With IT budgets squeezed tighter than ever and rough economic conditions meaning companies are trying to spend as little as possible on both their capital and operational expenses, the practice of upgrading memory, processors and disk storage has made a comeback.
“This time around this trend is embracing both client and server computers,” says Greg Pothitos, ESS business unit manager at Tarsus Technologies.
Since his business unit is focused on the server side of the equation, Pothitos says this has been an encouraging change to note.
“For the longest time, upgrades were the exclusive domain of companies with large desktop computer fleets, but now that the economic pressure is on, companies are thinking more broadly about extending the useful life of their computer equipment.”
While most customers tend to look at their servers' processors and disk space as a first port of call, Pothitos says expanding the memory of a machine brings the biggest benefit to the table.
“This is especially relevant if one considers that Intel's x64-based processors are capable of addressing more than 4GB of memory,” he adds. “Customers should look towards disk storage, and more specifically, the storage they have resident in an external array or virtualised environment. This might mean that an upgrade to the server's storage interface is required.”
Lastly, Pothitos suggests looking at an upgrade to the server's processor, since depending on the option chosen, a motherboard replacement might be required.
“That is, of course, unless the server uses an AMD processor. One advantage AMD solutions do have over Intel solutions is their pin-compatibility with both older and newer generation motherboards,” he adds.
“This essentially means that new generation processors are compatible with older and newer motherboards, and that new generation motherboards are capable of accommodating both new and older generation processors, making upgrading a breeze,” he says.
Components aside, Pothitos says the upgrade route offers benefits outside of simple cost-savings.
“For starters, upgrading one's server hardware, as opposed to replacing it completely, is a smart way to avert the downtime one would normally have to endure - the technician simply powers the server down, swaps out the old components for new ones and powers it up again.
“There's no more than an hour's downtime per server,” he adds. “Upgrades also pose a far smaller risk to the business when it comes to protecting against data loss, data corruption and stepping outside of compliance guidelines. With an upgrade, the hardware reference set out in the company's corporate governance guidelines stays largely the same.
“With new hardware, those references will almost certainly be different to the hardware procured, something that could well place the business at risk of non-compliance.”
Looking forward, Pothitos believes that the practice of upgrading servers as opposed to replacing them outright will become even more popular as companies strive to save on their expenditure.
“And with tape drives becoming simply colossal in capacity, most SCSI drives heading towards the dual-port route (offering double the throughput) and DDR3 memory becoming a market standard, there's great value to be had in this space.
“While the price points aren't quite there yet, we should also not forget the huge benefit Solid-State Disk (SSD) drives are offering in terms of performance,” he says.
“Upgrading has a lot to offer over conventional replacement and it's a trend I see growing healthily over the next two to three years,” he concludes.
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