[arthurfirst]

Depends how they are built. There are many embedded/real-time systems that expect this sort of reliability too of course.

I worked on systems that were allowed 8 hours of downtime per year -- but otherwise would have run forever unless there was nuclear bomb that went off or a power loss...Tandem. You could pull out CPUs while running.

So if we are talking about garbage windows servers sure. It's just a question of what is accepted by the customers/users.

[AdieuToLogic]

> I worked on systems that were allowed 8 hours of downtime per year -- but otherwise would have run forever unless there was nuclear bomb that went off or a power loss...Tandem. You could pull out CPUs while running.

Tandem servers were legendary for their reliability. I knew h/w support engineers years ago that told me stories like your recounting being able to pull components (such as CPU's) without affecting system availability.