1. Ask the bean counters what their depreciation schedule is on servers. If it's 3 years like many, they may not be doing their ROI correctly. 2. Ask how much money will be lost if the server is down for 72 hours due to a hardware failure. Does it offset the $4500? Do an ROI on a couple of even 24-hour outages and see what happens. 3. How much longer will the server need to be utilized? Another 3 years? Will it still be viable for that time? Or will patches/firmware/drivers become unavailable/outdated? How much harder will it be to replace the server once the MCA is running on it? Doing it at upgrade time is usually much easier. 4. Consider virtualizing the MCA. That way, if something chokes on the old server, you could have it up and running again somewhere else in minutes...
5 years ago it was a no-brainer to replace a 3-year old server. It's not so clear-cut anymore. Virtualization has really helped to extend hardware life while minimizing SLA risks. *********************** Charlie Kaiser charl...@golden-eagle.org Kingman, AZ *********************** > -----Original Message----- > From: Jeremy Anderson [mailto:jer...@mapiadmin.net] > Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 2010 10:36 AM > 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/> ~
