London Stock Exchange begins migration to Linux-based trading platform (ComputerworldUK)

Posted Jan 22, 2010 8:28 UTC (Fri) by trasz (guest, #45786)
In reply to: London Stock Exchange begins migration to Linux-based trading platform (ComputerworldUK) by leoc
Parent article: London Stock Exchange begins migration to Linux-based trading platform (ComputerworldUK)

One of such setups was having issues with XFS corrupting the filesystem in misterious ways. Another seems to just leak memory somewhere.

London Stock Exchange begins migration to Linux-based trading platform (ComputerworldUK)

Posted Jan 22, 2010 10:22 UTC (Fri) by sgros (guest, #36440) [Link] (1 responses)

I think that the majority of Linux installations, at least those
commercially supported by RedHat, use ext3. So, in case XFS makes you, or
anyone else, a trouble you can migrate to something else. In case of
Windows, your only option is FAT32.

London Stock Exchange begins migration to Linux-based trading platform (ComputerworldUK)

Posted Jan 22, 2010 13:28 UTC (Fri) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]

Most Windows servers, just like most Linux servers, just work and don't need this kind of workarounds.

London Stock Exchange begins migration to Linux-based trading platform (ComputerworldUK)

Posted Jan 24, 2010 0:56 UTC (Sun) by stanford (guest, #63180) [Link] (3 responses)

I can't help but notice that the original poster, leoc, asked to be pointed
to some "Linux systems out there that are restarted daily". In other words,
he was politely asking you to substantiate your claim. You have made vague
allusions to "filesystem corruption" and "memory leaks", but have not
actually cited concrete evidence of such things.

I suspect that you may be mistaken in your original claim, and are therefore
unable to provide substantiation. Linux is used on a wide range of
architectures, including supercomputers that require very high availability,
and its uptime can be measured in years. I can find no evidence that Linux
either suffers systemic file corruption in XFS, or from memory leaks that
mandate a daily reboot.

If you could point me to such systems, I'd be curious to see what kind of
setup they are running.

London Stock Exchange begins migration to Linux-based trading platform (ComputerworldUK)

Posted Jan 24, 2010 2:32 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I have to use a Linux system at work that's rebooted daily...

... because it's in a VM sitting atop a Windows 2008 Server system, which
needs a daily reboot before kernel memory leaks bring it to its knees. I
really wish my workplace weren't MS 'partners'.

London Stock Exchange begins migration to Linux-based trading platform (ComputerworldUK)

Posted Jan 25, 2010 12:27 UTC (Mon) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]

@stanford: What do you expect me to say, company names?

However, I actually can give you one company name, because they talked about this in public. Company is Nasza Klasa, kind of like Polish Facebook and one of the busiest websites in *.pl. One problem they had was that XFS was losing files. Just like that - something didn't quite work and the file was gone. It wasn't really a problem for them, because they had everything replicated, so were able to work around that in automated manner.

London Stock Exchange begins migration to Linux-based trading platform (ComputerworldUK)

Posted Jan 25, 2010 12:31 UTC (Mon) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]

@stanford: Also, by claiming that Linux is used in a mission-critical environments running without reboot for years, you seem to believe that it's somewhat different from Windows. It's not - Windows is being used in mission-critical environments as well, including military ones. And, believe it or not, it doesn't need daily reboots either.

What I'm trying to say is, both systems work OK for most people. But for some they don't, requiring restarts.