Re: Cluster computing drawbacks

glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> For programs where the runtime is measured in days it is a pretty good
> bet that most of the time there isn't someone there waiting for the
> next prompt.
>
> It is nice to be notified when it ends, though.

wasn't exactly what i had in mind, ... there are a lot of (mega)
"on-line" applications run in batch environments ... because the batch
environments have evolved a lot of "automated" conventions for
handling numerous types of events (rather than pushing them to the end
user, common in interactive system). these on-line environments tend
to make use of these automated facilities to help provide 7x24,
continuous operation.

several years ago, we were talking to one of the major financial
transaction systems ... which commented that they attributed their one
hundred percent availability over the previous several years primarily
to

1) ims hot-standby
2) automated operator

when my wife did her stint in pok (batch mainframe land) responsible
for loosely-coupled (i.e. cluster by any other name) architecture ...
she came up with peer-coupled shared data architecture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#shareddata

the first organization that really used it was ims group for ims
hot-standby.

batch systems tended to have some residual direct human involvement,
in the early days for tending printers, card readers, tape drives, etc
(i.e. called operators).

during the early 70s, i started developing automated processes for
performing many of the tasks that the operating system nominally
required of operators.

starting in the early 80s ... you started to see the shift from
hardware being the primary source of failures to software and people
being the primary source of failures. automated operator went a long
way to reducing many of the human mistake related failures.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
.

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