We recycle servers like that downward from mission critical to lesser important things. That satisfies the bean counters and keeps mission critical on new solid hardware. So, do you have an older server that could be replaced with this less older server.
As for the bean counters that is simple. How much an hour will the company lose if this app goes down. They need to answer that and accept the loss in revenue if they insist on reusing the server. Ultimately if it isn't your decision then it isn't your responsibility. From: Jeremy Anderson [mailto:jer...@mapiadmin.net] Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 2010 12:36 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: OT ? Server ROI - Reuse ? I am not even sure what the subject of this should be. I have a server, it's about 3 years old, the warranty expires in 15 days. It runs a %mission critical App%. This App is going to be replaced with %new mission critical app%. This server meets the hardware requirements for %new app% just fine. (it does require a BIOS update) Its been a stable and reliable server for the last 3 years. I can purchase an extended warranty for around $500, or I can purchase a new server for around $4500.00. The bean counters say, buy the warranty, run %new app% on it, life is good and we save 4 grand. My instinct is that this is a horrible idea, and we should just buy a new server. If we run %new app% on %old server% we will be completely wiping and reloading the OS. My question for everyone here is: How do I convince the bean counters that this is a bad idea. Or, is it not a bad idea, and is a 3 year old server not really that old? How do I justify spending 4k on a server when technically we have a perfectly good server sitting there to be reused? Am I just getting distracted by bright shiny things? %NewApp% is mission critical. If %NewApp% is down, the company is dead in the water. To put this in prospective however, %NewApp% will not be redundant, or even highly available and we are not even considering those options. Think of %newApp% like an Exchange server, for a company that relies on Email for all their communication. And yes, I know %newapp% should be clustered or highly available, but its not going to happen. Does this email make sense? Any help, or insight on the matter would be appreciated. Thanks Jeremy ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
