London Stock Exchange's .Net system has a meltdown

[Patrick]

The system was down for 7 hours probably causing billions in losses:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/26605984
http://www.onwindows.com/Articles/LSE-T ... fault.aspx

My guess is that some heads will definitely roll over this.

Luckily the NYSE converted to a Linux based system a while back and continued to work as designed in extremely high volume trading today.

http://www.nytimes.com/idg/IDG_002570DE ... mc=rss/ru/

[dann]

That first link is dead! Where is the article? Gaaaa!

[Patrick]

That first link is dead! Where is the article? Gaaaa!

F-U Reuters. Different link now that works.

[LinuxMint-4]

EXTRA: London Stock Exchange: blame Microsoft?

http://blogs.computerworld.com/extra_lo ... _microsoft


Mike Simons reports:

Microsoft adThe London Stock Exchange ... suspended trading as dealers reacted to the dramatic economic news that the U.S. government had taken over control of mortgage groups Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, in the biggest financial bailout in world history.
...
The breakdown occurred just days after the LSE announced plans to improve services as it competes against a range of new entrants in the market. Among the LSE's initiatives is a move to slash the time it takes to complete a trade from six milliseconds to three
...
Trading was halted at 8:45 a.m. London time. According to Reuters, it was not restored until shortly before close of the trading day, which is 4 p.m. The LSE said the system had been hit by a "connectivity issue" and insisted that the problem did not lie with its flagship TradElect trading platform.more


But Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols knows people who know different:

So what happened? Officially, the LSE ... gave the vague explanation, that "It was software-related, a coincidence, due to two processes we couldn't have foreseen," and not caused by high-volume.
...
I have friends in London and... Well, let me just make the following points about TradElec. First, TradElec runs on ... Windows Server 2003 ... [and] a custom set of C# and .NET programs, which was created by Microsoft and Accenture ... on Microsoft SQL Server 2000. The goal was to maintain sub-ten millisecond response times.
...
The programmers and serious database administrators in the audience can already see where this is going. Sorry, Microsoft, .NET Framework is simply incapable of performing this kind of work, and SQL Server 2000, or any version of SQL Server really, can't possibly handle the world's number three stock exchange's transaction load on a consistent basis.

I'd been hearing from friends who trade on the LSE for ages about how slow the system could get. Now, I know why.more

[mike-stock]

I suppose they needed an operating system to run the network..

[eddie]

As much as I do not like MS software, I have mixed feelings about this. There are multiple points of possible failure. Without seeing the actual setup, I reserve judgment. I have seen MS certified admins screw up a network setup before, during, and after. And of course they are never wrong. I have also seen application software blamed for issues when it was an os or network issue and vice versa. Then again, I know a lot of MS programmers who could not program their way out of a bag. If the real truth does come out, it will be interesting to see what the real issues are. Having worked in an ms shop environment, I suspect all we will hear is rhetoric.

[LinuxMint-4]

This happened nearly two years ago...