Phil Hogan, an IT application architect at Great Lakes Works EGL in Dearborn, Michigan, started the Stratus machine in 1993. That year was the first year of Bill Clinton’s presidency. Windows NT 3.1 and Jurassic Park were also released, and NAFTA was signed. Computerworld published the account on Jan 28, 2017, when the server had been running for 24 years.

Stratus built the system for fault tolerance by duplicating hardware components. Disk drives, power supplies and other parts were replaced over time, but Hogan estimated that almost 80% of the machine remained original. He could not recall an unplanned shutdown caused by a fault the system could not handle.

Stratus named the machine its longest-running server in a 2010 contest. It was then 17 years old, and the company operating it was known as Double Eagle Steel Coating Co. The server runs an older proprietary version of VOS, which Hogan believed had not been updated since the early 2000s.

Great Lakes Works had no maintenance contract with Stratus. Hogan obtained replacement parts from a third-party vendor, while Stratus said it probably still had parts in stock. Ownership changes and shifts in the business cycle repeatedly disrupted upgrade plans. Users did not complain because they valued the reliability and found the character-based, green-screen-like interface simple.

Jason Andersen, Stratus’s vice president of business line management, said the company’s systems are fully redundant. Since the 2010 contest, Stratus had learned of other systems older than 20 years, but the Great Lakes Works machine might still be the oldest. Stratus systems support payment and credit-card processing, telecommunications, manufacturing, energy, and natural-resources operations. The company builds systems for Windows, Linux, VMware, and VOS.

Great Lakes Works became part of United States Steel Corp. in a deal completed in 2015. An upgrade was scheduled for April 2017, after which the 1993 server would be retired.