Network OS's

[Jonathan Hutchins, Rune Webmaster]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Coleman" <mkc at mathdogs.com>

> "Jonathan Hutchins, Rune Webmaster" <hutchins at therune.com> writes:
> > We've found NT to be extremely stable - the servers here have been
running
> > continuously since late 1998 without a crash, and the majority of
> > workstations simply don't have problems.

> I don't have a dog in this race, but this statement seems hard to believe.
> You're saying you have a network of 5000 NT systems and not one of them
has
> crashed a single time in the last two years?

That's not quite what I meant to say...

First, the total network's bigger than the 4,407 objects that pop up in my
"Network Neighborhood".  Those are just systems, either Workstations or
Servers, that are announcing themselves via SMB and are within the same
resource domain.  The majority of them are NT 4.0 workstations.  There are
183 other domains linked in to the network, at least one of which has a
similar number of systems in it.

I can't speak for all of them, but I can speak for two Servers and around 97
Workstations here, as well as a fair number that I installed and maintained
in my previous position.

The servers here have been up since late '99, and haven't crashed yet.

The workstations have been similarly reliable, with the exception of one
department (15 users) which was running several applications at once and had
problems with one function crashing them.  Increasing RAM from 64 to 128 MB
took care of that problem.

Other systems I built and installed previously typically ran with NO
maintenance.  Period.  Users changed the backup tapes, and we'd occasionally
drop by to look at the logs when we were fixing or delivering a workstation.

> (All of the NT systems I've ever observed have crashed several times per
> month, but perhaps my situation is unusual.)

Man, I'm really sorry to hear that.  I've had that level of problem only
with bad hardware.  What kind of applications are you running on them?  I'm
no longer in the supply chain (and glad to be out of it), but whoever built
those thing for you should be held accountable.  As the above inidcates, NT
can be rock solid if set up correctly.

(OLC) I've often found that Linux will reveal hardware problems that were
assumed to be "just Windows as usual".  They say one of the best hardware
tests you can run is to do a kernel compile.