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,