[CentOS] (OT) Computer seems to have died

Tue Jan 5 22:42:07 UTC 2016
Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu>

On Tue, January 5, 2016 3:50 pm, Warren Young wrote:
> On Jan 4, 2016, at 8:37 PM, Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu>
> wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, January 4, 2016 6:18 pm, John R Pierce wrote:
>>> On 1/4/2016 4:03 PM, tdukes at palmettoshopper.com wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I have an old IBM Netvista.
>>>
>>> 10 to 15 years old?    its 5 to 10 years past expected EOL.      You
>>> got
>>> your moneys worth.
>>
>> Hm. I had to retire a few 10 years old servers and a few 13 years old
>> workstations. But they still were alive (what a shame to retire
>> something
>> that still works!)
>
> I don’t think John is saying that on the first day of the machine’s
> sixth year that thou shalt throw the machine away.
>
> Rather, be happy that it gave well over the 3-5 year use life you should
> have budgeted for from the start.

Certainly, I always agree to happily get from hardware longer life - when
hardware gives it.

>
> Between the lower power draw of the replacement over its expected
> lifetime, the time taken to diagnose it, the parts required to fix it, and
> the time required to replace those parts, you’ve probably spent more
> than the cost of a new machine.

Luckily, I rarely have to repair machines during their life (which is
almost always longer than expected life before it becomes obsolete). In
part, saving on lack of need of spending time and other resources on
diagnostics and repair comes in our case, as in everybody's else, from
paying slightly more initially and getting definitely very good hardware.
But if the machine is obsolete, when it finally dies, everybody feels
relief. But before it dies, it is getting re-purposed for easier task
(which are always many in every server room).

>
> That leaves out the increased productivity from running on a faster, more
> featureful machine.

And yes, there is downside in keeping older hardware around: wasting
precious server room space, power, AC. Well, there no harmony in this
World ;-)

Valeri

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Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
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