Mission critical - HW organ, what can be done?

Suggestion was made to start a new thread. Would like ideas. Some people, possibly correctly so, think using a personal computer (for an organ that "has to work") is at best risky. Without going too pricey, too complex, what is a best approach? Esp since "Murphy" still is active in these parts.

I posted this on another thread:

As an example of (nothing can go wrong, go wrong, etc, yesterday I got a panic call from a good client who had their HW organ, of over 2 years working perfectly, stop working. In this "mission critical" situation, we built for them a totally identical back up computer. Even with color coded connectors. It was/is plug and play ready I talked a medium tech person on how to setup/install the back up including changing the dongle to the back up computer. Thankfully, everything is working, the organist had only to change a few c/a settings. So for their First Sunday of Advent service and concert, they will be running with the back up. Both computers have identical (programmed) SSD's but I felt safer with this tech person to do the swap.

They had been having rehearsals most of the week with no organ issues so they weren't waiting to check things out at the last minute.Obviously, having that degree of back up isn't always possible.

Thought I would pass this on maybe to give an idea to those responsible for an important installation. It might be a future consideration to do a hot standby, but I wasn't looking to over complicate either. Still thinking about that. Any thoughts?

Being able to back a claim of reliability would certainly help the Hauptwerk "cause".

Rgds,
Ed

I suppose the vital questions are - how reliable are alternative systems, and which are easiest to get going again if a fault develops? I've never known an electronic organ from one of the major companies - such as Allen or Viscount - go wrong; but if one did, it would presumably mean a visit from the company's own technician. On the other hand, if a computer-based organ goes wrong, there will almost certainly be someone in the local community who knows how to sort out the problem.

It seems to be mainly older folk who feel negative about computers; the younger generation have grown up with them. My friend's six-year-old daughter was happily playing on her tablet here, until she need to access the internet, and was a bit upset when she couldn't do so instantly (I couldn't immediately tell her the code she needed to use my Wi-Fi).

Your idea of a complete back-up computer seems the ideal solution; it can “hold the fort” while the other one is being repaired.

Another argument in favour of a computer-based organ such as Hauptwerk is that computers improve continually, as does their software (Hauptwerk V!); whereas the only way to “update” a commercial electronic organ is usually to buy a new one.

Hi Ed:

I think you've showed that a hot spare is the easiest and quickest design for getting a HW system back in operation again by way of remote phone support. Years ago when I was a network administrator (way before VMs, SAN drives, Cloud computing,etc.) we looked at file servers that had High Availability features like redundant a power supply and RAID configured disk drives. They were quite expensive so we discovered that we could provide 2 of our 'standard' servers as hot standbys for less price than one super HA server. Of course the caveat was we would be called in to put the hot spare into service.

I spoke with an organist who played for a church with a Hauptwerk install. He said the installer included a flash drive for backups and a powered USB which contained all the USB connections. So if they needed to swap in a new or temp computer, there would be minimal connections to deal with: A/C, video, and 1 USB.

My idea for cost effective fault tolerance would be to have an Intel NUC or similar CPU design for say no more than $200 as an onboard stand by. They won't have the horse power as your default HW computer but the sample set used for the service could be trimmed down with less stops, divisions, etc. so the NUC isn't over taxed and the organist can still make it through a service. They take up little room and would act as cheap insurance.

The paragraph above was inspired by a true life event. Playing a pipe organ for my brother-on-law's wedding, the Swell developed a relay cipher during the pre-ceremony preludes! Any stop engaged on the Swell would play the same note. I was then forced to use only the Great and Pedals. Really wasn't a big deal for the actual service but the Trompette, which was the only reed and in the Swell, was sorely missed for the voluntaries!

My question for you is how did your hot spare obtain the latest piston combination settings or did it? My guess is all audio and pipe voicing was completed and 'locked' along with the HW cache when your hot spare was cloned.

Danny B.

This morning my old Rodgers’ pedal and choir divisions completely died. Nothing to do but move to the piano and call a technician and hopefully he’ll be able to deal with it. I would have LOVED to have been able to switch to my backup computer and kept going as planned...