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21 juin 2019

In celebration of International Day of Yoga, we talked to Stratus Software Engineer John Van Buskirk to understand he’s role at Stratus, and how the practice of yoga has helped.

28 mai 2019

More and more, Digital Transformation, or DX, is becoming a necessity for business operations. Its impact is particularly felt when automation systems and plant assets become a part of the initiatives. For these systems, it is Edge Computing that bridges the gap between sensor-enabled assets and ...

13 mai 2019

In recognition of IEEE’s Global Engineering Day, we spoke with Jonathan Albernaz about how he chose engineering as a career and what he sees as his biggest accomplishments.

29 avril 2019

While automation is accelerating business intelligence across industries, many industrial operators lack the staff and experience to pilot new automation projects, relying instead on system integrators. By developing core competencies in emerging technologies like edge computing, system integrato...

23 avril 2019

E-Merge Systems recently worked with a municipal client to upgrade the Wastewater Treatment System. Chris Johnson shares some of the goals of the project and how they achieved success.

08 avril 2019

To design, build, and maintain a more operationally simple performance and a secure computing architecture, one must understand application-architecture relations. Continue reading to see examples of and the strengths and challenges and within 4 application-architectures.

26 mars 2019

The promise of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is inspiring customers to think big in the long term, but in the short term, implementing IIoT solutions is proving more challenging than many expected.

22 mars 2019

Falmouth, MA, like many smaller communities, faced specific challenges when confronting the need to modernize the town’s water system. Learn how they evaluated which combination of technologies would create the results they needed.

18 mars 2019

Manufacturing and SCADA systems demand always-on secure reliability. To address this along with other possible shortcomings, purpose-built computing platforms combined with thin client software technologies are required for the most critical SCADA and other applications.

08 mars 2019

Madhu Mathiyalagan, Principal Product Manager at Stratus Technologies, talks about important issues facing women in the workplace, growing up in India, and what it’s like to be a woman in the engineering field.

05 mars 2019

2018 was a year of recognizing the need for digital transformation and planning what the impacts might be. 2019 will be a year of implementation, but do IT teams feel ready to execute these new strategies? Do they have the budget, support and assets? A new survey by TEKsystems provides some insight.

19 février 2019

The convergence of IT and OT in the industrial world has been a topic of discussion for years. With the increasing need to drive business efficiency through the adoption of new technologies and concepts such as the Industrial Internet of Things and the cloud, bringing previously disparate IT and ...

14 février 2019

The Industrial Internet of Things kicked off the smart manufacturing revolution, but there is still much more to be accomplished. By embracing digital transformation, organizations can reap the benefits of the intelligent edge.

12 février 2019

We’ve put together a list of the best conferences for industrial automation professionals. We’ve got IIoT, Manufacturing, Monitoring, Edge Computing and more, all around the world.

04 février 2019

By embracing the promise of automated tech, organizations of all sizes are poised to make good on their promises of digital transformation. But, to realize the possibilities of the connected, autonomous future, automation pioneers must follow a new set of best practices to achieve meaningful resu...

24 janvier 2019

It seems digital transformation is on everyone’s agenda, but not everyone agrees on what digital transformation means. How do you know if your efforts are truly effective, or if what you’re really working on is digital optimization?

16 janvier 2019

As baby boomers reach retirement age, organizations need to grapple with the effects of losing large amounts of institutional knowledge essential to keeping operations running smoothly. Automation can help ease this transition if implemented intelligently.

02 janvier 2019

At the recent Rockwell Automation Fair, Dave Vasko, Director of Advanced Technology at Rockwell Automation, Inc. spoke with Barry Dellecese, Director of Product Management and Marketing at Stratus about the “bleeding edge” of edge computing. Their conversation is now available as part of Rockwell...

27 décembre 2018

While complete infrastructure upgrades are long, expensive projects, modern tech and automation systems can yield important improvements. SCADA systems assets are at the heart of these improvements and must be protected from unplanned downtime or data loss in order to realize the full benefit tha...

26 décembre 2018

As another wonderful year at Stratus comes to a close, we take a look back at some of the exciting events we’ve attended. Here are the highlights of the 4th annual Smart Industry conference in Chicago, IL in late September.

19 décembre 2018

Avoiding downtime is a huge motivator for companies embarking on the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and can pay big benefits for organizations that do it right. Here are four best practices about keeping your eyes on uptime as you embark on IIoT.

17 décembre 2018

A primary consideration for edge computing platforms is determining how many clients can be reliably hosted before performance degrades. The following approach was used to realistically explore how a typical Stratus ztC Edge system would perform when hosting multiple applications.

03 décembre 2018

When developing complex digital strategies to achieve successful IoT initiatives and control system projects, the convergence of OT and IT processes is essential. To align OT and IT processes and reduce risks for more effective industrial computer projects, some factors should be considered.

28 novembre 2018

Computing infrastructure is an ever-changing landscape. The rise of edge computing capabilities, coupled with traditional industrial control system architectures, provides increased levels of customization.

27 novembre 2018

Edge computing is the new wave taking over top industries with no signs of stopping. As companies continue to deploy edge computing technology, IT experts now are challenged to properly implement and update security protection.

25 septembre 2018

To help navigate the new world of machine intelligence, we have teamed up with the International Society of Automation (ISA) to provide informative articles discussing the power of machine intelligence and how facilities can best utilize intelligence to enhance operations, productivity and uptime.

19 septembre 2018

The concept of digitalization within the manufacturing industry can feel a bit like trying to build a bridge between two islands - IT and OT. Each side has been aware of the other and each understands the other’s importance. But the idea of connecting to one other can be met with resistance.

28 août 2018

Downtime disrupts the supply chain on the front and back end of the food and beverage industry. Behind the curtain; profits and compliance are at risk when the production floor grinds to a halt. Safety also becomes a concern since injuries often occur when equipment is down, plant managers have l...

21 août 2018

The rising tide of data that organizations now receive, manage and analyse shows no signs of receding. The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) in particular has increased data management exponentially. More than ever before, the need for reliable hardware and accessibility solutions is a pi...

20 août 2018

Activities like predictive maintenance of industrial plants can now be done with wireless monitoring instruments that can cut time and cost by 50 percent. This frees up employees’ time to focus on other critical job functions that require a human touch.

14 août 2018

Edge computing is moving away from the “edges” to become a mainstream approach and an important consideration in industries where real-time data is needed to drive better business decisions. We look at four key factors driving the success of edge computing.

13 août 2018

Manufacturers leaning on outdated, stacked systems could very well find themselves left behind if they don’t modernize in order to keep pace with the explosive IoT. Gartner predicts that by 2020 the number of IoT devices will reach an astounding 50 billion. The need to maintain a system with zero...

09 août 2018

In the third article in our new virtualization series, we take a closer look at how virtualization helps companies achieve high application availability — as high as 99.999 percent — critical in an always-on world.

07 août 2018

In 1991, twelve million people in Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and San Francisco were unable to make or receive phone calls when service was sporadically disrupted between June 26 and July 2. This was a time when second generation cell phones were just hitting the market, so many of ...

06 août 2018

The top articles featured on The Edge this past spring reflect the increasing curiosity around edge computing and the modernization benefits it brings to the industry.

01 août 2018

In our fourth edition of the downtime prevention series we want to address the fact that high availability clusters may need cluster-specific APIs to ensure proper fail-over. Case in point, the Hershey order and distribution fail from the Fall of 1999.

31 juillet 2018

In this second article in our virtualization series, we take a closer look the benefits of virtualization, especially how it can provide the perfect solution for desktop environments.

26 juillet 2018

This article offers highlights from a recent newsletter featuring Gartner content. Learn how digital businesses can stay competitive by adopting an edge computing strategy.

25 juillet 2018

When the future is indefinitely smart machines and everything and anything can be a service, you must stop to ask yourself, when does it makes sense for industrial operations to take this on? As we embark on the next revolution with Industry 4.0 and the digital transformation IA is undertaking, i...

23 juillet 2018

This first article in our new virtualization series details the evolution of this technology while highlighting the importance of hardware and availability.

19 juillet 2018

For most the path to IIoT will be an evolutionary journey. Before you can start to tap the potential of next-generation, big data-driven, intelligent automation, you must modernize the foundation on which it is built. And that means taking a hard look at existing operational technology. Modernizi...

13 juillet 2018

Large Fortune 500 companies with deep pockets are investing in IIoT technologies. These projects are yielding results, although implementations are not without their challenges. An increasing number of industrial companies are looking at ways to leverage analytics, outside of the traditional appl...

12 juillet 2018

Stratus’s Downtime Prevention Buyer’s Guide, explains that the reason downtime negatively impacts all this rich, in-flight data is because, “When a system outage occurs all data and transactions not yet written to disk are at risk of being lost or corrupted.” This means data that could be used to...

05 juillet 2018

How do you safeguard your organization and the customers that rely on its accessibility? When you are working with an availability solutions vendor, it’s important to establish which system will provide the fastest recovery time. Or best yet, which system will ensure that your customers don’t eve...

03 juillet 2018

In this previously published IoT Evolution article, Stratus’ VP of business line management, Jason Andersen, discusses how industrial IoT gateway systems can be adequate, but relying on them for business-critical use in production environments could introduce new levels of risk. It also includes ...

28 juin 2018

There was a point in our history when experiencing unexpected downtime was considered unavoidable. Back in 1996, the primary internet provider AOL, went offline for 19 hours. The outage inconvenienced more than 6 million subscribers and was a wake-up call for organizations that had come to depend...

26 juin 2018

In this previously published RFID Journal article, Stratus’ VP of business line management, Jason Andersen, discusses the role of fog computing and how it will make the edge smarter for large, distributed Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructures.

14 juin 2018

There’s no better time to work on building optimal foundations for future asset management strategies and IIoT than now. With easy-to-deploy OT solutions that also provide low-maintenance upkeep, IA environments can be well on their way to delivering the strongest results possible for their clients

08 juin 2018

As we see more and more convergence of OT and IT, we are also witnessing an increase in the challenges faced by today’s OT professionals. We’ve seen an influx of OT professionals continuously being asked to support complex environments and infrastructures with dwindling resources. Making them ide...

05 juin 2018

In this previously published Automation World article, Stratus’ VP of business line management, Jason Andersen, discusses why artificial intelligence (AI) is important for industrial companies to be thinking about given the large amounts of data brought about by the Industrial Internet of Things ...

01 juin 2018

This article describes the evolution that is taking place in edge computing today, and briefly describes how next-generation solutions can help organizations capitalize on new opportunities presented by the edge.

30 mai 2018

When FacilityConneX was investigating how best to run their new analytics software, they searched for simplicity and reliability at the edge. Watch their story and learn how they were able to ensure availability at the edge with the first fully virtualized and self-monitoring edge server that is ...

28 mai 2018

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has many advantages for industrial organizations, enabling them to generate valuable business insights that can improve everything from efficiency to productivity. Read on to learn how to keep operations simple.

23 mai 2018

Despite emerging benefits there remains an undeniable resistance to converging OT and IT. A recent Automation World article shared that the two departments, “not only operate in a very separate way, but sometimes even have conflicting approaches.” The solution is to ensure that leadership brings ...

22 mai 2018

At first glance, edge computing appears very homogeneous, and includes all activities that are performed outside of the "Core", which could be the location of the primary corporate-wide IT (Information Technologies) infrastructure. In fact, edge computing is a multi-tiered mix of assets arranged ...

21 mai 2018

For many industrial automation professionals, the cloud has come to represent the backbone of the IIoT. But, for enterprises to really make progress with their IIoT visions, they must begin to realize that the cloud is only one part of their IIoT universe.

17 mai 2018

Advances in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0 are transforming the industrial automation world in a big way.

16 mai 2018

The readers of Automation World have selected their preferred suppliers across an array of automation technologies in the 8th annual Automation World’s Leadership in Automation awards program.

16 mai 2018

There is one simple truth in computing—systems crash and so do hard drives. If not properly monitored, server rooms can overheat. The best hardware is not immune to problems.

08 mai 2018

Organizations are becoming more focused on the data than on the applications – further recognizing that data and analytics have great potential for unlocking business value. To learn what’s driving this shift, read the full article here.

07 mai 2018

Edge computing:  There’s no denying that this a hot topic right now – particularly in industrial environments.  Over the past year, we have seen edge clearly move from an emerging topic, to a more mainstream trend.  Analysts and media, alike, are increasingly commenting on the value edge computin...

01 mai 2018

From the C-Suite perspective, edge computing is something that will help make business better and differentiate the company. Ergo, its importance will be elevated in a massive way. Read the full article here and learn more on edge computing moving from an emerging topic, to a mainstream trend.

25 avril 2018

How IIoT can help reduce risk, as previously published in Food Quality & Safety by Jason Andersen. Knowing where to focus your IIoT efforts first and how it will pay off in the long run, manufacturers can make smart decisions when implementing the IIoT into existing processes. Read on to uncover ...

24 avril 2018

Jason Andersen, VP of Business Line Management, Stratus, sat down with Tony Veroeven, the host of CSIA’s “Talking Industrial Automation” podcast to discuss the life cycle of edge computing, the challenges facing industrial automation, and the inherent value of SI partnerships.

19 avril 2018

There has been a lot of debate recently over the increasingly competitive and overlapping roles of operational technologists (OT) and information technologists (IT) within industrial automation.

18 avril 2018

Forget whatever image you may have; today’s large commercial dairies are extremely sophisticated enterprises that are always looking for new ways to leverage technology to enhance their production efficiency and their profitability.

16 avril 2018

In a digital age, software gets the lion’s share of attention. But the best software is only as good as the server and network it runs on. If software is a Broadway show, then servers are the stage, and if the stage is dark, no one can see the show.

10 avril 2018

To reap the advantages of edge-based industrial control technologies while minimizing disruption, manufacturing and process companies should take a gradual, step-by-step approach.

03 avril 2018

If you’ve been following us since the Fall, then you know we’ve been validating assumptions in the market on edge and cloud computing. And, our justification came through with an ARC Advisory Group market report on edge computing in industrial environments.

29 mars 2018

Following our recent webinar with LNS, “Build an Analytics Anywhere Strategy today with the IIoT”, we have received a number of questions around the cost implications of implementing an IIoT strategy and how cloud and edge computing both play a part in an IIoT framework.

23 mars 2018

Virginia-based New Kent County Department of Public Utilities provides safe, reliable, cost-effective, and environmentally sustainable utility services. Watch their story of how they went from a complex, multi-server solution to a simple to use, redundant system for operations.

13 mars 2018

It is no secret that applications and machines are increasingly becoming more interconnected, enabling the exchange of business-critical data.

09 mars 2018

Since 1997, E-Merge Systems, a systems integrator, has been devoted to helping its customers increase productivity and improve profitability through industrial automation. Watch their story of how they added value to their customers with limited IT resources to achieve more reliable and seamless ...

06 mars 2018

How do you prepare for the evolution toward edge-based devices and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)?

27 février 2018

I am sure you know the difference between OT and IT professionals, but what about their different approaches when it comes to the edge and edge computing?

12 février 2018

Today’s news of our introduction of a smart, self-monitoring edge computing platform – Stratus ztC Edge – marks an inflection point not only for Stratus, but also for our industry.

08 février 2018

ARC Advisory Group recently released a market report exploring the increasing awareness and attention around the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).

01 février 2018

Beverage manufacturers, specifically breweries, face extremely complex challenges in planning and logistics.

15 janvier 2018

It’s no secret that new IIoT technologies are driving industrial transformation.

15 janvier 2018

There are times when choosing your lowest cost option is a really awful idea.

08 janvier 2018

Today, Stratus released its latest V Series products – Generation 6 V2608, V4612, and V6616 models that offer greater performance, security, and flexibility.

04 janvier 2018

As industrial professionals know, enterprise computing is undergoing a major shift. By 2022, according to Gartner, 50% of enterprise-generated data will be created and processed outside the data center or cloud. That roughly doubles today’s figure.

07 décembre 2017

91% of respondents agree that as edge computing grows, organizations will need a simplified edge infrastructure that can be remotely managed.

29 novembre 2017

For almost sixty years, Kaye has been at the forefront of high accuracy process measurement for the biopharmaceutical industry, and its equipment has become the standard in high accuracy measurement systems.

16 novembre 2017

In all the excitement over the IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things), the domain of computing activity that may do most to translate IIoT technology into lasting business value has been somewhat overlooked. Yes, we’re talking about Edge Computing.

09 novembre 2017

In a new video, Adam Hamer, Advanced Electrical Technologies’ Automation Division Manager, explains that AET’s reputation is built on the systems they sell, and if those systems cause downtime for their customers, it’s a direct reflection on the business.

02 novembre 2017

John Fryer, Senior Director of Industry Solutions at Stratus had a great time at WEFTEC 2017. Check out his interview.

26 octobre 2017

The seasons may be changing, but IT leaders have been and still are waging a constant war against complexity and risk. That’s one theme I spotted in our four most-read blogs this summer.

19 octobre 2017

For our water treatment and wastewater management customers, these events remind us that well-planned disaster preparedness can help prevent or at least soften the impact of water crises and provide a faster path to recovery.

19 octobre 2017

That’s one of my takeaways from the food and beverage industry’s PROCESS EXPO trade show in September. Although the event focuses on “technology and integrated solutions,” from the perspective of a server vendor, it was hard to spot familiar IT technology.

02 octobre 2017

“If you need a machine and don’t buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don’t have it.” – Henry Ford

29 septembre 2017

The goal in the Life Sciences industry is to cure all diseases - while at the same time, reducing the cost of the medication that we all need to stay healthy. How is this accomplished with today’s challenges of doing more with less?

29 septembre 2017

Make the most of limited resources and prepare for the skills gap.

28 septembre 2017

Taking a more proactive approach saves money over the long run and makes the most of taxpayer dollars.

27 septembre 2017

This WaterWorld article features commentary from John Fryer, Stratus’ Senior Director of Industry Solutions, on why water/wastewater organizations should use a data-driven approach to address aging systems and their risk of unplanned downtime.

21 septembre 2017

To address operational challenges, pharmaceutical companies are undergoing a digital transformation that includes smart manufacturing and IT/OT convergence. These challenges, and benefits that can be obtained from the digital transformation and new robust and reliable infrastructure technologies,...

15 septembre 2017

The food & beverage industry is facing a number of key manufacturing operational challenges. Food & beverage manufacturing typically consists of complex processes, such as clean-in-place, traceability, capturing mislabeled products, and serialization, the industry needs to ensure the utmost consi...

12 septembre 2017

Almost every large food enterprise has already started its paperless journey, replacing paper-based processes in everything from order management to manufacturing to distribution and warehousing all the way to customer support. Going paperless offers huge competitive dividends as it helps manufac...

08 septembre 2017

Food and drink manufacturers need to be “nimble enough to evolve on the fly” in embracing the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) if they want to avoid losing business, a software expert has claimed.

05 septembre 2017

By 2050, the Earth’s population is set to swell from 7 billion to 9 billion. According to a 2015 report from the World Resources Institute, the agricultural sector will need to increase production by approximately 25% in order to meet the resulting demand.

01 septembre 2017

Manufacturing operational challenges abound in all industries. Water and waste water are no exception and share some common challenges.

24 août 2017

As we observe what’s happening in industrial enterprises, there’s an interesting evolution occurring—one that has important implications as companies make their first tentative steps toward the industrial Internet of things (IIoT).

09 août 2017

A key tenet of Darwin’s theory of evolution is the idea of adaptation, in which a species changes over time to better adapt to its environment. Based on discussions with industrial organizations getting involved in the industrial Internet of things (IIoT), I believe we’re witnessing a similar phe...

04 août 2017

Welcome back to the second blog in the series relating to a recent Twitter poll we launched to gauge industry audience insights and sentiments in specific Industrial Automation (IA) sectors.  These IA vertical markets include Oil & Gas, Food & Beverage, and Water & Wastewater.  As a reminder, we ...

26 juillet 2017

In the ever-evolving industry of Industrial Automation, trends and best practices are constantly changing with the goal of helping companies become better, smarter, and faster. Understanding that we need to be at the forefront of these conversations, Stratus launched a questionnaire poll on Twitt...

27 juin 2017

This week it’s Petya. Last month, headlines about WannaCry ransomware briefly grabbed the world’s attention. The sad truth is that not a day passes without some organization being held hostage by encryption-based ransomware.

22 juin 2017

There’s a lot of excitement about how the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) will reshape manufacturing, utilities, and other industrial operations. As companies reimagine their operations, many have questions about how to take advantage of edge computing in order to capture the high-value gain...

07 juin 2017

For 37 years, Stratus has been preventing computing crises before they happen, eliminating that need to clean up after.

01 juin 2017

Whether you’re running control processes for a municipal water / wastewater facility on the edge of a metropolitan city, or in rural America, sharpening operational excellence is critical when you are under continuous public scrutiny, dealing with pending risks and penalties for lack of complianc...

25 mai 2017

In today’s automated world, Industrial enterprises are being empowered to become dramatically more productive 24/7/365, with the objective of doing more with less. The key to success in this world is modernizing your infrastructure while reducing the complexity of your control systems. Watch this...

16 mai 2017

Not long ago, data centers were the primary bastions for data, servers, networking, applications, and other infrastructure. Residing in these locations, or at least nearby, often was a highly skilled IT staff focused on designing, testing, and supporting all of that infrastructure. But the paradi...

10 mai 2017

With over 180 attendees, it was a great platform to hear the challenges that end customers face and what kinds of automation modernization projects are on the horizon.

04 mai 2017

For most manufacturers, the road to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is an evolutionary journey. And while it may be marked with twists and turns, it doesn’t have to be fraught with risk and uncertainty.

26 avril 2017

Imagine annually hosting 25 million theme park visitors that expect a magical and safe experience and the public health consequences if water contamination occurred at the site. That’s why Shanghai Disney Resort, the newest and largest Disney theme park in Asia, takes no chances. They run their w...

19 avril 2017

Moviegoers know the danger of a tiny interruption in a building security system. In Oceans 11—and other fictional heists—just a brief flicker on the security center's video monitor tells the audience that thieves have infiltrated the system to execute their nefarious plan.

12 avril 2017

As we welcome spring, we at Stratus wanted to reflect on our five most popular blogs of the last few months of winter. It’s no coincidence that they all had a common theme: the industrial internet of things (IIoT)—a clear indication that the IIoT is gaining traction as the next stage in the evolu...

07 avril 2017

April 9, 2017 is the 7th annual IoT Day. While it seems like every day has become a national day of something, IoT Day holds a special place for Stratus and our customers as it reminds us to take a step back and think about the important issues surrounding the IoT, and specifically the industrial...

05 avril 2017

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is emerging as the next step in industrial automation for companies that are ready to modernize their infrastructures and gain improved efficiency and business intelligence. At Stratus, we've witnessed broad growth across the industrial automation space, e...

30 mars 2017

Wanlian Securities Co., Ltd. is the first standardized securities firm in Guangdong province, China. Its business scope touches everything from securities brokerage, securities investment consulting, securities trading, and securities investment activities, to securities underwriting and sponsors...

22 mars 2017

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) can pay big benefits for organizations that do it right. It’s no surprise that a report by LNS Research and MESA International shows that more than 50% of manufacturers plan to pursue IIoT in the next 12 months. In fact, one of our gas pipeline customers h...

15 mars 2017

Hydrocarbon producers face extreme pressures to reduce operational costs and boost efficiency. This is easier said than done. Standing in the way are outdated operational technology (OT) infrastructures that run supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, historians, and automation ...

08 mars 2017

02 mars 2017

Ask any business line executive associated with a production line, or a continuous process, what is it that they fear the most and the almost universal response is “unplanned downtime”. This is the one thing that can wreck KPI’s and negatively impact overall equipment effectiveness in unexpected ...

24 février 2017

Dr. Peter Martin of Schneider Electric is calling it a whiteboard moment. Time to get out the erasers and start over. And maybe he’s right – the models and metaphors that defined the industrial automation space for at least a generation are being challenged.

16 février 2017

Last week, I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel at the ARC Industry Forum in Orlando. The topic du jour was OT and IT convergence and a common thread amongst the discussion was how an organization can move to IIoT.

08 février 2017

Across the spectrum of industries, one thing all companies agree on is that the cost of unplanned downtime is quite substantial. The vexing question is how much?

02 février 2017

When it comes to utilities, we as consumers find interruptions to electricity, heat, water, and phone service as extremely disruptive and even dangerous. For utility providers, the impact of such outages also is severe when it comes to lost revenue, customer dissatisfaction, and liability risks. ...

09 janvier 2017

In our 35-plus years of providing continuous availability solutions for enterprises, we’ve seen only a handful of technology shifts that you could call “seismic.” The globalization of eCommerce was a big one that was transformational for mission critical infrastructures. At Stratus, we believe th...

21 décembre 2016

Continuous improvement has been a theme in the industrial space since the second part of the last century. It’s not just a sound management philosophy - quite naturally, additional efficiency, effectiveness and flexibility go a long way to adding value in processes that are repeatable and continu...

12 décembre 2016

Organizations today expect their applications to be continuously available. Their businesses depend upon it. But what happens when unplanned downtime occurs?

06 décembre 2016

The pursuit of efficiency and the avoidance of unplanned downtime have always been primary operational goals in industrial plants. There are a number of pressing market demands prompting plant operators to seek upgrades to their operational foundation. First and foremost, such upgrades are geared...

30 novembre 2016

Lately, people have been asking more questions about the safety and reliability of their water supply. That's because recent incidents of system contamination such as the crisis in Flint, Michigan and storm damage from hurricanes Matthew and Sandy have thrust water and wastewater issues into the ...

23 novembre 2016

Water is getting a lot of attention lately. Whether it's contaminated water in Flint, Michigan or environmental impact from hurricane-damaged wastewater facilities, incidents like these raise serious questions about safety and reliability.

15 novembre 2016

The digitalization of our world, and the globalization of our economy, have truly transformed the business environment in which we all operate.

09 novembre 2016

Stratus has served the Industrial Automation (IA) space for 35 years, and we continue to see greater uptake for our solutions combined with those of our global partners.

19 octobre 2016

ARC estimates that $65 billion worth of process automation systems are nearing the end of their useful life. These estimates are even larger if one includes those installed systems that don’t meet the requirements for cybersecurity protection, or leveraging technologies, such as IIoT, cloud compu...

14 octobre 2016

PSAPs (Public Safety Answering Points) dedicated to handling calls to police, fire stations and ambulance services deal with life threatening emergencies every day. It’s an environment in which any amount of unplanned system downtime can have catastrophic consequences, so I’m pleased to see that ...

12 octobre 2016

On 4th October in Manchester and 6th October in Milton Keynes, Routeco, one of the UK’s leading distributors of industrial automation and control products, brought together some of the biggest names in the industry to discuss the latest developments in the market and to exhibit some of the remark...

04 octobre 2016

I’ve been involved in shrinking downtime and ensuring business data availability for most of 27 years – so when Stratus offered me a chance to contribute to their blog, I couldn’t say no. Whenever you consider an evolutionary, even revolutionary, improvement to an IT process, there are almost alw...

30 septembre 2016

Unplanned downtime has long been the nemesis of industrial operations. In recent years, we've seen tolerance for unplanned downtime get even lower. In fact, a recent survey by Stratus and the ARC Group reports that almost 40% of respondents said they could handle no more than 10 minutes of downti...

23 septembre 2016

I talk to a lot of people in the industrial automation world, and almost without exception they share the same challenge. They need to prevent unplanned downtime while preparing for the future, which includes evolving to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Industry 4.0, and smart factories.

22 septembre 2016

In the world of securities trading, few things are more important than speed and availability. With electronic, algorithm-driven trading, delays of even a few microseconds can translate to financial losses of tens of thousands of dollars. Longer periods of system downtime could be ruinous, with f...

16 septembre 2016

As companies across the energy value chain look for ways to become more efficient and agile, the Industrial “Internet of Things” (IIoT) offers attractive opportunities. Harnessing sensor data, machine-to-machine (M2M) communication and Big Data analytics enables oil and gas companies to take auto...

08 septembre 2016

The state of the art in building automation and security is evolving with incredible speed. But one thing is certain: Construction companies and building owners will become increasingly reliant on digital systems to keep their buildings safe, secure, comfortable and energy efficient. Focusing on ...

01 septembre 2016

More and more, we're seeing operations organizations virtualizing critical industrial automation (IA) applications such as Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and human machine interface (HMI) historians. And whether virtualizing these systems or not, many companies choose to run the...

26 août 2016

For organizations across the industry spectrum, heightened awareness of both physical and cyber threats is driving increased investment in automation systems for building security. They are deploying more access control, more cameras, more alarms, more backup power systems, more logs and databases.

23 août 2016

It’s often difficult to fully understand the impact of modernizing an automation system and how an investment in fault-tolerant platforms from Stratus, along with updated Programmable Automation Controllers (PACs) can deliver rapid results. For Columbia Pipeline Group (recently purchased by Trans...

17 août 2016

Operations organizations aren't always fans of IT. But since 2010, we've seen one of IT's tried and true technology strategies increasingly adopted by operations: virtualization. There's a good reason for that. They're seeing powerful benefits from virtualizing their industrial automation (IA) ap...

12 août 2016

As building automation and security systems become increasingly reliant on server technology, ensuring the availability—or uptime—of the applications running on those servers is absolutely critical. But how much availability is “good enough”? And what’s the best way to achieve that level of avail...

10 août 2016

Downtime prevention is becoming a top priority for organizations across all market sectors — from manufacturing, building security and telecommunications to financial services, public safety and healthcare. What’s driving this requirement for always-on applications? It’s partly due to the rapid e...

04 août 2016

When you look at the manufacturing sector from a global perspective, the competition truly never sleeps. It's everywhere, all the time. That puts huge pressure on manufacturers to keep their industrial automation (IA) environments up and running. In particular, Supervisory Control and Data Acquis...

29 juillet 2016

Alaska is an environment tailor-made for Stratus Technologies’ solutions. The state is remote, access to IT expertise is a challenging in many locations and the environmental condition can present a myriad of issues. Combine this with small, remote communities with the need to run automation syst...

19 juillet 2016

As energy demands in the U.S. rise, oil and gas companies feel pressure from all angles. They not only have to push for higher production, they're under scrutiny from regulators overseeing compliance and the public concerned about safety and environmental impacts. So oil and gas companies are dou...

13 juillet 2016

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is attracting more attention by manufacturers, especially as the Internet of Things (IoT) takes hold in consumer and business markets. Many manufacturers are getting excited about opportunities enabled by applying advanced analytics to information generate...

05 juillet 2016

There's so much happening today with the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), it's important to understand where Stratus fits. For one, we’re proven as we've played a role in supporting mission-critical industrial automation for decades. This includes supervisory control and data acquisition (SC...

30 juin 2016

Having spent three days at IFSEC with our partner Tyco and 33,000 plus global security professionals, it was clear that Smart Buildings was the topic of the week. Are Smart Buildings just hype and the buzz word of the week that the bandwagon is jumping on, or are they a reality? Buildings today a...

24 juin 2016

The buildings we sit in or public spaces we visit (like airports) today are getting smarter all the time. A simple case in point is the lights that automatically turn on when you enter your office. A more advanced example is when your badge reader is tied to your company’s HR database and provide...

16 juin 2016

Craig Resnick of the ARC Advisory Group shared his insights on how to eliminate unplanned downtime and future-proof automation system assets in a recent webinar. The webinar reviewed the ever-present consequences that can occur from unplanned downtime and some of the leading causes.

09 juin 2016

The proliferation of online trading platforms and services coupled with demand for high speed trading has put pressure on stock exchanges to seek high performance capabilities while maintaining system stability. But how are stock exchanges responding to this need?

18 mai 2016

The interest around the ExxonMobil initiative to modernize their automation systems and their selection of Lockheed Martin to lead this initiative has generated considerable interest and discussion within automation vendors and the industry at large. Now that vendors have had the time to digest t...

16 mai 2016

While there are several companies claiming to have an always-on solution, always-on actually represents a much wider spectrum than just on/off. IBM, HPE, Oracle, Microsoft and VMware are among the usual tech titans talking about Always-On solutions of one type or another, joined by others such as...

13 mai 2016

Two key questions that many people ask are, “What evidence exists that implementing analytics and IIoT will improve efficiency, and what are the key areas to make an implementation successful?”

09 avril 2016

Stratus just announced the release of its “Always-On infrastructure for IIoT” (Industrial Internet of Things) platform. This latest generation of its industry leading availability platform, ftServer for VMware, incorporates some significant new options for the broad continuous availability market...

08 mars 2016

A few weeks ago, Stratus hosted a Webinar with Light Reading titled “Achieving Instantaneous Fault Tolerance for Any Application on Commodity Hardware” aimed at Telcos and Communications Application Providers. I was pleasantly surprised at the turn out. We had hundreds of people interested in thi...

24 février 2016

A few weeks ago, Stratus hosted a Webinar with Light Reading titled “Achieving Instantaneous Fault Tolerance for Any Application on Commodity Hardware” aimed at Telcos and Communications Application Providers. The event was very successful, with 150 attendees dialing in live and an additional 200...

02 février 2016

GE and Accenture recently announced a breakthrough deployment for an “Intelligent Pipeline” solution that is clearly a stop on the road to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT). Reliable and accurate analytics depend on reliable and complete data sets and Columbia Gas accomplishes this with th...

30 novembre 2015

Many of our current customers once relied on a good enough availability solution before turning to Stratus. In the video below, Jason Andersen goes over some of the reasons why our customers made the switch, and why you should consider doing so as well. We think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by ...

24 novembre 2015

Last week Stratus Technologies sponsored our 10th Rockwell Automation Fair event. Over the last ten Automation Fairs the emphasis on IT infrastructure has grown dramatically. Ten years ago IT infrastructure was hard to find at the show, but this year all the elements of modern IT infrastructure w...

24 novembre 2015

Why do customers choose Stratus Technologies? There are two important factors: When an organization chooses a good enough availability solution, it often leads to greater complexity and additional hardware costs as the company moves forward. They need a simpler solution. Stratus’ always-on soluti...

15 octobre 2015

I’d promised myself that I’d take a break from discussing cloud and NFV for a while, but against my better judgement, here’s one more… For the past year or so we have been working on our new cloud product designed to solve the problem of resiliency for NFV based networks. NFV is a daunting task, ...

30 septembre 2015

Downtime. It can mean lost revenue, customer dissatisfaction, reputation damage and, depending on the nature of your organization, even loss of life. That’s why we at Stratus are committed to building technology that enables always-on applications. To communicate the importance of keeping your sy...

27 août 2015

So you’re sold on the advantages of cloud services—the flexibility, agility and “always on” business models they enable. But what’s the return on investment? The fact is, calculating ROI on cloud services is challenging. The abstract nature of the cloud doesn’t lend itself to a simple matter of a...

05 août 2015

When someone in the technology industry throws around the term “carrier grade” it suggests the highest bar when it comes to reliability, availability and resiliency.

15 juillet 2015

A lot of our attention these days seems to be on building highly reliable (up to carrier grade) clouds, but another area we’ve been collaborating with partners on is the notion of the Internet of Things.

02 juillet 2015

Linux Containers (LXC) is an operating-system level virtualization environment for running multiple isolated Linux systems (containers) on a single host.

11 juin 2015

At Stratus we are and have been the leaders in reliable computing infrastructure for decades. However, like many terms in technology the definition of High Availability (HA) is very broad.

27 mai 2015

Earlier this month (May 5 to 8), I was invited to speak at the NFV World Congress in San Jose on “Ensuring Availability and Resiliency in NFV.”

21 mai 2015

Earlier this month (May 5 to 8), I was invited to speak at the NFV World Congress in San Jose, attended by about 1,000 people.

06 mai 2015

Yesterday we announced that Stratus is in the process of delivering a proof of concept (PoC) for the European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI) – you can read the press release here.

13 avril 2015

If you are considering any of the fault-tolerant solutions out there – including ours – you need to ask these questions:

27 mars 2015

In the course of serving subscribers, CSPs accumulate a lot of data about their subscribers. This includes information about their devices, their usage patterns, service plans, geographic locations, contacts, purchase histories, and more.

17 mars 2015

Mobile and broadband communications service providers (CSPs) are facing a proverbial “good news / bad news” situation.

12 mars 2015

I came across an article on networkworld.com, by Peter Wayner, titled “7 Timeless Lessons of Programming ‘graybeards’”.

12 mars 2015

VM regions are often used as sharable address spaces in VOS applications. This is a very efficient way of allowing multiple processes to access the same set of addresses.

05 mars 2015

VOS stream files are limited in growth to about 2 GB. This is because the definition of interfaces such as s$seq_position, s$get_port_status, s$lock_region, etc.

28 janvier 2015

Recently, I sat down with Terry Rourke in programs marketing to discuss how North America’s emergency call centers are doing in terms of keeping their critical public safety applications up and running.

27 janvier 2015

Virtualization is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in today’s datacenter.

16 janvier 2015

Since 2012, Stratus has created an annual PSAP survey featuring an array of questions on call volume, staffing, next-generation 9-1-1 plans, the use of virtualization technologies, system outages and more. Last year’s results were really beneficial to the constituents as well as their colleagues,...

16 décembre 2014

In 2014, downtime impacted the bottom line more than ever before. Twenty-three percent of the most expensive outages reported were caused by unplanned IT equipment failures and the unfortunate truth is 52% of enterprise executives believe most of these incidents could have been prevented. So, why...

05 juillet 2014

Recently, a customer wrote to Stratus Customer Service to ask whether we could recommend an "atomic clock" for use with his OpenVOS system.

24 juin 2014

Starting in OpenVOS Release 18.0, VOS System Administrators will be able to select one of 3 new password encryption algorithms. This post provides an overview of these changes.

20 juin 2014

I was recently asked why Stratus was not providing security updates for customers running OpenSSL on releases of VOS prior to 17.0, when we are still providing updates to customers running OpenSSL on VOS 14.7 on Continuum.

18 mars 2014

What if you had the choice of having your applications available 99% of the time versus 99.9995% of the time – would you really experience a difference?

07 janvier 2014

The world of server virtualization is undergoing a seismic shift and Kernel-based Machine Virtualization (KVM) is playing a key role in that process.

06 janvier 2014

Cloud computing has become a popular deployment option for a lot of enterprises.

23 août 2013

Does your office have a modern photocopier? One that accepts output via TCP/IP? If so, you can probably configure the OpenVOS spooler to send files to it. Here’s how.

15 août 2013

Today, a customer asked me how much disk storage a single VOS module can address. Here is my response.

29 juillet 2013

When you are fixing bugs in existing code, it is easy to fall into the habit of finding the "mistake" in the code and adjusting the code to avoid the mistake.

19 juillet 2013

Here is a short list of useful enhancements to OpenVOS that have been suggested by our customers.

04 juin 2013

Why is it that from my home directory I can use SSH with public key authentication to log into another host without being prompted for a password?

25 avril 2013

I'm pleased to announce that OpenVOS Release 17.2.0, GNU Tools Release 4.0.0 and Kona for OpenVOS Release 1.1.0 are now generally available.

24 avril 2013

Last week (well it was last week when I started writing this) we had an issue come into the CAC where someone wanted to write a command macro that ran telnet to log into a system and execute some commands, for example the command macro test.cm logins into a remote host and executes the foo.cm com...

15 avril 2013

About 18 months ago I wrote a blog talking about changes in how accept works in OpenVOS release 17.1.

27 mars 2013

If you have ever tried to use POSIX-based programs to process VOS structured files, you may have encountered some restrictions or seen some behavior that you didn't understand.

11 mars 2013

The maintenance network is used by OpenVOS for monitoring several devices including the RAID and SAN disk arrays.

05 février 2013

Over 100 million people worldwide tuned in to watch Super Bowl XLVII. Therefore, it could be argued that was the most viewed and infamous power outage to wreak havoc on the grandest of scales..It just goes to show, downtime happens.

04 février 2013

In today's always on, increasingly complex IT world, CIOs are faced with an unprecedented set of challenges.

29 janvier 2013

Businesses not only perform risk assessments on downtime but also, they make business decisions to avoid it.

26 janvier 2013

In this post I wish to discuss a common coding error that can result in a module running out of or at least seriously depleting the available number of stcp device clones for use in creating TCP sockets.

22 janvier 2013

With texting on the rise, it’s inevitable that 9-1-1- technology must evolve to meet the needs of today’s mobile citizens.

11 janvier 2013

A lot of locations are mandating that you stop connecting to the system with Telnet, and use SSH instead.

18 décembre 2012

The company is so happy with their Avance experience that it is considering expanding its use of Avance to other business applications. For more information please feel free to read through our case study on Concorde

07 décembre 2012

While the holiday season means rest and relaxation for many, for others it translates into frustration because of IT outages.

04 décembre 2012

In order to have your most important applications protected, you must tier your applications into three levels, with tier 1 being the most important.

19 novembre 2012

There has been a fair amount of confusion over the difference between the host file and hosts (plural) file.

13 novembre 2012

When it comes to deploying police, fire and emergency services, every second counts. That’s why public safety organizations simply cannot tolerate unplanned downtime of critical applications. If system interruptions delay notifications of emergency responders, it could result in property theft, d...

02 novembre 2012

This month, we're kicking off a new blog series that will examine availability in terms of the nines. We'll provide you with some basic, real world examples to give you a better idea of how one little 9 can make a big impact. In this installment, we'll look at what this means for your favorite so...

01 novembre 2012

This week Stratus announced the release of Avance 3.1, the newest version of our industry-leading high-availability software solution. The latest update includes virtual-machine load balancing and rolling reboot. What does this mean for users?

29 octobre 2012

Don't worry, despite the title I haven't reverted to math nerd mode. The topic is not number theory but socket programming and a coding mistake that I have seen way too often.

02 octobre 2012

South Africa (SA) had hosted its credit and debit card processing service on Stratus® ftServer® systems since their previous server failed them for two hours in 2005. This failure cost the business over one million rand, not to mention its hard-earned brand reputation. At the time, Makro had been...

21 septembre 2012

I recently had a discussion with someone who had run afoul of their corporate firewall settings.

11 septembre 2012

Manufacturers today are squeezing more productivity out of existing resources by leveraging production automation through manufacturing execution systems (MES) and other mission-critical manufacturing applications. While the added productivity is certainly a plus, this also means manufacturers ar...

06 septembre 2012

For this month’s customer spotlight, we’re taking a look at how downtime can affect hospitals. Tasked with implementing a new EHR system to include ambulatory care, Columbia Memorial Hospital needed to come up with a way to serve over 200 clinicians, in more than 25 locations, giving them access ...

22 août 2012

If someone told you your company could easily save tens of thousands of dollars every year, would you be interested in finding out how? It seems like a no brainer, but you might be surprised at the answer. According to an array of industry surveys, including one conducted by Stratus Technologies ...

22 août 2012

STCP has had duplicate IP address detection for quite some time but a change to how Microsoft Windows 2008 and 7 behave has added an interesting wrinkle.

25 juillet 2012

Stratus Technologies’ high-availability (HA) Stratus Avance Software 3.0 now includes support for Intel Xeon E5 “Sandy Bridge” processor-powered servers. This is an exciting development for companies that use Intel Xeon E5 servers manufactured by HP, IBM, Dell and Intel, as Avance software proact...

18 juillet 2012

For this month’s customer spotlight, we’re taking a look at how downtime can affect travel and transportation. Located in Atlanta, Georgia, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is the world's busiest airport, with nearly 90 million passengers traveling through the airport annually.

12 juillet 2012

Less than a week after a storm knocked out some of Amazon’s cloud services, one customer decided they had enough. Online dating site, Whatsyourprice.com, chose to end their commitment to Amazon Web Services EC2 after thousands of singles were left dateless during the most recent server outage in ...

06 juillet 2012

Starting with OpenVOS 17.1, STCP supports the time stamp, selective acknowledgment, and window scaling TCP options.

26 juin 2012

Starting this month, we will begin featuring stories about our customers in the Customer Spotlight Series, a new section of the blog that showcases the diversity and results our customers are seeing. This month’s spotlight is on Rexam, one of the world's top five consumer packaging companies. Rex...

30 mai 2012

The average manufacturing IT system will experience 3.6 instances of downtime at a cost of $65,830 annually, according to a recent readership survey conducted by IndustryWeek magazine for Stratus Technologies.

25 mai 2012

This talk will explain under what conditions it is safe to stop running the telnetd server and describe several approaches to prevent unwanted access to the module, via telnet, when it is not safe to just stop the telnetd server.

18 mai 2012

TCP Backlog capture is an effect that prevents a server application on the Stratus module listening on port X from successfully creating a connection with any client trying to connect to port X.

16 mai 2012

Uptime – or downtime, depending on how you look at it – plays a huge role in cloud computing, especially as more and more businesses are using it to run business-critical applications. Deciphering how downtime affects public, private and hybrid clouds starts with defining the different types, and...

18 avril 2012

Solid state storage has been available for many years as a means to accelerate IO operations and reduce latency. However, they have historically been relegated to niches that placed a high enough value on performance that they were willing to accept the price premium.

15 avril 2012

Recently I dealt with a site that appeared to be having an issue with the link between their module and one of their Ethernet switches.

05 avril 2012

Uptime for Public Saftety Answering Point (PSAP) applications is critical for a multitude of reasons. Downtime causes slower emergency response times, impacts the ability of computer systems to capture and disseminate vital information, jeopardizes the safety of first responders when location his...

31 mars 2012

Microsoft Windows SBS simplifies small business IT, protects business data, reduces IT costs, and increases productivity and growth. This small business solution promotes collaboration within your company, is simple to manage, and is very affordable. SBS also provides file and print sharing, auto...

27 mars 2012

The performance of applications that use cross module or cross system communication is dependent on having the correct number of OSL server processes running.

23 mars 2012

Cloud computing is on everyone’s minds these days – and it isn’t as light a subject as the title would suggest. The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines cloud computing as “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access...

16 mars 2012

On Tuesday, March 13th, Boston experienced a large power outage due to a transformer fire. NStar crews arrived to the scene in mass in a heroic effort to contain the fire and get the Back Bay, Fenway and South Boston residents and businesses back online within a matter of days.

09 mars 2012

Anyone in the public safety sector will tell you that the key to a safe neighborhood and a successful first-response system is teamwork. Everyone is essential. For example, even on one small car fire, the person who calls 9-1-1; the dispatch operator who answers the phone and sends the proper eme...

07 mars 2012

Saturday’s 911-system outage in the District of Columia highlights the necessity for fault tolerant systems running mission-critical applications. Due to a PEPCO power outage to the call site on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, citizens could not reach EMS personnel from 1:53 to 2:16 p.m. Although ...

02 mars 2012

Information Technology Intelligence Consulting’s (ITIC) recent report on Continuous Availability with Stratus ftServer and Microsoft SQL Server provides a number of insights on what customers of the major hardware providers experience in terms of downtime.

01 mars 2012

Today, your Danskos are going to power over the linoleum floors, moving from patient room to patient room. In a sea of charts, beeping machines, gurneys and meal carts, you know that one small misstep can set back your whole day. It isn’t a large leap, then, to understand that one lapse of even a...

23 février 2012

Chas Horvath, Director of Software Engineering at Stratus provides a brief history of remote service connectivity, positioning Stratus’ current offerings relative to the industry and outlining why Active Service Network (ASN) connectivity is of increasing strategic importance to Stratus and its c...

21 février 2012

This guest post is written by Katie Matlack of Software Advice and discusses what ophthalmologists on the lookout for the right ophthalmology EMR solution should keep in mind. At Software Advice we hear often from individuals who are looking for an EMR for a particular specialty. We decided it wo...

19 février 2012

The “netstat –interval X” command in releases prior to 17.0 will display a list of network connections every X seconds but you have no idea which if any of those connections are active or how active.

14 février 2012

Recently, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer recalled over a million birth control pills due to packaging and visual inspection errors. The media coverage of the incident was crucial to getting the word out about the possibly-erroneous packs, but it also serves to draw attention to the costly fragility ...

19 janvier 2012

Noah Davids, Support Engineer at Stratus discusses how application performance is affected by the network, the TCP stack and the application’s design.

19 janvier 2012

I build products for a living. Often when I visit a Stratus customer, I'm asked a question of the form "Do you support left-handed widgets?"

16 janvier 2012

I was on Spiceworks today and ran into this conversation about 100% uptime.I had a few thoughts but am interested in what others had to say, as well. Share them below, or on Spiceworks! Most SLAs will claim 100% uptime (which most of you know is unattainable) with the provisions that "an outage d...

22 décembre 2011

On occasion, when explaining how to set up SSH's public key authentication system, I am asked which is better, RSA or DSA keys.

22 décembre 2011

I learned my ophthalmologist office is transitioning to EHR and they had my folder to check me in and do my exam. After they finished, they placed a bright yellow paper on top of the papers in the file “ALERT, Patient is now in EHR system”. So I sat there, missing my holiday party and thinking th...

21 décembre 2011

Virtualization and fault-tolerance are decades-old technologies reinvented for the demands of modern enterprise computing … industry-standard platforms, business continuity, application availability, server consolidation, end-to-end business process reliability, flexibility and rapid response.

05 décembre 2011

Jon E. Schmidt, President and Founder of Transaction Design, Inc. (TDI), explains how your VOS system can be PCI compliant. From Jon: "Industry regulations have changed dramatically in the last 20 years. Sarbanes-Oxley, PCI, and HIPAA have put in place requirements for much tighter security and c...

01 décembre 2011

I have noticed some confusion between the Ethernet Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) and the TCP Maximum Segment Size (MSS), hopefully the following will explain it.

17 novembre 2011

The OpenVOS architecture makes use of several independent systems; the NIO for X25 communication, the fiber channel disk array controllers, UPS for power, the RSN Internet Console Server for RSN over IP and the maintenance network Ethernet switches that allow all these systems to communicate over...

01 novembre 2011

Industry regulations have changed dramatically in the last 20 years. Sarbanes-Oxley, PCI, and HIPAA have put in place requirements for much tighter security and control of computer environments than ever before.

20 octobre 2011

PCI stands for the Payment Card Industry, referring to debit, credit, prepaid, ATM and POS cards and related businesses. The governing body is the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) which is responsible for the implementation, dissemination, development, enhancement and storage of security ...

07 octobre 2011

I’ve been ignored by post office clerks, bank tellers, and shoe salesmen, but never a computer – until now.

29 septembre 2011

Did you miss the webinar? Well, we have the video right here for you!

19 septembre 2011

Paul Green will give an overview of the steps that you can follow to port open-source code to the Stratus OpenVOS operating system.

10 septembre 2011

Recently there have been reports of problems getting newly registered users logged in when using SSH. The SysAdmin registers Alice and then has Alice try to login via SSH. Alice reports an authentication error.

19 août 2011

The CAC is frequently asked to look into problems with VOS message queues. Here are a couple of interesting ones, along with some solutions and recommendations that I’d like to share with you.

09 août 2011

I've been busy the past few weeks away from the office and deep in the thumping heart of Public Safety. APCO, which debuted it's new brand logo at the conference. APCO is a conference dedicated to the innovation and development of best-in-class public safety communications, unifying people and te...

01 août 2011

Under STCP when you have multiple processes listening on the same port number only the first process that bound to the port number is notified when a connection is requested.

28 juillet 2011

I have recently ported several new or updated open-source packages to OpenVOS Release 17.1. They are now available on the VOS anonymous ftp site.

26 juillet 2011

I recently diagnosed an apparent compiler problem for an OpenVOS customer. He has two modules running OpenVOS Release 17.1.

25 juillet 2011

Last week I attended the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles. I went to a breakout session at the on financial services and capital markets, and something looked very familiar. But first, a back story. About a year ago, Stratus began relationship with Microsoft and S1 and we agr...

15 juillet 2011

So, you head to work one morning, say hello to the security guard on your way in, and you fire up the coffee machine, your desktop, and the printer. Or you try to fire up the printer. The print server is taking the day off. Can a print server crash put a stop to an entire day’s work? Absolutely.

07 juillet 2011

It seems we live in an age where we have to think of new passwords every week.  In the good old days, you could browse a web site, even order stuff, without having to create an identity first.

07 juillet 2011

Over the last few weeks several people have asked me about routes that mysteriously appear and then disappear.

30 juin 2011

Uptime SLAs are not being written to protect the customer. They are designed to shield the service provider and avoid responsibility. It should be different. I was just reading some stories of system downtime on the LinkedIn conversation “Skip Continuous Availability and High Availability. Have Y...

26 juin 2011

Prior to VOS 17.1 STCP would not accept a TCP connection request unless the server application had called the accept function.

30 mai 2011

Prior to 17.1 STCP would resolve host names by first querying any configured DNS and only if there was no response or a negative response from the name servers would it search the local hosts file.

19 mai 2011

Watch a technical training seminar about the recently announced fourth generation V Series platform/OpenVOS 17.1 and Kona for OpenVOS.

11 mai 2011

You are invited to attend a technical training seminar about the recently announced fourth generation V Series platform/OpenVOS 17.1 and Kona for OpenVOS.

10 mai 2011

A journey that began nearly 30 years ago continues today for many Stratus customers with the release of Stratus OpenVOS 17.1, arguably the world’s most reliable operating system for running mission-critical applications.

10 mai 2011

The final version of the "Best Practices for Configuring ftScalable Storage Arrays on OpenVOS Systems" is now available.

09 mai 2011

Having just returned from the eClinicalWorks Northeast Users Conference - a really helpful and informative conference of 1200 enthusiastic users - the IT challenges that face small to mid-sized EHR practitioners were never so apparent.

04 mai 2011

I had the chance to speak at the Microsoft Connected Health Conference in Chicago this week, where Stratus was among a number of Microsoft partners sponsoring this event. This was a well-received conference with good insights on technology and services. Talking with practitioners and other partne...

22 avril 2011

Columbia Memorial Hospital serves more than 100,000 residents in the Columbia, Greene and Dutchess counties of New York State. The hospital focuses on advanced surgery, primary care and health education. It is a 192-bed acute care hospital, operates a 120-bed long-term care site as well as 26 out...

19 avril 2011

The general rule of thumb when porting an open-source package is to keep track of the changes you make to get it to build and execute on your system, and if you think the changes would be useful to the community at large, to submit them to the maintainers of the package.

11 avril 2011

Ever wonder how STCP knows what its name is? In the >system>stcp directory is a file called host.

05 avril 2011

Don't you just hate it when something breaks the build of your software?  Build problems create extra, unplanned work.

29 mars 2011

I have recently ported several new or updated open-source packages to OpenVOS Release 17.0.

23 mars 2011

In this blog I will address how to determine if enough osl_server_processes are started; in a future blog discuss how to determine if the max_open_servers value is correct for your environment.

16 mars 2011

Microsoft's Cindy Hibble interviews Peter Cook at HIMSS about uptime assurance and the growth of windows-based EHR systems in the healthcare industry.

01 mars 2011

The ARP cache exists in one form or another on every host that communicates via IP over Ethernet. The cache holds the mapping between IP address and Ethernet Media Access Control (MAC) address.

24 février 2011

At this year's HIMSS conference, there was a growing buzz about "Collaborative Care". And much of today's frenzied rush to automate healthcare via Electronic Health Records (EHR) and Health Information Exchanges (HIE) is in reality to put Joe Consumer on the doorstep of Collaborative Care. It's n...

22 février 2011

This is an updated version of an article that was first posted on November 16, 2010. This version adds several diagrams and covers some additional subtopics.

21 février 2011

I started thinking about the qualities that separate great programmers from merely good programmers. Read on to learn my views.

18 février 2011

What causes computer systems to go down? Is it mostly hardware failures, software crashes, or other factors like user error or environmental problems? Lots of studies have been conducted over the years, but many of them suffer from small sample sizes, both in systems and in runtime.

17 février 2011

I've just uploaded ports of cflow and cscope to the VOS anonymous FTP site. Read on for details.

17 février 2011

So, you are thinking of upgrading to a new release of OpenVOS, or to a newer hardware platform, and you want to know the effect on the response time or the throughput of your application? What do you do to answer this question? Read on to hear some suggestions.

15 février 2011

A senior person at a Regional Extension Center (REC) summed up their primary goal with healthcare practices recently by saying "Make them amongst the willing", in describing the fundamental push to get healthcare practitioners to select an EHR system. In other words, keep the decision as simple a...

09 février 2011

Having the correct time on your module is critical for all kinds of activities including log synchronization and security certificate validation.

09 février 2011

Unless good records are kept when VOS products are installed, determining the revision of all the products on a module can be a daunting task.

02 février 2011

How much Downtime is acceptable? Customers need to evaluate how much downtime are they experiencing today and how much is acceptable to their business. Downtime occurs due to planned activities (e.g. hardware maintenance and software upgrades etc.) and unplanned activities (e.g. power failure).

26 janvier 2011

I maintain a document that describes the best practices for porting open-source code to VOS or OpenVOS. Read on for more information.

25 janvier 2011

The other day I came across a program that allowed me to select from a prepackaged set of queries and then communicated with a server to retrieve the answer to the selected query.

18 janvier 2011

I just ported the lzip file compression utility program to OpenVOS. Read on for more information.

07 janvier 2011

The following STCP code fragment demonstrates a problem that I have observed.  It blocks on the recv call until there is data to read, then it processes the received data and calls recv again which will either return with more data (or an error) or block. 

05 janvier 2011

I have never forgotten the way I installed my first change (and my first bug) into Multics. Read on to hear my story.

05 janvier 2011

Government programs and incentives are accelerating the adoption of systems that streamline patient care processes and digitize patient records. The implications are staggering – according to a report from the RAND HIT Project, the adoption of interoperable EMR (Electronic Medical Record) systems...

23 décembre 2010

I've joined Twitter! Click to find my handle.

09 décembre 2010

Making Things Too Easy - Part 2 - The Evils of list_messages for Server Queues; how to use check_queue_depth to monitor queues.

08 décembre 2010

Recently while troubleshooting a connection problem this question arose. The OpenVOS system was connecting to a public Internet facing server.

03 décembre 2010

As more and more people start using SSH in place of Telnet, I am seeing more and more confusion over the way that the SSH daemon treats password warning, expiration, and grace times.

02 décembre 2010

The OpenVOS Operating System provides a high-level Application Programming Interface (API) that on the whole makes programming the system easy.

22 novembre 2010

A common misconception is that TCP guarantees delivery of the data.

17 novembre 2010

The stcp_statistics package has been updated to correct a problem.

16 novembre 2010

In this posting, I offer advice on how to configure your ftScalableTM Storage Array (hereafter abbreviated to ftScalable) to optimize its performance.

01 novembre 2010

Your application just detected a critical condition, you can write a message to an application log or even the syserr_log but how do you notify someone right now that the application needs attention?

24 octobre 2010

Many times the only way, or at least the fastest way, to resolve network communications problems is by collecting a trace of the communication and sending it to an expert for analysis.

05 octobre 2010

The information about current releases/versions of the VOS/OpenVOS operating system for V Series and Continuum systems has changed locations on the Stratus web pages.

01 octobre 2010

Back in May of 2009 I wrote about securing telnetd so that only the RSN process has the ability to use it (Telnet can't live with it, can't live without it).

29 septembre 2010

SFTP is the FTP subsystem that is part of SSH, it allows you to do encrypted file transfers. In the past week I have had 2 issues about SFTP not properly transferring files. In one case OpenVOS was the source of  the file and in the other case OpenVOS was receiving the file.

29 septembre 2010

Your application is reporting problems reaching the back end database server at 172.16.1.116 or maybe you are about to set up a new application and you want to make sure it can reach the back end database server.

29 septembre 2010

The other day while working an issue at a customer site I noticed and happened to mention that there were two sets of application processes running, one set running under some generic name like Production.

29 septembre 2010

After your VOS or OpenVOS module has been up for a while (a few months or more), you may notice that some of the metering values displayed by various analyze_system requests have gone negative, or some of the percentages are way off.

29 septembre 2010

You can accomplish many programming tasks in VOS and OpenVOS without knowing the details of how the operating system manages the user address space.  But it is fun to know the details, and sometimes to accomplish a task you need to adjust the default configuration.  This post is an introduction t...

29 septembre 2010

“The application has been running fine for years, last week the network was upgraded and we moved from 100 mbps to gigabit. Now the last half of the data in some messages is garbage. The network people swear it is not the network - but that is the only thing that changed.”

29 septembre 2010

The SDLMUX software combines two network adapters into one IP interface, providing a fail over capability if the link on the active adapter goes down or the adapter fails. Once set up it requires virtually no administration but there are some things you should be aware of.

29 septembre 2010

When the ftStorage array was originally conceived the thinking was that when it was necessary to configure something on the array administrators would use either the command line interface from an OpenVOS login session or the OpenVOS console PC to access the GUI interface.

16 juin 2010

With the trend away from running telnetd and FTPD and toward running SSHD many system administrators are removing the "telnet" and "FTP" service lines from the >system>stcp>services file.

16 juin 2010

The other day during a discussion with some users it became clear to me that they did not understand under what conditions a Stratus VSeries system would call home regarding a network adapter.

16 juin 2010

While implementing a change to the OpenVOS kernel, I found myself faced with the task of modifying about 150 files.

16 juin 2010

In the 1971 movie "Dirty Harry", Clint Eastwood plays a tough, street-smart cop. In the opening scene, he coolly stops a bank robbery by gunning down the bank robbers with his enormous, long-barreled, Smith and Wesson .44 Magnum handgun.

06 mai 2010

Stratus will be celebrating its 30th birthday next month!

06 mai 2010

I recently fielded a question from a VOS customer who wanted to know how to get his shared virtual memory regions to align between his legacy non-POSIX programs and his new, POSIX-based programs.

06 mai 2010

I’ve been fielding questions from VOS customers who are considering upgrading to OpenVOS Release 17.0 and they are all asking the same question – what’s new, and why should I upgrade?  

06 mai 2010

Customers often ask me how to get Stratus to add a feature to an existing product, or how to get Stratus interested in offering an additional product or service. 

06 mai 2010

I've been doing some research into handling XML (Extensible Markup Language) data on VOS and OpenVOS, and I thought it would be useful to share what I learned with a wider audience.

06 mai 2010

I have just uploaded a port of the GNU indent command to the VOS anonymous FTP site.  This command adds or removes whitespace from a C program to make the appearance conform to a set of standards. 

06 mai 2010

Recently a number of VOS and OpenVOS customers have switched from using the standard ftp client (ftp.pm) to the secure ftp client (sftp.pm). 

06 mai 2010

I enjoy meeting our VOS and OpenVOS customers.  Customers ask me where we are headed with VOS/OpenVOS, and colleagues ask me where we should go with VOS/OpenVOS.  I've often said that I get my best ideas from our customers.

06 mai 2010

I wrote the following remarks about conducting effective pre-production testing for my "VOS Corner" column in the Stratus User Group newsletter for December, 1996.  They are still relevant today, almost 13 years later.

06 mai 2010

If you have used the POSIX shell ("bash") on VOS, then you know that you can run various POSIX commands and use all of the nifty tricks that bash provides, such as input and output redirection. 

06 mai 2010

I am often asked whether a particular open-source package can be ported to some release of VOS or OpenVOS ("VOS", for short).

06 mai 2010

Stratus has offered ports of open-source, POSIX-based software to its VOS customers for many years.

06 mai 2010

I recently revised our notes on how to port open-source code to VOS and OpenVOS. This new revision is about 30% longer and contains much more detailed information.

06 mai 2010

Are you still working on VOS using a 80 column by 24 line view?  Get with the flow and see the big picture.

06 mai 2010

Over the years we have added a number of UNIX® features to VOS. One of the simplest and most useful of these is the ability to use dot (".") and dot-dot ("..") as pathnames.

06 mai 2010

For over 25 years, the name VOS has referred to an operating system that is reliable, continuously available, and easy to use.  We did not take the decision to rename VOS lightly. The new name acknowledges another important trend has taken place over the last 10 years. 

06 mai 2010

Thank goodness for regression tests.  There I was, earlier this week, feeling really good about some new code that I had written and (I thought) debugged. 

06 mai 2010

In 1998 it took me three days to walk the show room floor and I was pretty sure I didn't see everything. The last few years I've been doing it in 1 day and this year was no exception.

06 mai 2010

When writing a network application you can use non-blocking mode or blocking mode. Non blocking mode is more flexible and required when the application has to do multiple things, like servicing multiple sockets.

06 mai 2010

"We just upgraded from a T1 (1.544 mbps) to a T3 (44.736 mbps) so why is it still taking 90 minutes to copy that file?"

06 mai 2010

Traceroute can be an invaluable tool when trying to diagnose connection problems to hosts on other networks. However to be used effectively you have to understand how it works and what the output means.

06 mai 2010

In my last blog I talked about automating file transfers using FTP. There are three issues with using FTP. First, your password is sent across the network in clear text making it available to anyone with a protocol analyzer.

06 mai 2010

Lots of people have created automated processes to transfer files using FTP. There are several different ways to do this, some better than others.

06 mai 2010

When you contact customer support with a problem, the typical goal is to get it resolved FAST. I have observed that in many instances the initial contact with support coordination makes a fast resolution much less likely. This blog provides some tips to help speed up problem resolution.

05 mai 2010

When trying to diagnose network problems one of the questions I always ask is “What is the status of the switch port that is connected to the module's interface?” The typical answer is “I need to ask the network people”.

05 mai 2010

TCP was designed to support end to end connections, that is, one host communicating directly with another host. Sure, there were bridges and routers in between, but those devices didn't touch the TCP header or the payload.

05 mai 2010

The impact of communication layer latency is typically under estimated when trying to fix application performance problems but correct understanding is critical if you are to direct your efforts toward practical solutions.

05 mai 2010

It is coming up on the end of daylight savings time and that means questions; specifically how to change the time zone, does ntpd need to be stopped and restarted when the time zone changes and if ntpd is running will it change the time zone automagically.

05 mai 2010

I recently ran into a site with several modules, each of which was forwarding packets. The worst case was at a rate of 1 every 2 seconds or so.

05 mai 2010

Many times when working an issue I ask people to send me a network trace. A  network trace often points to the root cause of the problem.  At a minimum, it reduces the problem space to something that is manageable.

05 mai 2010

I recently was asked to do some analysis of a trace file, it was only 161 seconds in duration and contained a little more than 2.6 million frames. I was amazed to discover that approximately 75% of those frames where either ping requests or ping replies.

05 mai 2010

Paul covered CPU utilization and code paths but there is another very important aspect of many applications - network utilization.

05 mai 2010

Having two interfaces in a module on the same subnet does not give you two interfaces into and out of the module.

30 avril 2010

First a little background, TCP has a concept called maximum segment size (MSS). This is the largest segment (of data) that the TCP stack will accept.

30 avril 2010

A multihomed system is a system with multiple IP interfaces. These interfaces can be on the same or on different subnets. Today I want to consider protocols like FTP and NDMP.

30 avril 2010

As the system administrator for a VOS system you typically could care less about what other hosts are on the local subnet.

30 avril 2010

FTP transfer times painfully high, interactive login response time way too long, getting 1 mbps out of your 100 mbps network. While I always prefer to blame the network I have to admit that sometimes it is not the network.

29 avril 2010

Someone sent me the following trace and asked if it represented retransmissions because the "packet numbers" were duplicated.

27 avril 2010

I was recently asked if it was OK to not run the snmpd process. The answer is yes. If you are not using an SNMP manager to monitor the availability of the system there is no reason to run the snmpd process.

22 avril 2010

More and more security and network administrators are prohibiting the use of telnet. Unfortunately, the Stratus RSN requires that the Stratus module run a telnet server.

22 avril 2010

Stratus has released two versions of OpenSSL/SSH. Release 1 runs on the Continuum platform under VOS release 14.7x. Release 2 runs on the Vseries platform under releases greater than 15.0.

22 avril 2010

Every now and then someone asks the following question "We added our application port to the services file and now some other application is using it - why". The answer is because the services file does not reserve port numbers.

22 avril 2010

Sometimes netstat will show a socket that appears to be stuck. The remote application has been terminated, sometimes even the OpenVOS application has been terminated but netstat is still showing the socket. This article will explain why this happens and what you can do about it.

22 avril 2010

Something that people moving from TCP_OS to STCP notice right off the bat is that the set of TCP statistics displayed by the TCP_OS netstat command is quite a bit richer than that displayed by STCP.

22 avril 2010

When people think of IPsec they think of data encryption but it can also be used to drop packets or allow them without any encryption.

22 avril 2010

An SSH tunnel can be used to secure communication between a client and server that cannot otherwise be secured.

22 avril 2010

Starting in release 13.2 VOS has offered the ability to configure a fault tolerant IP interface by configuring active/standby Ethernet adapters.

21 avril 2010

When system log messages (all of them: hardware, security, syserr, etc) are generated in OpenVOS, they are sent to the syserr partition, and an event is notified. A process named TheOverseer is waiting on that event, along with a lot of other events.

21 avril 2010

I thought you might be interested to know that Stratus has updated our VOS Apache release to a newer code base. While we had the port open we added support for PHP. That new product is called Apache Web Server with PHP Release 3.0 for OpenVOS.

21 avril 2010

You may now find Operating System Release Information for VOS and OpenVOS Systems on the Stratus web site.  Look for it in the left navigation bar on many of the pages.

21 avril 2010

Paul Green and I were discussing a new command he’s working on called check_module_security. The subject of unnecessary commands available at the login prompt came up. Jon Schmidt of Transaction Design recommends in an article about Locking the Barn Door.