Epic Uptime Achievement: Can You Beat 16 Years?

that's sweet.

Best I've ever had was a windows NT 4.0 server running on a P2 Dell that had an uptime of 3 years, 7 months and 10 days before coming down for the last time to get replaced.
 
I still have my USRobotics external (with all those pretty lights!) 28.8kbps modem that was upgraded w/v.32 (?) to do 33.6kbps. NEVER going to let go of that puppy.

Damn... I was like 10 years old at the time, waiting anxiously for my birthday, on which I got my first personal computer - Am486DX4 100 on a PcChips motherboard - yes, the one with fake cache chips!

I was the king of setting IRQ and DMA on hardware modems and sound cards. And I was the leader of the crusade against WinModems that came later on. No one could take my USRobotics away... well, except for a lightning. Damn you lightning, damn you.
 
here's my server before a move:

307457_10150460178003835_269697970_n.jpg
 
What a waste of electricity.

I agree as the forum says it has only had his notebook attached since 2004 which is when the OP says he started and even then the server was "completely orphaned".

The uptime is still impressive but not as much so as the thing wasn't being used. Hell I wonder if the drives were still readable? That old of netware could run off memory so it is possible the drives were not readable.
 
At work, we have a voicemail computer running AT&T Merlin Mail on what is either a 386 or a 286. It hasn't locked up once in 10 years, but our power goes out on at least an annual basis.

Also, every UPS I've seen has a failure mode that causes a loss of power for whatever it is protecting, and I've never seen one last anything like 10 years. Maybe that server has dual power supplies with separate UPSs?
 
At work, we have a voicemail computer running AT&T Merlin Mail on what is either a 386 or a 286. It hasn't locked up once in 10 years, but our power goes out on at least an annual basis.

Also, every UPS I've seen has a failure mode that causes a loss of power for whatever it is protecting, and I've never seen one last anything like 10 years. Maybe that server has dual power supplies with separate UPSs?

This is a data center class one. They don't go down often.
 
It is not unusual for a server to never lose power. A properly designed data center should never lose power unless there is a fire or major disaster. Two UPSes with one or more backup generators is necessary to do this. Each server cabinet would have two or more PDUs. Half the PDUs go to one UPS and half to the other UPS. Everything in the data center should have dual power supplies so one power supply can go to each UPS.

The UPS at my employer is designed so if it fails it will automatically switch to regular power without interruption. The UPS is at least 20 years old and has failed four times I know of. Each time power was not interrupted.

Our main data center has only lost power twice in 20 years. Once was the fault of an electrician and the other time was the result of a very small fire. The fire system automatically killed power to the data center which put out the fire. We don't even have a generator, but we have multiple power feeds to the building in a major downtown area.
 
At work, we have a voicemail computer running AT&T Merlin Mail on what is either a 386 or a 286. It hasn't locked up once in 10 years, but our power goes out on at least an annual basis.

Also, every UPS I've seen has a failure mode that causes a loss of power for whatever it is protecting, and I've never seen one last anything like 10 years. Maybe that server has dual power supplies with separate UPSs?

From the forums it sounded like they have the entire building on a UPS system. They can probably remove / replace cabinets without interrupting power to the building.
 
Hahaha that's awesome! My online server has been up for 800 days last I checked, but that's still nothing compared to 16 years! LOL.

Our DMS100 switch at work has been up for about 30ish years though but that's fairly common for telco equipment. You install it, turn it on, and it never gets turned off.
 
I had to do a service call on a Netware server and found out when I got there that it had been running around 5 years straight. Scared the crap out of me. I thought for sure if I touched it it would die.

Netware 3.11 and 3.12 were very solid. 16 years is amazing.
I seem to remember a story a while back about a server found in a wall somewhere still running.

(found it!)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/04/12/missing_novell_server_discovered_after/

Hahaha I remember hearing about that! That's awesome. People hate on Novell, but have to admit, their software is solid! Or at least it was, not sure what it's state is these days.
 
I'm amazed at all the Novell stories here. My only experience with it was that it was easily exploitable, even behind college computers. Got your internet access cut? Control Panel, Accounts/Groups (something like this, it's been a while) and Create New User. Instant new user with unlimited access to the internet.
 
At home and at work I have had 3 year uptimes on my linux based machines. However I do more frequent updates now on the kernel mainly for updated filesystems like ext4 and btrfs. As a result my uptime on the home and at work is only down to a few months between reboots in recent times..
 
I'm amazed at all the Novell stories here. My only experience with it was that it was easily exploitable, even behind college computers. Got your internet access cut? Control Panel, Accounts/Groups (something like this, it's been a while) and Create New User. Instant new user with unlimited access to the internet.

That's a Windows exploit. Unless you mean Starting NWAdmin, and creating a new user. Then that's a dumbass mistake by the server admins giving regular users access to NWAdmin and permission to create a user.
 
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