Sysadmins need money to replace aging servers
35 posts across 9 communities in the last 30 days; 57% from r/sysadmin.
“Last two of everything, if you can't be bothered to click a button to update your shit then I can't be bothered to support your decision.”
“This is not a good idea on many levels. It’s much easier to stick with an x86 architecture. There are so many cheep second options that make resorting to old phones unnecessary. Rolling your own custom solution to solved problems always becomes a support and reliability…”
“Maybe so when that one powerful server is seriously down/broken, you're not up the proverbial creek without an instrument of propulsion.”
Multiple sysadmins report their server infrastructure is nearing end-of-life, and replacing it requires significant budget allocation. Some express frustration with the financial burden and suggest drastic measures to secure funding.
SOURCES (60)
“I haven't really seen any posts about this but it seems to be affecting a lot new servers we've deployed over the last couple of years. I have a feeling I'm going to be spending the rest of my day dispatching Lenovo hardware techs. https://datacentersupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/servers/thinksystem/sr250v3/7dcl/7dclcto1ww/jz018e0b/solutions/tt4152…”
“My man, we are at 8 years, and as long as the hypervisor supports it, its gonna be 10 to 12 at these prices. [re: The sysadmin who argues against best practices]”
“It's heartbreaking to see those among us having such untimely deaths. Maybe our org just has a bad set of dice. submitted by /u/Rustyshackilford [link] [comments]”
“I don't think we have anything legacy that is related to our DC/production server environment. Anything that was running server 03, 08, etc... for specific web apps, back end db's, etc... has been upgraded and/or migrated to new software. We do have some XP machines connected to some dedicated hardware but that is air gaped and we told them we are not supporting that OS or the PC hardware. The business unit leader is in the process of getting updated hardware so w11 computers can be depl”
“They said they would do it for $ 1 million. Translation: The guy who wrote the original software retired in 2002 and no one here has any idea how it works. $1M is enough to deter most people, but also gives us the budget to hire someone smart enough to figure out how to modernize it.”
“FUD. Never a good reason to absorb the stress that doesn't belong to you. OP is a Sysadmin, not a miracle maker. I've been in IT for a long, long time. I've never seen anyone get fired for being unable to support the unsupportable. A company that has no IT security policies around AI use will not be in a position to terminate the only person on the team who can support IT.”
“Not kidding here: I'm one of the professional service people tell you to call. This is even way over my head. Depending on the size and profitability of your company, I give it a less than 50% chance the company will survive; either you'll cheap out and botch the migration, or the cost of doing it properly will tank the place.”
“Whatever you go to I would recommend NOT involving Net at Work as your servicer. They were a mess for us as well as others I've personally spoken to.”
“Last place I worked had one for inventory/accounting. It crashed and had to be replaced. The people who installed it were no longer walking this earth. They managed to find a couple of guys out of retirement to help. Your best bet is to go to the nursing homes and ask some residents.”
“Last two of everything, if you can't be bothered to click a button to update your shit then I can't be bothered to support your decision.”
“This is not a good idea on many levels. It’s much easier to stick with an x86 architecture. There are so many cheep second options that make resorting to old phones unnecessary. Rolling your own custom solution to solved problems always becomes a support and reliability nightmare and never ends up being cheaper. If this was a good idea, the homelab community would have been all over it years ago.”
“Enjoy the lull while it's here; it's a normal part of a stable(ish) corporate 9-5, and it will eventually demand more from you.”
“Yep, lol that's pretty fucking horrible... I work for a disorganized MSP, and that sounds horrific to me”
“The second you quit, they would just hire some A-hole to revert it all back to line their pockets though...”
“Nextcloud has identified the biggest threat to the homelab: the person running it.”
“Yeah with the size of the company it’s not worth putting any servers in. Just use sharepoint at no extra cost.”
“Some DoD contracts easier to buy single encrypted servers, so data at rest is protected. Lmao, that's not even close to accurate.”
“Maybe so when that one powerful server is seriously down/broken, you're not up the proverbial creek without an instrument of propulsion.”
“You joke but I happen to be a bit younger than Comic Chat! I'm just into retro tech, and I did administer IRC servers for friends for over a decade now where it occasionally comes up as a party trick. I even wrote a proxy to fix a crash bug with modern servers - needs an update for modern Python especially now that Microsoft released the source code.”
“Yeah CTO. Insight and Lenovo both dragging their feet made this happen and both are taking no responsibility. I would of never made the second order if they didn't tell me the first one would not be fulfilled.”
“Oh yeah for reference I have a 4TB that has a year under its belt at 5% loss. My 2TB i just deployed so no data.”
“When I first started at my current job we were running our public website in house. It was on a server with one raid-0 array.”
“While that's true, their lifespan met our normal lifecycle, so... [shrug]. I wouldn't do it on purpose, but I also wouldn't sweat it if we had to again.”
“I left a continuous ping to our head office server running over an international ISDN connection...for a long weekend. It racked up $38k in telco fees.... My stomach dropped when i got the monthly bill...but after some disputing the charges i got away with it....”
“I don't need help but I just wanted to tell you I love what you wrote brother. IT needs more helping hands and industry support, that's the only way we'll ever get people to become component.”
“Sorry that this happened to you guys. Unfortunately, smb's are the largest target because they are usually the most vulnerable due to lack of awareness, resources, or time to dedicate to a decent security program. Ill give you two resources to check out that you can leverage at this stage. The first is reaching out to your local CISA rep, the second is leveraging resources from the cyber readiness institute. CISA offers free training and resources a long with periodic assessments and health”
“That is... Awful. That's inexcusable lol. They could literally lay off 90% of HR and they'd have too many HR people”
“Many (many) years ago we had a failed disk in an array. MSP (because I was young and inexperienced) came out and replaced all disks in the array to rebuild from a backup. As they removed the dead disk, they gave me the good one as well. He told me that I should destroy the disks as he's rebuilding from backup. So I did as he suggested - pulled the screws, removed the lid breaking the vacuum, and removed the platters. I then went away on holiday for a week. Turns out the backup he was so cert”
“How/why are you running on-prem Exchange Server for such a small business? Tell me they’re not running Small Business Server. If so, they’re WAY past due for getting off of that. Getting them 365 subscriptions and migrating their mailboxes to the cloud seems like a no-brainer.”
“Copying and pasting from another comment - but I have installed over 30-35 servers all the way through in my life time, it has just been since 2018 since this was done. Recently I have been dealing with more LAN / Switches. Servers I do install - recently I just have been setting up and getting the other team to install software. I have experience in CALs. Again - just been a bit and more type this up before I even did some refreshing. This is something I am 110% confident I can install. Everyon”
“I agree and this is where I am just seeing options out there for current. My plan was server 2025, they use a terminal server now. I need to go back ( i was only there for a different job, but they told by at end of year they are looking to get it upgraded) - this was back in May. So now we are in the works of options and costs. Files are stored on-prem - 100%. honestly what they have now is trash. half their stuff is not backed up correctly, and i know that from my previous visit. From what I r”
“Select Shutdown instead of Restart on a server on the other side of the United States, where no one would be around to restart it for a few days.”
“Hey, I did something similar back when I knew nothing about sysadmin stuff and I uninstalled the SQL service from a server! Thankfully the DBs were still there, but everything had to be wired up again and it took a full day of client's sites down.”
“Y’all run your shit ass backwards I only run absolutely Windows only services on Windows if the service can be run on Linux it’s going on Linux. I like my uptime in years rather than hours. I literally have to bounce the DAG cluster on a daily basis to clear out logs.”
“Don't have a UPS but my system will power on when receiving power. Could that be used as a dumb trigger on one of these systems”
“the "(mostly)" after "keep the servers running" is doing a lot of work there. I assume the rest of the servers run on the goodwill of people arguing about pizza.”
“That's pretty quick in a corporate world. It took us a little over a year to get our servers.”
“I was going to attach his LinkdeIn post, but a copy/pasta will have to suffice. What are your thoughts? "I honestly wish I owned an MSP right now. There is no better time to be alive as an MSP. Get out there, spend time with your clients, help them cross the Al chasm, and bring janky business processes into the world of automation. And, if you're willing, we'd love to join you on that journey. Helping MSPs turn what they know about their clients into action is exactly why we're”
“backlog hell and being told to keep legacy gear limping along is now my normal working life. I've been told to keep some equipment going to well into the next decade, which will see me most of the way to retirement, and if they want to give me a package then that's just fine with me. in the meantime I have to balance a vendor that wants to offshore (read: enshittify) support for the product as step towards ending all support, virtually all of the hardware is under a LTB but manglement do”
“Lab equipment that does 1 specific niche job and the hospital that contracts my company refuse to replace due to the cost, uses the expansion port and serial ports with a custom made IO card Technically its not meant to use a C64 but the actual computer its meant to use is specific to this machine and I've never seen one, so years ago when there last one of those failed an engineer hacked a solution together with a C64”
“received the same …..broadcom does not give s fuck, unless your a high end datacenter….them buying vmware is one of the darkest days the IT industry ever had”
“Most compliance standards require updated systems. Trying to convince healthcare providers, PCI entities etc. that no they can’t run 2012 any more and it’s going to cost a lot to replace systems sees you pushed out of the quoting process. “We just want someone to manage what we have””
“I retire in 20 years so probs not 🤣🤣 will i be with current company also probs not, on another note I have recapped a few to get them going again”
“So I have a stock of c64 because theres 1 machine we support that uses them that would cost upwards of 50 mill to replace”
Clone it, upgrade it and if it breaks just run the old clone...
“I dont wanna be rude but your tech stack is massively out of date. This looks like an enterprise stack from 2010 (and I'm being generous here especially Java Swing)”
“That's not remotely accurate. Hdds are fine whether on always or powered on and off repeatedly, it's been tested many times by places with thousands more hdds than you will ever own in your life”
“Fully agree. It’s funny the homelab thing really seems to be a pretty good indicator of how much someone actually cares about tech. Not that id exclude someone just because they dont have a homelab, but for sure when I hear someone that I’m interviewing talk about stuff they’ve done or are doing in their homelab , that tells me they at least have some genuine interest in this area. Which I believe is essential to be successful in this field. Those who just took it for a job because they thought”