“You get five years out of a server? I think you need the help.”
*or* YOU are luckily spoiled ! Yes, a 3 year lifecycle refresh is ideal, but not realistic budget-wise for MANY out there in the real world. Especially in the SMB market, I frequently run into aging servers with some of my consulting clients. You’d be hard pressed to convince them to replace a server that is currently working as expected with new hardware and/or new OS without proving any significant benefit in features over the existing systems. The biggest issue on aging servers that I see is drive failures, and insufficient drive space/size due to data growth. Data volumes can be replaced/upgraded without an entirely new server in many if not most cases. That said, we all know that Windows 2000 ( all flavors including servers ) are dropping from Microsoft support July 12th this year. So the lack of support, service packs, and vulnerability fixes *will* be a driving factor for OS upgrades which work out well with hardware upgrades Erik Goldoff IT Consultant Systems, Networks, & Security ' Security is an ongoing process, not a one time event ! ' From: Holstrom, Don [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2010 9:15 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: How would you go about this? You get five years out of a server? I think you need the help. I was just looking for some help in picking up a file server. I replace all my workstations and servers every three years. But I only have 130 workstations and servers. Your growth estimate is OK as it increases here at the Museum. That is why I am splitting the data onto several HDs. Thanks for your help… From: Jonathan Link [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 4:18 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: How would you go about this? I'm not going to answer your question, instead I'm going to pick apart your request. We really don't have any idea of what your rate of data growth is. There are two estimates we can make from the data supplied, linear growth or geometric growth. With linear, you're adding about 125 GB of data per year. With geometric you're doubling your data every ~19 months. So, if you expect the same growth rate, in 5 years (assumed life of a server) you're at either +625 GB of data or over 8 TB of data. Just taking a step back and looking at it from 30,000 feet, a server is the least of your storage concerns if you're doubling your data every 19 months or so. On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Holstrom, Don <[email protected]> wrote: I have a file server that has gone above 1 TB. When I first came here to the museum a few years ago (8), they had 33 gigs of data on one server. I brought in file tape backups until last year when the backup went out of that range. I always used SCSI RAIDs but even now that is a bit high. So I have ordered a new file server with six HD openings. I am figuring a pair of 10,000-rpm 150 or 300 gig HDs for the OS, I can go Server 03 or 08, figuring on 08. I would back up one with the other. Then for data, two 2TBS backed up for the main data and two 1.5 or less for other data, also backed up. Then I could/would backup to external 2TB drives for longevity. What thinkist thee? Is there another way I should go? Data here will continue to increase at the same rate... ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
