Modular OS design cuts downtime

摘要

Today companies require infrastructure uptime of 99.999% (five nines) to maximize the performance of business-critical applications and increase productivity Unfortunately, traditional Ethernet LAN switching systems were not designed with the features and functionality needed to support this level of reliability. A new development to help solve this problem is the use of modular architectures in Ethernet LAN switch operating systems. The health and robustness of an Ethernet switch operating system is critical to maximize network uptime. Traditional monolithic operating system designs use one static-compiled image and run in a single memory address space. This means .that network switches are always running in an "all or nothing" mode. If any one element or application within an operating system fails or needs to be updated, the entire system must be shut down and restarted, ceasing all packet flows.