Posted on 04/27/2006 11:25:00 AM PDT by Salo
Federal Aviation Administration Saves $15 Million by Migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux; FAA Achieves 30 Percent More Operational Efficiency for 50 Percent Less Cost
Apr 26, 2006 8:00:00 AM
Copyright Business Wire 2006
RALEIGH, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 26, 2006--
Red Hat (NASDAQ: RHAT), the world's leading provider of open source to the enterprise, today announced that the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) saved the federal government more than $15 million in datacenter operating and upgrading costs by migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The FAA executed a major systems migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux in one-third of the original scheduled time and with 30 percent more operational efficiency than the previous system. In addition, by switching to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the FAA realized 50 percent savings and spent less than $10 million on a project initially estimated at $25 million.
Related Quotes Last Change % Change RHAT 30.10 0.15 0.50
The FAA accommodates more than two million passengers on domestic airlines every day. With roughly 8,000 airplanes in the air at any given time, the successful execution of the FAA's mission largely depends on the highly complex Traffic Flow Management (TFM) infrastructure and its real-time Enhanced Traffic Management System (ETMS). When the administration embarked on a technical refresh effort for the TFM and ETMS, the FAA faced significant implementation time along with a high price tag.
"There is no room for error or down time in our systems," said Joshua Gustin, TFM-Modernization program manager, FAA. "When we first considered refreshing our entire system, we were looking at $25 million in costs and 18 months to full deployment. By switching to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we were able to spend less than $10 million and accomplish a major system modernization in one-third that time. Red Hat Enterprise Linux fixed our problems of reliability and scalability, and gives us the support we need to reduce our risk."
The FAA deployed Red Hat Enterprise Linux first in its remote computing locations and later moved Red Hat Enterprise Linuxto its central processing facility located at the Department of Transportation's Volpe Center. By migrating from a costly UNIX platform to Red Hat Enterprise Linux on its workstations, servers and at the hub site, the FAA was able to eliminate costs and ineffective systems, while creating a scalable architecture that met their high-demand environment today and for the future.
The FAA also used Red Hat onsite training during the modernization project to effectively transition engineers to Red Hat Enterprise Linux through the Red Hat Certified Engineer program.
"For training, we decided more was better, particularly with the developers," said Gustin. "As a result, we made training a priority, and it has really paid off."
"The FAA's successful and impressive migration truly exemplifies the value, performance and security of Red Hat Enterprise Linux," said Paul Smith, vice president of government sales operations, Red Hat. "There are scores of agencies across the entire federal government, as well as state and local governments in all 50 states that are moving Unix-like capabilities to Linux on commodity hardware. The fact that Red Hat delivers a platform for better total cost of ownership, throughput, and credentials for strong security makes it the obvious choice when agencies look at either a technical refresh or infrastructure modernization."
To learn more about the FAA's migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, read the case study and view the video testimonial, please visit http://www.redhat.com/.
The FAA can be a difficult customer, imo.
So maybe my pic was of a different Airbus line, I was responding to the lies they use Windows, which is nowhere on those planes, is it. If you want to go correct someone, go correct those people, they couldn't have been more wrong, but since they were smearing MS you were just fine with it.
This "going down in flames" moment brought to you by GoldenEagle aka Microsoft Fan-boy - Millennium Edition
Yes, as I understand it, the in-flight entertainment systems are the only problem, and that lies largely with Panasonic...the article where Buzzy posted the picture actually referenced a physical problem, not anything with Linux. Also, I saw that the system Panasonic uses is actually RedHat 6 with some of their own applications running on top of it, but I didn't have a chance to verify that.
Incidently, I did find this anecdotal excerpt, which I found interesting. Don't know if it's true or not:
"My father used to do aircraft maintenance and said that early Airbus' aircrafts used MS Windows system. If they ever lost current during a flight, passengers would not be able to listen to music for at least 20 min...
I guess Airbus got fed up of complaints and they now use another entertainment system, which happens to run Linux ;)"
Here's an incident report from the article on the other thread. From what I can tell, it's simply outlining some preventive procedures and telling how to get the instrument panel back online after a power interruption. Nothing is mentioned about Linux in the report, that I could find. Seems to be a physical problem, as the report describes an audible "clunk" right before the power interruption.
http://www.aaib.dft.gov.uk/cms_resources/S3-2006%20G-EUOB.pdf
I did the search as GE suggested. Found the above, but didn't find the "myriad" of problems that he was talking about.
"I was responding to the lies they use Windows, which is nowhere on those planes, is it."
So, you were showing that they prefer Linux instead of Windows? Fine by me. You win this one.
Have to say, in most cases, I agree with them.
Even better, then FreeRepublic could be made to work only on Windows Vista running IE 7.0. Woo Hoo!! < /sarcasm >
"I guess you haven't heard about all the problems Airbus has been having with their various uses of Linux?
Rebooting Your Airbus
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1620586/posts"
This deals with one problem in the in-flight entertainment system. Can you detail another problem they're having? Thanks...
ha!
I already linked one on the other thread. You guys will love it too, it comes from one of those foreign IT rags like you're always quoting. How did you ever miss it?
I didn't miss it, I don't think.
If you're referring to the Inquirer article, that one also dealt with the in-flight entertainment system. That system is based on an old RedHat version, and has been modified by Panasonic, as I understand it.
You do refer on that thread to Airbus having problems with Linux "all over" the planes. Does that refer to the fact that the in-flight system can physically be seen anywhere on the plane, or was there another Linux system within the Airbus planes that was causing a problem? Or, were you exaggerating?
Do you have any documentation of any other problems with Linux on Airbuses, outside of Panasonic's entertainment system? Thanks.
Oh, and please refer me to the post where I have ever quoted a "foreign IT rag". Thanks.
The reason Firefox would be easier than Perl is because all the authorization is already set if you use the cookies.That.. and perl rots the brain!
I'm not as good at reading foreign websites as you guys,but when I glanced over the article all I saw was the error message of "your seat is rebooting".
In any event it was obviously Linux and not Windows as the other posters were claiming.
If I hadn't come along you boys would probably still be cussing Bill Gates for it LOL.
"I'm not as good at reading foreign websites as you guys,"
You're not as good at reading, period.
"but when I glanced over the article all I saw was the error message of "your seat is rebooting"."
And just what the hell did you think that meant?
Another linux crash on Airbus, what else?
And this article, which simply dealt with the entertainment system, and probably is more rightfully attributed to Panasonic than Linux, made you giddy enough that you posted here without reading the article?
Oh, and BTW, if you can imply that Linux isn't reliable by using RedHat 6 from 1999 as your yardstick, then I guess you would judge Microsoft by Windows 98 or ME, which came out about the same time...
Fair enough.
Do you have a link for this? I have a link that says this was a fault with Harris' implementation of the software that uses GetTickCount, and that the 49.7 day limitation of it in the API is due to it being 32-bits.
Additionally, it went on to say that the FAA had been meaning to get the program changed, but in the interim implemented a 30day reboot sked so as not to come close to the 49.7 limit.
Who cares, since the original lies were it was all Microsoft stuff crashing.
And the original article on the other thread had nothing to do with Linux crashing either, but rather a glitch with the power that ran the planes systems (you're welcome to go back and read the PDF report that I posted earlier about this). But you had to paint that picture for us, implying that particular crash was the fault of Linux, complete with the picture of a Linux boot screen from a totally unrelated system on a different plane.
As for the in-flight entertainment system, if you'd give me any seven year old operating system and leave me to cobble some nonstandard apps on top of it, I could make it crash handily, whether Windows or Linux.
But, then, as you said, who cares, especially when it comes to facts?
We have the same information. Microsoft's implementation rolled over at 49.7 days (2^32/(1000*60*60*24)). Microsoft's RPC uses GetTickCount(). Pre-fix implementations (Update Rollup 1 for Windows 2000 SP4 last year fixed it) would grow to use 60% of processor resources after the GetTickCount() rollover, killing system and network performance.
Because of this, the machine would become unusable if the FAA didn't reboot often. Harris put in a reset routine when the OS hit 49.7 days of uptime as a safeguard against the slowdown. So you get shutdown instead of slowdown.
It still amazes me though. Microsoft didn't think anyone would want to have their server up for 50 days at a time?
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