On Fri, Oct 09, 2009, Shawn Everett wrote: >Hi Guys, > >I have a client who hopes to keep their server another 5 years making it >10 years old at that time. > >At this point there are no plans to add new infrastructure or a new server >to the mix. Their business model is fairly static. > >I'd like to see them upgrade. Can anyone suggest specific reasons why >running a business on 10 year old equipment is a bad thing? > >Specific arguments I can think of would be: >- Hard/Impossible to find replacement hardware >- Lack of support for both H/W and S/W >- Possibly unable to run current versions of CentOS >- Higher probability of hardware failures over time >- Performance bottlenecks > >Any other thoughts? These are plausible reasons, but may not be in the client's best interests, assuming that you are monitoring the system for potential hardware problems and have good, verified backups that can be used to build a new system quickly if necessary. We have many commercial clients doing accounting/database things where the existing hardware and software does everything they need and want, and their systems are behind good firewalls so they're not generally exposed to the Internet (and none run Windows). They much prefer to put off hardware replacement until there's some good or compelling reason to do so (e.g. one of our clients is running SCO OpenServer 5.0.6a on hardware installed in November 1999, and we're planning on building a CentOS box with VMware to replace it after first of the year). Most of our clients are small-to-medium businesses that only work one shift, not huge enterprises going 24/7 where zero down time is a must. Uptimes on these systems is often measured in years, and outages are mostly due to an Internet connection going down when the telco screws up. Hardware updates are usually done by building a new server in parallel with the production box, then rsync'ing data over at close-of-business on Friday night with the weekend available to deal with visits from Mr. Murphy. Bill -- INTERNET: bill at celestial.com Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC URL: http://www.celestial.com/ PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way Voice: (206) 236-1676 Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820 Fax: (206) 232-9186 Skype: jwccsllc (206) 855-5792 Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws. -- Mayer Amschel Rothschild