on 2-29-2008 2:36 AM Stephen Usher spake the following:
Scott Silva wrote:
How much longer can a system be expected to run? 8+ years at 24/7 is about a half a million hours. Drives are getting old and expensive to replace. Processors are probably slow. Energy use is high. Motherboard capacitors are probably drying up. The systems are past a safe point and are getting closer to the "great e-waste pile in the sky".
I retired a 13 year old DEC AlphaStation 5/266 yesterday... Legacy systems are still doing useful things. You just have to make sure that they're isolated from the outside as they can't be patched or upgraded. (e.g. newer versions of OpenSSH won't compile under Digital UNIX 4.2C)
Steve
P.S. For the record, the DEC box has only ever needed to be shut down for power outages and (in its early life) OS upgrades. It ran 24/7 and never had a hardware fault (and still doesn't). Now that's reliable hardware! True, but just because it hasn't failed in 13 years doesn't mean that it wont fail tomorrow. Or next week. Everything wears out sooner or later. I don't feel right using a server for critical systems for more than 5 years. I usually will warranty them to that age, and then move them on.
The servers that used to handle our e-mail needs a few years ago are now terabyte backup targets. A new raid controller and some new drives, and the critical part of them is as good as new. If a MB or power supply dies I can move the drive cage to another system and get to the data in less than an hour.
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