When Should You Upgrade Your Server?

IT departments in almost every industry and sector are being asked to do more with less and to extend productivity, not costs. Unfortunately, the make-do-and-mend mentality is artificially inflating IT spending – especially on the subject of your servers.  

In keeping with Single Source IT, servers were found to have a strong first 12 months after being put to make use of, with only 5% experiencing issues. This was often as a consequence of some minor misconfiguration. Over the following two years, they maintained their reliability before hard drives began raising concern around 12 months 4 at 11%. From then on, it becomes clear that server alternative will likely be vital for operations to run easily and efficiently. 

Your IT team is the perfect resource on this case. Ask them for those who need a server upgrade, and take heed to what they are saying. Nevertheless, for those who need a business case to justify spending, consider the actual costs of the next situations:

One in every of the simplest ways to make certain it’s time to upgrade your server is that if it’s out of warranty (or worse, now not supported by its manufacturer). The older it gets, the more susceptible to failure it becomes. Disk crashes, power supply overloads, and localized overheating turn out to be rather more common as a server ages. If the manufacturer doesn’t support it, you may have to show to legacy, third-party support, which may quickly turn out to be very expensive. 

Poor performance is a sure sign that server upgrades are in your future. The slower your apps run and the more often they crash, the more productivity you lose.

If you happen to depend on an older server, having a solid data backup and/or disaster recovery plan becomes vital. Hardware failure is rarely a fast and simple fix, though. Even with backup solution, you’re taking a look at plenty of downtime.

Probably the greatest reasons regular server upgrades are standard practice is that upgrading dramatically improves your data security. For instance, for those who’re running Windows Server 2003, you haven’t been receiving security patches for a while now. An upgrade will be certain you get timely security updates and shut security flaws as they’re discovered by the community.

The longer you set off upgrading your server infrastructure, the more you’ll spend on maintenance. You’ll also begin experiencing more unplanned downtime, which may very well be an issue to your entire operation. There’s a law of diminishing returns for old equipment, and servers follow it fairly predictably. 

This one is straightforward. In case your server physically can’t fit the information you’ll want to store on it or can’t handle the throughput you wish it to deliver, the answer by now. 

If you happen to don’t wish to wait until the last possible moment to upgrade your server – and also you absolutely mustn’t try this – rule of thumb is to upgrade every 4 years. If you happen to upgrade to a good model, it should find a way to deal with what you wish for at the least three years. Nevertheless, even the top-of-the-line is often a large number after five years. 

It’ll eventually turn out to be economically not possible to take care of older servers, and they’re going to have to get replaced. Nevertheless, you usually are not saving money or time pushing aside that date so long as possible. By the point you’re recurrently coping with the inconveniences of an aging server, you may have very likely already passed the purpose where the full cost of ownership of a brand new server is lower than the full cost of maintaining your existing equipment. Why spend more to take care of poorer performance?

All that being said, don’t merely throw money at the issue. Take the time to learn what you wish from a server upgrade. Learn which options will surely be a help and which of them won’t allow you to in any respect. Also, take the time to explore radical changes in server architecture and placement. For instance, have you ever considered a dedicated cloud server? If you happen to don’t have the in-house expertise, Liquid Web will likely be completely happy to assist. 

Paradoxically, probably the most obvious good thing about a server upgrade is the one you’ll notice the least. That’s the way you’ll understand it’s working – you won’t notice your team complaining about poor app performance. You won’t notice your server taking place or chugging noticeably at peak demand. You won’t pay out extra time from the IT team having to scramble to get the server up and running again before work starts the subsequent day. A brand new server that has all of the capability you wish is all but invisible – just appropriately. 

Briefly, you may have a alternative – develop the in-house server upgrade and maintenance you wish or use a company like Liquid Web to administer your upgrade for you. One option is an ideal deal easier and cheaper than the opposite. 

We hope this text has made you think about the price of maintaining older servers and the business case for a planned upgrade – before an emergency upgrade becomes vital. As they are saying, an oz of prevention is price a pound of cure.

If you happen to would love help or advice on upgrading your servers or other vital IT infrastructure, please contact Liquid Web, and one in all The Most Helpful Humans In Hosting® will likely be completely happy to help.