How long can dedicated server run?

FerdieQO · Feb 13, 2017

Hello All,
I mean a lifetime. If I buy a dedicated sever, which factors should I care about? quality of hardware, environment, other specs? etc.. So I can't really predict the exact life of a server.
How long can it run without any problem? When should I make a migration to another hardware? Or after what time? what is your expertise on this?

LJSHost · Feb 13, 2017

You can't, failure can happen at any time for either software of hardware. If the server has no hardware failures and lives in a cooled data center with stable power then risk from environment should be minimal. My advice would be to run full diagnostics on all the hardware every 3 months for example, you should isolate some bad RAM or failing drives etc before it fails.

In terms of software Linux can run for many months or even years with needing a reboot but it's situational.

RDO Servers · Feb 13, 2017

First of all, are you asking when you should switch servers from your provider, or are you considering purchasing a physical server and having it colo'ed?

A bare bones server can last for many years, If it is properly cared for and in a stable environment.
CPU will last for years as long as the temperature is controlled and it is not able to overheat.
RAM will occasionally fail.
Hard drives do fail from time to time.

If you are purchasing your own hardware, you need to have spares of everything just in case. This is why most do not recommend Colo until you need a least a half rack. Otherwise, the cost savings is rarely worth the headache!

LJSHost · Feb 13, 2017

I have to agree, ownership is simply not worth the headache needing spares for everything and staff to carry out repairs. I'm a big fan of IaaS and physical ownership I feel is a thing that is coming to an end as it's increasingly not viable in terms or business costs or technical reasons.

LJSHost · Feb 13, 2017

I agree but feel the amount of revenue required to make the switch from leased to owned is very expensive.
Ownership does have it's benefits, you are not waiting on an engineer to fix something when you have your own engineers and spares things tend to get done quicker I would say. Some data centers do have qualified DELL support for remote repairs etc.

serversget · Feb 20, 2017

Hi! I suggest you care only about HDD, if you have SSD you will need change it every ~2 years

FerdieQO · Feb 20, 2017

RDO Servers said:
First of all, are you asking when you should switch servers from your provider, or are you considering purchasing a physical server and having it colo'ed?

A bare bones server can last for many years, If it is properly cared for and in a stable environment.
CPU will last for years as long as the temperature is controlled and it is not able to overheat.
RAM will occasionally fail.
Hard drives do fail from time to time.

If you are purchasing your own hardware, you need to have spares of everything just in case. This is why most do not recommend Colo until you need a least a half rack. Otherwise, the cost savings is rarely worth the headache!

Thanks for your reply I wanted to ask when I need to change a dedicated server to a new one when its hardware is out of date. Can that happen on any dedicated servers or VPS?
I also need to upgrade VPS if I used it for many years.

serversget said:
Hi! I suggest you care only about HDD, if you have SSD you will need change it every ~2 years

I am wondering why I need to change SSD every 2 years once while HDD is not.

RDO Servers · Feb 20, 2017

FerdieQO said:
Thanks for your reply I wanted to ask when I need to change a dedicated server to a new one when its hardware is out of date. Can that happen on any dedicated servers or VPS?
I also need to upgrade VPS if I used it for many years.

All servers get old, wear down, break, or become obsolete.
A VPS is on a dedicated server also, you are simply only getting part of the server.

No matter what, things will break over time. That can not be avoided. The important part is to choose a quality provider, (preferably one that owns/maintains their own hardware) which will take good care of you when these things happen. The need to upgrade, or even replace broken hardware, should not take a extended amount of time.

FerdieQO said:
I am wondering why I need to change SSD every 2 years once while HDD is not.

This is simply not true.
When SSD's were new, their was a big fear that they would not last more then 2 year. However this has been disproved many times. We have several servers with SSD's that are over 2 years old and they are still working as good as they were when they were new.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2856052/grueling-endurance-test-blows-away-ssd-durability-fears.html
https://betanews.com/2014/12/05/modern-ssds-can-last-a-lifetime/

TMS - JoseQ · Feb 20, 2017

You need to change servers when your current server isn't able to do what you need it to do.

If it is really old (say 5+ years) then it is recommended to change as the chances of failure (especially on moving parts such as hard drives) increases over time.

SSDs do have a finite life. Each bit can only be rewritten so many times before it stops working. This is specified in the hardware specs for each drive. In most cases, you can rewrite the entire drive many times over before it fails. They have spare bits to cover the ones that die as they degrade, but obviously there is not an infinite amount of it.

All parts of a computer will stop working eventually, given enough time. But if you are using good quality hardware and take proper care of it (good environment) you can easily have a server last 10+ years. I've been trying to get some of our customers off of Pentium4 servers! They're still running.

racksandcloud · May 18, 2017

Hello,

All server devices are electronic devices and it may happens issue at any time but getting a enterprise quality dedicated server are operating in Enterprise Grade Climate Control data center with 24/7 fast support can help to avoid the downtime of the server maximum.

casualhost · May 19, 2017

The most common failures I see are HDDs followed by RAM issues. Your best bet to fight this is to have remote backups constantly, or even a failover IP

How long can dedicated server run?

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