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US Postal Service Moves To GNU/Linux
twitter writes "The US Postal Service has moved its Cobol package tracking software to HP machines running GNU/Linux. 1,300 servers handle 40 million transactions a day and cost less than the last system, which was based on a Sun Solaris environment." The migration took a year. The USPS isn't spelling how big the savings are, except that they are "significant."
rates are pegged to rise no faster than inflation, so not really: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_postage_rates
"Not only that, I just checked and according to fedex it costs $7.39 to mail that same letter from coast to coast for their cheapest option. That's only what, nearly 17 times more expensive?"
factor in how much of your tax dollars when into that and then get back to us with a valid point....
Umm, the USPS is self-funded. None of your tax dollars go towards supporting their operation source
When you request the location of your package, it just sneers at you and says "Google is your friend."
That's actually true.
Type/paste a tracking number from any of the major shippers into google and it will automagically figure out that is a tracking number and will show you the current status.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Umm, the USPS is self-funded. None of your tax dollars go towards supporting their operation source
That's a little misleading - it hasn't always been that way, so a lot of the USPS infrastructure is tax-payer funded.
In addition, they come around every once and a while and ask for money from Congress - they are doing it this year and while I am hazy on the details, I believe they did something similar about a decade ago in order to fix funding problems with their pension system. Plus, they have a monopoly on letter delivery - that's why fedex costs so much more, they have to classify and price it as something other than a letter - so that's an indirect tax by government intervention to prevent a free market.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Really? GNU/Linux? How do we know it's not really Ruby/Apache/X.org/KDE/GNU/Linux? The article just says "Linux environment." It could very well be BSD/Linux instead of GNU/Linux.
But I digress. HP generally uses Red Hat Linux. To be semantically correct the summary should have read "Postal Service moves to Red Hat Enterprise Linux on HP Hardware"
Actually, FedEx still gets a lot of hand-written, photocopied or otherwise POS labels all the time. Just like the post office, they are encoded with a bar code at the first station that gets the package and are then read optically by a computer from then on. Or did you think those little squiggles on the bottom of your postal envelope (Postal Bar/Line code) were for decoration?
FedEx has a whole bunch of people whose only job is to look at scanned images of labels and type in the actual address when the machines fail to read them.
And I'm not in the part that deals with all that. That's the Tracker hardware. We just get the 60-100M scans per day, turn them from an isolated event into a "package" and then forward that information on to billing and the web interface system for tracking (and another dozen downstream systems that work with the data.) We also get fed information from about half a dozen other systems (like delay information, if there's an accident or a storm that grounds the airplanes) and use all of it to predict delivery dates for the packages. We also process point of failure information and information on commitment dates (the date that your package becomes free if we don't get it there) and containerization and consolidation information (i.e. what packages are in that bag, that got packed into that shipping container that got loaded onto that airplane, etc.) so we can pass scans done on a container down to all of the packages in that container. That's about another 20 million plus events per day.
A typical package traveling in the system ends up with 20-30 events that occur on it. Some end up with 80 or more. There's a lot more that goes on too, like clearance information, and multiple-piece shipments, COD information, and so on and so on. All of it goes through our system. With 45 boxes (actually we just bumped up to 50 with the June updates) and 12 database boxes. All HP boxes running Red Hat.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
I'm a system analyst, and I support the hardware distribution that goes into this.
This system doesn't have to help get the mail there, it just has to report when it's arrived. Mail processing is done by large machines in localized distribution centers, and then shipped to the local post offices where they get it into the hands of the carrier on the route for that day.The data entry is handled by hand held scanners that upload the data back to the LIM (local server). The central computers are most likely in one of three spots (I'm not sure, I don't know how they're configured, I just support the system they're ordered through) either in Eagan, Raleigh, or St. Louis. At least, that's where I know of major server locations in the USPS. But I'm not sure the information is sent to the local servers wirelessly. I know that the local locations have USB cradles, so I assume the data is kept on the handheld unit all day, then uploaded when the carrier returns to the office, but that's just a guess. If that's the case, the machine sits idle most of the day, then runs most of it's work in the hour or two when the carriers return to the office in a batch run.
As I mentioned above in reply to another post, we still get hand-written airbills, airbills that have been photo-copied (Gee, twenty packages, all with the same tracking number...) and you can still find airbills in the system that are total crap. Try tracking the package "444444444444" sometime... (Hey, we filtered out "TWELVEZEROES" and "NO_NUM_GIVEN")
Our transactions are things like "contract event" when you fill in an airbill on-line, pickup scans, revenue data, station outbound, ramp inbound, ramp outbound, hub inbound, revenue exceptions, hub outbound, station inbound, on-van, delivery, proof-of-delivery, package close, point-of-failure processing, etc. etc. We have over 70 types of scans, and a typical package ends up with 20-30 events on it. If you think you can see anything when you track a package, you have no idea how much more goes into it behind the scenes. Every one of those scans is 2-3K in length, these aren't just a simple 20 byte "ping" or something. And we retain all that data for nine months.
And we still do 133 transactions per second per server.
And always remember that the USPS contracts out to FedEx to move all of its "Priority Mail".
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
I think the summary and the TFA are a bit confusing. It probably would have been better had the summary linked not just to the TFA but also directly to the gcn.com article which is linked to from TFA, or maybe better yet, just to the gcn.com article. What I get from that gcn.com article is this:
a) There is a mainframe that is talking to ~1300 "midrange" servers.
b) The mainframe is an IBM Z-series which has been shifted over from an IBM proprietary OS to Novell SUSE Linux.
c) The COBOL code is running on the *mainframe*, not the ~1300 servers! (TFA summary is wrong on this)
d) Because the mainframe is now running Linux, and because of a USPS IT decision to standardize on Linux (this is why OpenSolaris was never an option - sorry OpenSolaris fans), they're now converting the servers to Linux as well for better interoperability between the mainframe environment and server environments.
e) As for what this system is actually tracking:
Events are transactions that occur at the service's retail counters, such as shipping and picking up packages or the delivery of priority mail by carriers to businesses and residences. The mail is scanned to confirm delivery, and that information is sent to the PTS database. ...
âoeWe're inserting like 40 million events a day,â he added. ...
The PTS has 56 transaction types, such as acceptance scans and delivery confirmations, that have now all been migrated to Linux.
The gcn.com article has more info, but even it is confusing to me. Questions:
What is an "HP Linux Environment" (Does HP have its own version of Linux? What distro is HP using?)
Any Z-series gurus reading this want to chime in and explain what the IFL actually is (Page 2 of article)?
Yes, I know, I could Google for those answers, but I'm already worn out just doing what the original story submitter should have done. Just consider the above an "improved summary". :)