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Comment by tablespoon | Hacker News Reader

> “The server rack is more than 50 years old. There is no other piece of technology in data centers that has survived for so long," Zsolt Szabo told DCD back in 2016.

Quick, someone tell him about floors, walls, ceilings, doors, and electric light.

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I know of several datacenter backups that are driven by 50+ year old train diesel engines, and one where the backup generator is/was a WW2 era diesel sub engine.

The rack unit's dimensions are inherited from manual telephone switchboard jack-and-lamp panels ... and the standard rack is approximately 100 years old. https://archive.org/details/bstj2-3-112

Tell him about the SR-71 (entered service in 1966, and it’s still the same instances that are flying). Most Cessnas flying are also 50+ years old, because if you purchase a more recent one, it has to comply with all the newer rules.

Yeah, but those aren't in data centers.

For now

Yeah high speed high altitude reconnaissance is simply not mission-appropriate. That's why Switch uses predator drones loitering in a tight loop pattern for surveillance and a quick strike.

The SR-71 hasn’t flown in 22 years, so that’s a bad example.

There are of course planes that have flown for that long, and longer. The B-52s come to mind. But the SR-71 isn’t one of them.

DC-3s are still flying commercial (not joyriding).

This feels somewhat counterproductive to me. Would these old planes be noticeably more dangerous?

Not OP, but I wouldn't say significantly more dangerous, no. Older aircraft sometimes have to undergo modifications to mitigate faults that have been discovered over time in order to stay airworthy. By and large, a 50 year old aircraft is going to have well-understood failure modes with mandatory steps to mitigate them.

The mechanism by which this is enforced is an "Airworthiness Directive" if you want to read more about it. Source: I used to fly a small 50+ year-old aircraft recreationally

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