[CentOS] Opteron, Athlon/64, and disaster recovery

[Chris Mauritz]

Benjamin Smith wrote:

>What it comes down to is this: so far, all the servers I've been administering 
>have been 32-bit P3/P4/Athlon alikes, so if a server died and we needed it up 
>NOW we could go to a local computer store here in smalltown USA, buy some 
>desktop machine, swap harddrives, press enter a few times while kudzu does 
>its thing, and have a working machine. 
>
>Now, we're moving to Opteron-based servers, and I just was wondering if it's 
>reasonable to expect that, in a worst-case scenario, we could get an 
>Athlon/64 system locally, and have it work, even if not optimally. 
>
>Obviously, the Opteron is better and faster, but if the Athlon 64 will run 
>CentOS X86/64, then I can be pretty certain that in the worst case, I can run 
>to the local Performance Leet g4m3rz store, and get an Athlon/64 to get a 
>needed database server back online. 
>
>Just checking the accuracy of the data behind my decisions. (I've turned down 
>Xeon servers for this reason) 
>  
>

I'm sure you already know this, but....

if it's THAT critical of a machine then it would probably be in your 
best interest to have a spare or two.  Whenever I stop using one brand 
of server and begin using another type (at least in rackmount datacenter 
situations), I always have at least one spare installed.   On more than 
one occasion, I've had the power supply fail on a Compaq or HP rackmount 
machine or a motherboard failure.  I just popped out the "hot plug" 
drive(s) on the stricken machine and plugged them into the spare system, 
flicked a power switch, and voila.  At one of our datacenters, I 
actually have a Cisco 7513 that's been hollowed out and is a stealth 
storage bin for spare parts (the 7513's internals were immolated in a 
rather spectacular PS failure/fire).  8-)

Cheers,