Hardware Reliability

[Avleen Vig]

I don't have any written analysis for you, just 15+ years of experience.

Most server hardware (cheap or expensive) will run 5 years without
many issues, 10 years with some issues.
By "issues" I mean the occasional bad disk, etc.

IMO most drives which are going to die, do so within the first 12
months. After that they often last 3+ years, and 5+ years isn't
unheard of.
The biggest killer of old drives, is power cycling them. It requires
bearings which have been in constant motion for years to suddenly stop
abd then be exposed to sheer forces when starting up.

If you are happy running older, slower, less efficient hardware, you
can probably keep it longer than 3 years without a problem.

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 9:49 PM, <duncan.garland at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Can somebody please point me in the direction of some authorative reliability statistics for server hardware, preferably including add-ons such as disc arrays?
>
> I case to put together a case for the number of failures we can expect if we replace our hardware every three years.
>
> Everybody has an opinion but I can't find any proper published data.
>
> Thanks
>
> Duncan
>