3000 stays above water at manufacturer
October 22, 2013
Ed. Note: The HP 3000's ability to remain running over more than 25 years has kept it in service at MacLean-Fogg. IT Director Mark Mojonnier updated us on the current status and future plans for their MPE/iX server. At times, the computer simply needed to keep its (disk) head above water.
We've been running HP 3000 systems since 1983. The company was originally part of Reliance Electric out of Cleveland years ago. In 1986, Reliance sold a piece of that business to MacLean-Fogg company in Mundelein, IL. The new company, Reliable Power Products, bought its first HP 3000 Series 48 in 1987. We had a flood in the building later that year and had to buy another one. The disk drives were high enough out of the water to survive, so when the new one arrived, we warm-booted it (with the old disk packs) and it picked up right where it left off.
At the time we bought our first HP 3000, there was a single manufacturing location to support. Now, there are 11 manufacturing facilities in North America we support. The business has grown from $25 million to about 10-15 times that now. Same base software -- just a lot more functional these days. It evolves constantly.
Since those first days, we have had an Series 925, Series 957, Series 969, Series 989, and now an N4000-750 (for production) and a N4000-500 for DR. We run home-grown ERP software written in COBOL. We run about 200-250 users pretty much all the time. The system runs 24/7/365, basically unattended. We have developed all sorts of notification software that pages, texts, emails, and calls when the system sees $STDLIST for unexpected things that went bump in the night (or day). There are two of us that write the software, manage the OS (not much to do there), and handle the day-to-day activities.
When we bought our latest HP 3000 systems, we found that these were actually new machines that had simply been in storage for many years. These new ones simply blow the doors off that Series 989. Fiber vs. single-ended SCSI is no match on throughput. Our 2-3 hour overnight processes dropped to 1 hour. Just being able to backup to LTO instead of DLT made a big difference.
We moved from that Franklin Park address simply because the building would have a tendency to flood just about every year. In 1987, we had 18 inches of water. This was called the flood of the century. 18 inches rising up the back of a Series 48 doesn't leave much dry space. Then, starting in 2008, we had a flood almost every year through 2013. Now, 6-8 inches of water in the office doesn't go over too well with furniture and office equipment. But those floods never hurt the HP 3000s.
After about five of these floods, the company decided to sell the building. They moved the factory to Tennessee and the corporate offices to South Carolina. The 3000 now resides in Mundelein, where the two of us continue to keep the 3000 running.
However, as most 3000 sites go, the system is being phased out over the next few years. We are installing EPICOR. It runs on a cluster of Windows and SQL servers. The plan is to phase it in, and phase out the HP 3000, all over the same time period. The two HP 3000s will remain around for a few years after that to hold archived data.
I hate to see them go, but I've been working with them since 1983 (30 years and counting) and hope to see another four to five years. It's been quite a ride. I hope it continues for a few more years.