On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 at 14:09, Chris Zach via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > Funny story about that: In 1990 I installed a Compaq systempro for > Hechinger's that cost over $100,000.
I just about remember the SystemPro machines. One of my bigger clients in my first job got one, but they hired a full-time guy to customise their app for it, and he also became the sysadmin. A very early example of devops, I suppose. So I never got to play around with it. :-( > Had a full compliment of memory, > max internal disk on the ATA controller, ATA? That long ago? Possible but unusual in a server, I would have thought. What OS, just out of interest? > and two external boxes of disks > with the smart SCSI-ish controller. Massive system running Sybase SQL. > Designed to replace a 24*7 mainframe and expected to be up all the time. A single box? Oh dear. > Got a call 2 months later: The system had blown a hole in one of the > disk controllers and was down. Called Compaq, they got someone on a > plane with a spare controller from the west coast and I drove out to > meet them in the middle of the night so we could get the system up by > morning. > > That was pretty insane. And pointed out that "mainframe" PC's didn't > have anywhere near the redundancy or support of true mainframes. Oh yes indeed. I've had catastrophic hardware failures, but luckily, none that took out a RAID controller. I've just heard the horror stories. I finally left the support business in about 2011, but by then, it was fairly standard practice to install VMware (the free VMware ESX hypervisor if the company didn't have a paid vSphere site licence) on all new boxes, then install the OS in that. Even if it was a dedicated machine that only ran 1 OS ever. Because that way, if the machine died, you could restore the backup onto a new, totally different box, so long as it was running ESX, and it would Just Work™ with no driver or activation issues -- the virtualised hardware was the same. -- Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053