Waking up to a mess
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Wow. It's been a long time since I worked on software for which 3-week soak sessions were a thing.
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The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.Some of the systems I work on only turn off once a year. Things like memory fragmentation become very important. It can be a real challenge to track down some customer issues.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
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Some of the systems I work on only turn off once a year. Things like memory fragmentation become very important. It can be a real challenge to track down some customer issues.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
I used to work on systems like that (telecom call servers). What kind of system are you working on? I still find it amusing when systems are shut down every week or two for "routine maintenance". :-D
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The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. -
I used to work on systems like that (telecom call servers). What kind of system are you working on? I still find it amusing when systems are shut down every week or two for "routine maintenance". :-D
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The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.Production machines for packaging. Imagine a 200 foot long machine packaging beer or diapers.... you name it. If our product stops running, the entire line goes down. The cost of our machine is insignificant to the cost of the line or the downtime. So, yeah, like telecom switches and the like. :)
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
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Production machines for packaging. Imagine a 200 foot long machine packaging beer or diapers.... you name it. If our product stops running, the entire line goes down. The cost of our machine is insignificant to the cost of the line or the downtime. So, yeah, like telecom switches and the like. :)
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
Interesting. I'd have guessed that the line would be regularly shut down for hardware maintenance, which would reduce the uptime expectations on you. Then again, your software wouldn't want to be the cause of a shutdown.
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The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. -
Interesting. I'd have guessed that the line would be regularly shut down for hardware maintenance, which would reduce the uptime expectations on you. Then again, your software wouldn't want to be the cause of a shutdown.
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The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.Most of the time there is an annual shutdown. In our case, our equipment tends to be wired into the production line, so it's a REALLY big deal to tell the user to cycle power. Many times, our equipment is parked under the line in protected areas. The only way to cycle power is to do it for the entire production line, and there tends to be a LOT of systems connected to that line. Note that if our system isn't working, they aren't making product, I guess that qualifies as mission critical in a light sense of the word. So, over the years I've learned not to code things in ways we take for granted. For example, malloc's are evil. Skipping the memory leak issue (We'll assume there is a matching free everywhere), this can easily lead to memory fragmentation and a hang down the road. I didn't believe it at first. I'm a believer now.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
