-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 thus Brian Mathis spake: > On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 8:01 PM, Shawn Everett <shawn at tandac.com> wrote: >> Thanks to everyone for their comments so far. >> >> The "server" in question is a basic 2 node cluster connected to an MSA500. >> >> It runs a variety of applications including Oracle, Apache, Samba, and a >> proprietary app built by another vendor. >> >> The hardware is monitored, maintained and backed up regularly. >> >> The setup is mission critical to my client. They spent a lot of time and >> money to make sure it wouldn't go down. >> >> The list's point is well taken that old *nix installs are very reliable >> long term. I've had similar experiences. Given this particular client's >> need for a reliable, stable, redundant system, I was contemplating >> alternatives or future upgrades rather than letting things age. >> >> Shawn > > Another reason might be to avoid memory/data corruption. Search > Google news for a recent report from Google about how they found more > memory errors than conventional wisdom has held to be expected. For the archives, it can be found here: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf (about 300k) http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=638 > However, consider this. IT has a reputation among most businesses of > always wanting new toys. Many times, they have a point and it seems > that IT is more interested in getting new things for no real reason. > This sounds like one of those times. > > The better solution would be to make sure you are prepared for when > the hardware does fail. Inform the client that you understand that > they don't want to upgrade the servers, and that hardware failure is > not a case of "if" but "when". Lay out a plan to them describing what > would happen when that occurs, and how you will make sure that their > downtime is minimal. > > My recommendation would be to look into VMware P2V conversion, and > test it out on one of the servers if you can. Schedule a time to run > it once a month or so, and make sure any data that would change is > also backed up. You could back it up to a $99 1TB external USB drive, > very cheap (just turn off the drive when you're done with the backup). > When the servers finally die, you can bring up a new server, pop the > VM onto it, and they are back up and running. You might not even need > P2V if you can rsync the entire system off to the external drive. The > important thing here is to make sure you test bringing up the backup > system before you're in an emergency. Cheers, Timo -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with CentOS - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iD8DBQFK0MMkO/2mgkVVV7kRAiWbAJ0ecEM0S2+BzIFxG8CVCu25b5Pd8gCgizZK lpv0kbPFNDSJjnV+IiApA5U= =dUhU -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----