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I've been "arguing" AGAINST mainframes on HN in the past, and after that I've seen many really cool presentations about them. One, quite commonly known, is that
by filleokus 3y ago
I've been "arguing" AGAINST mainframes on HN in the past, and after that I've seen many really cool presentations about them. One, quite commonly known, is that two separate mainframes can run completely in lock-step if they are less than ≈ 50 km / 30 mi apart. So if one explodes mid instruction it will still continue fine. As for a single system, I don't think there is any single point of failure, you can swap cpu's mid operation.
- valenterry 3y agoFirst of all, I'm not arguing against mainframes or anything! I'm just trying to clarify/explain terms and remove confusion. Just to get that out of the way. > One, quite commonly known, is that two separate mainframes can run completely in lock-step if they are less than ≈ 50 km / 30 mi apart Since they are 50km apart, they are connected to each other by one or multiple cables. I assume that they are also both connected to the internet (or something else that matters) so that if one burns down the other can take over. Correct so far? If so, then please answer this questions: how does the system behave if all the cables between the two machines are severed, for an unknown time?
- gwbas1c 3y agoMore importantly, for a lot of the things that people build today, a mainframe is powerful enough to handle however large the load will get. The ultra-scalable techniques that Google, Facebook, ect, use are great, but most applications do not need that kind of scalability. Throwing a little more money on a fancy mainframe is much, much cheaper than the programmer time needed to build a distributed system.