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Message-ID: <47D97C9E.303@emc.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:12:30 -0400
From: Ric Wheeler <ric@....com>
To: Daniel Phillips <phillips@...nq.net>
CC: Lars Marowsky-Bree <lmb@...e.de>,
Alan Cox <alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
Grzegorz Kulewski <kangur@...com.net>,
linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ramback: faster than a speeding bullet
Daniel Phillips wrote:
> On Thursday 13 March 2008 06:27, Ric Wheeler wrote:
>>>>> So "perfectly reliable if UPS power does not fail" seems a bit over the
>>>>> top.
>>>> It works for EMC :-)
>>> Where they control the hardware and run a rather specialized OS as well,
>>> not a general purpose system like Linux on "commodity" hardware ;-)
>> Actually, in Centera we use generic hardware with a fairly normal kernel
>> which has strategic backports from upstream (libata, nic drivers, etc).
>>
>> No UPS in the picture. Data integrity is protected by working with the
>> application team to insure they understand when data is safely on the
>> disk platter and working with IO & FS people to try and make sure we
>> don't lie to them (too much ) about that promise.
>>
>> The centera boxes are tested with power failure & error injection and by
>> all of our customers in all those ways customers do ;-)
>
> Hi Ric,
>
> Right, so Linux has gotten to the point where it competes with purpose-
> built embedded software in reliability. Not quite there, but close
> enough for mission-critical.
This is our case, but we have been working for quite a while to enhance
the reliability of the io stack & file systems. It also helps to be very
careful to select hardware components with mature, open source &
natively integrated drivers ;-)
>
> I was not thinking of Centera when I mentioned the UPS though...
>
> Daniel
No problem, we certainly have many boxes with built in ups hardware ;-)
ric
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