Ricardo B (ricardo.b.delete@this.xxxxx.xx) on June 8, 2017 2:55 pm wrote:
> Michael S (already5chosen.delete@this.yahoo.com) on June 8, 2017 9:07 am wrote:
> > dmcq (dmcq.delete@this.fano.co.uk) on June 8, 2017 5:54 am wrote:
> > > Michael S (already5chosen.delete@this.yahoo.com) on June 8, 2017 12:54 am wrote:
> > > > RWT forum became a little dry of lately, so let's discuss something more juicy.
> > > >
> > > > In particular, I am interested in why nobody (well I'd guess not literally nobody, but certainly
> > > > not many I had seen) is blaming OEM, which in this case most likely was Big Blue.
> > > >
> > > > Is it considered normal for very expensive computer system to be physically
> > > > damaged just because some idiot pushed Big Red Button twice?
> > > >
> > >
> > > Damaging the computers shouldn't have brought down the
> > > system like it did. They should have had a physically
> > > separate fallback with a completely separate power system
> > > continually being updated on every transaction. That's
> > > just the basics for something like this. The system should not go down if somebody drops a bomb on it.
> >
> > According to my understanding of reports, they had backup system few km away, on the other
> > side of Heathrow or something like that. Not bomb-proof in case of BIG bomb, but since in
> > this particular case no bombs, big or little, were thrown and even power interruption was
> > not caused by external reason (at least as long as we don't count sub-contractor electrician
> > as an external reason) it should have been good enough. Except that it didn't work.
>
> Testing failure paths always gets pushed down the priority list.
>
>

There has been no coherent account as yet of how this failure happened.
The only corporate comment blamed a 'power surge' that damaged the system. That explanation is embellished by rumors of a contractor inadvertently shutting down the system and then turning it on again without the required restart procedure.
Absent some inside detail, there is too little known to understand the failure, much less to propose corrective action