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Data in motion follows 3000 archival project

HMSHostHMSHost has been an HP 3000 shop since long before the start of this century. The company that operates duty-free outlets in major US airports has made changes to its datacenter structures that have put its 3000 in cool standby. Regular operations have moved to another server. Archival has become the mission for the MPE/iX server.

Brian Edminster told us about the changes to the company's IT operations, having managed the 3000 solutions for HMSHost for many years.

The live and current data that was hosted on the application under MPE has been migrated to systems belonging to the new owner of the retail division of HMSHost.  Several years ago, HMSHost sold off their retail division to World Duty Free, USA (the US arm of the global World Duty Free Group, WFDG). In a surprise move, WDFG was then acquired by one of its rivals, Dufry. In talking with some friends that still work there, the former-3000 data will likely need to be migrated to yet again—to the Dufry systems. Talk about “data in motion!” 

But as it turns out, the historical 3000 data (from before WDFG acquired the retail unit) still has to be retained for compliance reporting for about three more years. They've decided to keep an A-Class system, basically in a cool backup environment. The server is still racked in their server room, but is kept powered off, until one of these events occur: 

1) a compliance report and/or analysis is required (a fairly low probability), or

2) a quarterly reboot/confidence check is scheduled.

Edminster said that in either event, he'll be called in to perform that work on the cool backup system. Archival systems still consume some resources, but it's that reduction of human resources that can make a drastic change when a 3000 goes from production to archive. The 3000 server may not even get powered up, as is the case at HMSHost.

"They thought about keeping the machine powered up, but idling," Edminster said, "but there was concern regarding remaining the MTBF on the A-Class disc mechanisms and fans. It was determined to be a lower risk—and consume less electricity and generate less heat—to leave the system powered down until access is needed."

In archive, though, backup practices don't change. "We've got several complete backups," he added, "should a boot drive fail, or the RAID-1 (Mirror/iX) data volumes fail catastrophically."

 

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