEL, after its processor) and rebooted it.
And then it just ran, and ran, and ran.
"Sixteen and a half years later, INTEL's hard disks—a pair of full height 5.25 inch 800 MB Quantum SCSI devices—are making some disconcerting noises from their bearings, and you're tired of the complaints. It's time to turn off the old warhorse."
We got to wondering, is there anyone in our readership who could equal or top that record? Let us know. We'll give prizes to anyone who can match or beat 16.5 years of continuous uptime. Email a shot of your console showing the uptime stats, to coolguys@novell.com.
If no one can beat 16 years, we'll give a prize to the one who comes closest.
Related Reading
- We ran a server uptime contest in 2001, and here was the result. NetWare Server Uptime Contest Winners
- We repeated it in 2005. Uptime Workhorses: Still Crazy after all these Years
- Oldie from the Register: Missing Novell server discovered after four years
- Here's a little riff on NetWare reliability from DevX.com: If Only the Cloud Had Netware's Uptime
- Here's commentary from ZDNet about that extraordinary uptime: A lesson for the cloud: 100 percent uptime achieved -- for 16 years
Disclaimer: As with everything else at Cool Solutions, this content is definitely not supported by Novell (so don't even think of calling Support if you try something and it blows up).
It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test, test, test before you do anything drastic with it.
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User Comments
Miss these days
Submitted by tiagoaviz on 3 April 2013 - 7:29pm.
This is the kind of stuff that gets me saying I'll keep using Novell even if Novell goes away.
No product can match this uptime so easily. Today our times have changed, where constant modifications are needed for you to remain competitive, and security updates are rolling weekly, let it be Linux or Windows (the latter always excels at that).
I always joke that while our users are running OES and GroupWise, we go out service Microsoft customers while we forget that maintenance is on our servers.
My boss has a saying: you can know for sure something at IT is good when you forget it exists.
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