http://www.bladewatch.com/2009/09/04/how-old-is-my-server/
I’ve published the file which is in the previous post on the documents page.
The concept is for those management/inventory reports where you’re trying to establish where you are with the server estate for consolidation/hardware or server virtualization project. They dates are of course a guide only, and referenced from the HP quick specs guide, they do not constitute the official manufacture date of your server, though HP or your service provider should be able to provide more information if required.
After publishing this Chris called me and asked what guide I used to determine if a server should be virtualized?
At the moment (though situations change as do standards), I’ve been thinking that anything older than a G4, shall we say 2004 should be virtualized.
At this point my business as usual mind feels horrified and notes that these servers work, they typically (if managed and maintained) need not represent a higher support cost than the newer servers and not everything should be virtualized – that 700GB file server might be best left as a DL380 G3 with 4x300GB drives rather than eating half the storage on my ESX solution. Anyway, many at this point would be horrified and state that everything can and they would be right in most cases, however, as a vehicle to moving towards that scenario, let me summarize my position:
What works for you will depend on your business, your internal standards and the individual applications involved.
This is a good discussion. Everything should be virtualized, including old servers, unless they are no longer needed, for the reasons you state.