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History never repeats; for NonStop making history continues unabated!

Critical infrastructure has always been a priority for society but when it comes to technology critical infrastructure, October 1987 and Black Friday remains a lesson on just how well NonStop can scale even in the darkest of hours.


The completion of new infrastructure projects is always an exciting time. When it comes to linking two estranged parts of Sydney, it meant life could blossom on its North Shore. History will recall that Jack Lang, Premier of the state of New South Wales, missed his big opportunity to cut the tape and to be officially part of the legacy of Sydney’s most iconic landmark as he was upstaged by a sword-wielding protestor on horseback, Captain de Groot who charged the tape ahead of Lang.

Given the one-off occasion this happened to be, there was no chance at all that history would ever be repeated. With this in mind, I had an occasion this past week to recall the music of New Zealand’s well-recognized rock group, Split Enz and, in particular, the lyrics from one of the better known songs -

History never repeats
I tell myself before I go to sleep

Followed by -

Better to jump than hesitate

Indeed, as we all know, history is often repeated but even so, when it comes to technology, how often are we left to think more on whether it is better to jump than hesitate. As we get deeper into 2021 there is so much that is changing that we are more often than not left to wonder whether history has any relevance at all and whether what worked in the past can contribute to the future. 

We often write about legacy and about how the moment any application goes live, it becomes legacy. Likewise, much the same can be said about modernization projects; as soon as they enter production, they are no longer modern as something more modern has intervened in the time it takes to incorporate the latest trend. When it comes to history it isn’t hard to imagine that what transpired a second ago becomes, in that instant, history and part of a much bigger story.

For NonStop there is much that has taken place over the four plus decades NonStop systems have been around. However, amongst the most often referenced is how early Tandem Computers kept on running, processing transactions, and of course the day US stock exchanges experienced its infamous October 1987 “Black Monday.”

Even as the ticker tapes fell behind and processing orders submitted on what can only be considered as punch cards, the exchanges kept their NonStop systems running by going to extraordinary lengths to do so. Perhaps at no other time in the history of IT did scalability have such a meaningful impact on the operations of such a key piece of financial infrastructure. It may have taken place thirty four years ago but it’s a real world occurrence that we shouldn’t forget.

If you missed reading the July – August 2020 issue of The Connection magazine, you would have missed reading HPE Master Technologist, Justin Simonds’ column, NonStop Trends & Wins where he wrote about Black Monday -  

“It was Monday October 19, 1987, the DJIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average) fell 508 points (22.6%), accompanied by crashes in the futures exchanges and options markets. This was one of the largest one-day percentage drops in the history of the DJIA. 

“In 1987 Tandem had systems in the stock exchanges and the volume that day was so great that it appeared the systems couldn’t handle it.  The New York Tandem office shutdown and moved their office systems to the NYSE and added capacity online during the trading day circumventing an outage.  It was one of the legendary stories if you worked for Tandem.”

Over the past week both Simonds and I have turned to social media groups to see if there were those present at the exchanges during Black Monday who could throw additional light on what took place. Turns out that Tandem engineers and support personnel went to extraordinary lengths to ensure exchanges kept on processing. Heroic certainly and definitely legendary as far as the NonStop community is concerned!

Some of the names you will see referenced here were long-time Tandem Computers and later, HPE NonStop, employees. However, first a little background as Black Monday happened while the Tandem community was meeting in New Orleans for their annual ITUG Summit.

As posted on Facebook, Frank Sheeman recalls –

“I was at ITUG in a general meeting when a lot of pagers went off and about half the room left for the phones. Story was that NYSE was very close to running out of disk space for log files when 4pm came.

“Major upgrades (happened) overnight; done by stripping the local office hardware. We were one of few to survive the 600 million share day the next morning we were ready to handle a billion. Fortunately we did not have to find out as trading was lighter.

“But the NYSE was Very pleased and stayed a fiercely loyal customer for a long time. Tandem surviving the 600 million share day was impressive but the overnight upgrade was more impressive. Nobody cared that it wasn’t needed. They cared that it happened.”

In an update provided to TandemAlumni.groups, Bill Karpowic wrote that –

“Actually I do remember that day and night.  

“I was on site at NASDAQ not in New York but I remember the NY folks reconfiguring the systems so they were no longer fault tolerant and hardware was being flown in from Reston, I believe. Folks from the Connecticut office drove down to help.

“Both exchange support teams work through the night to be ready for Tuesday. Systems at NASDAQ had processors added from other systems that were not directly connected to trading.”

According to Bill, these were two of the longest days he can remember. It was from another Bill, this time Bill Honaker, who also posted to the TandemAlumni.groups, of how he heard the news -

“I was also at the ITUG conference at the Superdome in New Orleans. The ‘exhibit hall’ was a cramped room with a low ceiling, and as I heard about it I was standing next to some SIAC employees who were attending.

“But I do remember they were planning how to install the surplus hardware that was being acquired. This was probably around lunchtime in NYC.” 

One year after the event, Computerworld ran an article in its October 17, 1988 issue, under the general heading of Wall Street Rebuilds -  

“Indeed, most exchange computers did have trouble handling the volume, The NYSE’s SIAC system comprising 200 Tandem CPUs, lost two processors under the strain – but the fault tolerant system kept going.”

It was only a short time later that having come through Black Monday, SIAC went ahead and migrated from TXP processors to VLX boxes with increased disk storage for its Limit System and upgraded the memory and disk capacity of Common Message Switch.

Henry Ford set about modernizing transportation and as he did, Ford didn’t shy away from being controversial. The most quoted observation by Ford falls into this categorization even as it defies contemporary logic -  

“History is more or less bunk. It is tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s dam is the history we make today.

“We want to get away from that and take care of today. We’ve done too much looking back. What we want to do and do it quick is to make just history right now.”

Have we done too much looking back? It can only be said that those extraordinary efforts to keep major applications running during Black Monday were greatly appreciated by SIAC and that the demonstrable success in Tandem’s ability to scale-out as dramatically as it did, warranted the gratitude of SIAC for many years to follow. Yes, they were fiercely loyal for a long time. More importantly, it certainly helped cement the tradition within the NonStop community to always put the customer first.

Urban legend? Not even close! The ability to scale out processors and memory as well as storage saved the day for SIAC. It should come as no surprise then to read of how seriously HPE values scalability even today and how NonStop still exhibits industry-leading scale-out properties.

I am sure there are more stories that can be told about Black Monday, the team at Tandem and SIAC.  However, even as we look back at how the history books recall those times, it’s perhaps even more encouraging to know that yes, history does repeat and it does so almost daily for enterprises that continue to rely on NonStop.

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