How Often Should Servers Be Replaced?

Servers are the backbone of your organization, maintaining and making sure they are replaced in a timely manner can save your company thousands of dollars. How often should servers be replaced? It depends on who you ask, there are no hard rules on knowing when you should be replacing your servers.

Major OEMs generally recommend a refresh cycle every five years. These projections work off the assumption that server hardware has a three to five-year lifespan before encountering performance issues. Once they reach this stage, lags increase while certain capabilities decrease, meaning your organization may see a substantial uptick in server hardware servicing costs.

In short:

• Servers nearing a five-year mark should be analyzed for retirement.
• Individual server components with slowing capabilities or failures signal it’s time for a refresh, not just an upgrade.
• Full failures lead to removing servers or going offline — the very issues you’re trying to avoid with an institutionalized refresh cycle.

The Manufacturers Server Warranty will help guide REPLACING YOUR SERVERS

Normally the manufacturer will have a warranty on the server for the first three years from time of installation. Many of the warranties include overnight replacement parts depending on location of your business. Normally the warranties will include updates to prevent any additional downtime.

After the initial three-year warranty expires, you may be offered a warranty renewal package from one to three more years. Normally agreements won’t be offered after six years due to the age of the hardware.

Example of what happens when warranties are denied

Now more than ever you need to make sure your business technologies are up to date, lead-time for equipment and parts can be out three to six months.

The following is an actual case that cost the customer considerably more money than it should have.

There was a customer with an old server that was out of warranty, they denied the request to replace or extend the warranty. Shortly after our discussions the server had a hard disk fail. A compatible unit was located, but delivery was going to take six weeks. In the time period we waited for the hard disk, the second drive failed losing all data. The data was backed up, which was normal procedure.

Getting the customer up and operating came at a price, now everything was an emergency and they paid a premium to keep the business operating. Critical services went to the cloud, other services to old equipment on hand and some services remained offline.

The new equipment ordered was overkill for their business, but the equipment needed was unavailable. They also paid a large amount for shipping the new server overnight.

It took over twenty-four hours before basic services could be restored, and some were down for more than a week. The price for the $1,000.00 extended warranty ended up costing over twenty-thousand dollars, this doesn’t include the cost for lost productivity in the business. The company will need to revisit some of the current business software being used because there are versioning compatibility issues with the new system, additional cost to the company.

 

Who can we talk with to make sure our technology is up to date

If you’re unsure about replacing your servers, then it may benefit you to consult with an IT company to help provide peace of mind. Many times, a company like Catalyst IT will provide a free assessment with recommendations to make sure your technology is operating at peak levels. You would be surprised on how many times vulnerabilities have been found on a business’s network. Looking for more information contact Catalyst IT at 877-843-9611 or go to our Contact page to submit a request.