Server Live Expectancy?

[JM]

We are using 4+ year-old Dell PE2450's with dual 1.0Ghz processors / 1GB RAM
/ RAID5 for our dev, qa, and prod web servers for a financial application (3
identical servers).

They all run fine, there are no reliability problems, and performance is
fair/good. The initial warranty expired at the two year mark (24/7, 4 hour
response), and we keep renewing 1 yr contracts.

My question is: Is there a universally acceptable life expectancy for this
grade of server? For example, should we just plan to replace servers at the
four year mark even though the performance is still fair/good? System
availability per our SLA is critical.

Thanks!

 

[Curt_C [MVP]]

Alot depends on how "high-end" you went when you bought it but 4 years seems
to be common, 3 is as well in a company where they can afford it. Many times
you will still find even older equip but they tend to get cycled down to
dev, test and staging servers, oh, and as web servers. You'd be amazed that
even an older machine will make a decent low-volume web server :}