(a) whether there is no alternate arrangements in the
railways to tell the position of reservation in case of
computers failure throughout the country;
(b) if so, whether the Government have made any arrangements
to avoid inconvenience to the passengers in such a situation;
(c) if not, the reasons therefor; and
(d) the time by which alternate arrangements would be made
by the Government to tell the position of reservation in case
of computers failure?
MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF PARLIAMENTARY AFFAIRS AND MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF RAILWAYS ( SHRI O.RAJAGOPAL)
(a) to (d) It is a fact that position of reservation on
real-time basis is not available in case of failure of
Central Computers. However, in the event of computer
failure, on the day of the departure of train, the position
of reservation, updated upto the close of the previous day,
can be obtained from skeleton charts displayed at the
platform at the time of departure of a train.
For minimizing the computer failures, upgrading of
existing computers and creation of redundancies is an on-
going process. Indian Railways have recently, inducted
latest state-of-the-art Alpha computers, in order to improve
reliability. These computers help quick restart of
reservation services by way of achieving speedy system reboot
etc. Failure rate of these servers is also very low.