6,030 days, 5 hours, 21 minutes, 19 seconds. That’s how long a server monitored by Ars Technica forum user Axatax has been faithfully operating without interruption. The 16-year-old server, powered Novell’s NetWare operating system, finally shut down last week after its 5.25-inch SCSI hard drives started to fail.
The impressive uptime was due to the server’s use in a large financial company; a centralized UPS system insured against any power failures that might have brought the computer down.
Axatax adopted the server in 2004 when he joined the company, but he was unsure of its exact technical specifications. He had never seen the server boot, so he did didn’t know what processor it ran, and his attempts to look inside the case while it was still running were futile. After 16 years of continuous operation, the level of dust inside the case was so thick that no individual components could be discerned. “It’s like a bird’s nest,” Axatax reported.
With its duties complete, the server will now head home with Axatax, where it will be cleaned and rebooted for the first time since the Clinton-Dole presidential race. Axatax hopes to use the opportunity to learn more about the NetWare OS and experiment with using the computer as a print server.
TekRevue’s production PC currently has a measly uptime of 17 days. How does your system compare?
