The ever-present, ever-vigilant, and strangely charismatic monstrosity called Suspendo hangs in the corner of the office, humming quietly. Its bright blue Cyclopean LED stares unflaggingly into the static-void of data while the red LED beneath it blinks thoughtfully. Naked IDE cables and slender, serpentine power cables weave an electronic circulatory system that terminates in an umbilical cord plugged into an uninterruptible power supply.

Fishing line threaded through screw holes and attached to the ceiling by simple metal hooks hold Suspendo aloft in a seemingly meditative trance. Its disk drives are poised to strike like the heads of a cybernetic hydra. The single feature that prevents Suspendo from being truly menacing or appearing as some cut-rate form of postmodern sculpture is its tail: an appendage formed of a dozen plastic monkeys linked arm-in-arm, tipped with their barrel-shaped keychain abode.

Suspendo is AO Industries' "utility man", playing a number of important roles in the company. Below is a short list with explanations of each of these roles.

Test Environment

Suspendo provides a secure, stable test environment where the vast majority of AO Industries' proprietary code is developed and tested. The customized distribution of the Linux OS running on Suspendo is identical to that which runs on all of our production servers. This allows us as developers to understand exactly how our code will run when uploaded in a live production environment.

Local Fileserver

Suspendo has the lion's share of hard drive space in the office, and so acts as a local fileserver in AO Industries' administrative office.

Distro Source Server