One of the most significant IT outages in recent times has severely affected many airports and banks in the United States and Europe. The incident caused a number of problems, including flight delays, disruption of services to customers and a slowdown in the processing of financial transactions. Such events highlight the importance of a reliable and stable IT infrastructure in critical systems and draw attention to the benefits of open source software, especially the Linux operating system.
The background of the IT outage
The most recent IT outage mainly affected systems that were built on some form of centralized network infrastructure and closed source software. These systems, while having many advantages, often suffer from a lack of scalability and flexibility. To avoid a single point of failure (SPOF), system administrators and IT professionals must place greater emphasis on redundancy and robust security protocols.
Advantages of open source software
Open source software, especially Linux, has gained significant popularity in recent years through its use in critical systems. Several factors contribute to this popularity:
- Cost-Effectiveness: Open source software is generally available for free, allowing organizations to save significant costs in terms of licenses and software updates.
- Security: The source code of open source software is publicly available, allowing the community to continuously review and improve the code. This kind of transparency reduces the risk of security breaches and enables faster fixes.
- Flexibility and customization: Open source software can be easily customized to meet specific needs. This is especially important in critical systems, where standard solutions are often insufficient.
- Stability and reliability: Linux based systems are famous for their stability and reliability. Many large companies and organizations, including financial institutions and airports, use Linux-based systems for critical operations.
Linux in critical systems
Critical systems such as air traffic control and banking transaction processing require extremely high levels of reliability and availability. The Linux operating system is particularly suitable for these tasks, as it offers several advantages:
- Scalability: Linux is easily scalable, so it can handle increasing workloads and data traffic growth without significant performance loss.
- Redundancy and failover capabilities: Linux makes it easy to set up redundant systems and failover mechanisms, which minimizes risks from a single point of failure.
- Automation and containerization: Modern Linux distributions and tools such as Docker and Kubernetes allow systems to be automated and containerized, which increases flexibility and reduces downtime.
Google is one of the best-known examples of a large technology company successfully using Linux on its critical systems. Google’s search engine, which handles billions of searches per day, is run on Linux servers.
Google supports and uses many open source projects, including the Kubernetes container orchestration system originally developed by Google. Kubernetes is widely used in cloud services and automated systems.
AWS
AWS (Amazon Web Services), the world’s largest cloud provider, uses Linux-based systems for most of its servers. The Amazon Linux operating system is specifically optimized for AWS infrastructure to provide high performance and reliability.
AWS supports and uses many open source tools, such as Apache Hadoop for managing and analyzing large data sets, and Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), which provides Kubernetes-based container orchestration.
New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)
Critical systems at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) are Linux-based to ensure high availability and high performance. In the case of stock trading systems, stable and fast operation is essential, which is provided by Linux-based solutions.
The NYSE uses a variety of open source technologies in its network infrastructure and data processing systems that contribute to reliability and flexibility.
NASA
NASA, the American space agency, has many critical systems based on Linux, especially data processing systems for scientific research and space missions. Stability and reliability are key in space exploration, which Linux systems provide.
NASA develops and uses many open source software, such as the OpenStack cloud platform, which is used to manage data storage and computing resources.
Airbus
Airbus, one of the largest aircraft manufacturing companies, uses Linux-based systems in its flight control and manufacturing processes. For Airbus, the high degree of reliability and security provided by Linux systems is essential.
Airbus makes extensive use of open source software in aircraft design and development, including CAE Linux-based simulation tools and various data processing systems.
Time to choose reliablity
The above examples clearly show why organizations providing critical services are moving to Linux and open source software. Cost-effectiveness, security, stability and flexibility are all factors that promote the spread of open source solutions in critical systems. Such transitions not only increase reliability, but also contribute to technological innovation and transparency.
The recent IT outage that disrupted the operation of airports and banks in the USA and Europe highlights the importance of a reliable and secure IT infrastructure. Open source software, especially Linux, offers many benefits that make critical systems more stable, secure, and resilient. The lesson from such events is that in the future, more and more organizations will prefer open source solutions over closed systems to minimize risks and increase system reliability.
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