High-availability operating systems not anything new
High-availability operating systems not anything new
Posted Jan 18, 2007 7:17 UTC (Thu) by eru (subscriber, #2753)Parent article: LCA: Andrew Tanenbaum on creating reliable systems
The design principles Tanenbaum describes have been for decades in daily use in operating systems for telecommunications and other applications where seriously high availability is needed (and often enforced by regulators). What he is advocating is bringing that kind of technology to more mainstream computer users. Could be a good idea in principle, but are people willing to pay the cost? Selling reliability is harder than flashy performance.
Posted Jan 18, 2007 11:29 UTC (Thu)
by gdt (subscriber, #6284)
[Link]
It's not that hard to sell reliability. Mobile phone manufacturers for one are getting very worried about the implications of the huge amount of code on their phones. Which is why they are funding things like the formal proof of the L4 microkernel. Most ISPs are deeply interested in the stability and uptime of their routers and switches. One of the great disappointments of Cisco's IOS XR is that although it runs on the QNX microkernel it doesn't exploit that and runs huge processes that need to be restarted to have bug fixes applied. The talk was timely because it refocusses the discussion on to building the best computer possible, rather than merely building an operating system better than Microsoft's.
High-availability operating systems not anything new