@ajstringham said:

When one person's job becomes obsolete, there are many new jobs created. The computer rendered people who worked on typewriters obsolete, but enter the age of the computer tech. As one door closes, so does another open.

Sadly, I think we've entered an age when technological change no longer results in new jobs. I think we can see this with the current mass unemployment in Europe and US, which I don't think is going to go away. Keynes predicted that we'd all be working for just 20 hours a week by now and would have loads of leisure time to enjoy. Unfortunately it hasn't worked out like that. Some of us are working 60 hours a week and some of us are working zero hours a week - madness.

I didn't see your talk though @scottalanmiller. Synopsis?

@scottalanmiller said:

Most businesses, even the Fortune 100, have multiple user databases. Often many. SMBs are not well prepared for SSO. I'm not sure that I've ever worked anywhere with a single user database. And obviously anyone using Spiceworks has to have two or more.

Not that I've worked for, they don't. There are separate user accounts for various LOB applications, like payroll for example, but these aren't managed centrally by the IT department, they're user managed. But even then, AD sits behind it, because the programs and files are located on servers where access is controlled by AD. So even if someone knew the username and password for the payroll application, they couldn't even get to the sign-on screen without logging on with a valid AD account first. Application passwords are primarily about preventing internal users from access rather than preventing external attacks - so security is less of an issue than it is with AD, and hence can fall outside of the IT department's control.

I have various log files e-mailed to me constantly and I've created Outlook rules to process those logs. For example, if a certain log file contains the word 'failed' in the e-mail body then the e-mail will appear in my Inbox, but if it contains the word 'success' it will be moved to a subfolder and marked as read. So I only really see log files that I need to see.

Basically, I've found Outlook rules a really quick and simple way of processing text, and that's why I use e-mail for so many of my automated tasks.

If they're allowed to have 50GB+ mailboxes then why shouldn't they? What do they care? I got a number of execs to tidy up when we moved off PSTs because I put a size restriction in Exchange. That was the only reason they did anything - their hand was forced. They're the same people that have a dozen filing cabinets stuffed with ring-binders that they never look at. I imagine their garages at home are rammed full of junk as well.

Interesting. What problems did you have?

You're right. If everything is cloud based, there is little point in having AD. However, I've never come across an SMB that is in the position of having nothing on premise. Maybe in a micro-business, but any company with 30+ users I would expect to continue to need AD for some years. If a company was in that fortunate position, I would definitely go with Google Apps rather than O365.

I actually posed the same question on Spiceworks a couple of years ago, when I wrote "I'm starting to imagine what life would be like without Active Directory. I'm not there yet, but I can imagine it happening sooner rather than later." Two years on and I'm not really any closer.

I was more thrown by your statement "Very little in the SMB space authenticates to AD. Not even Office365". I can't imagine having to support two user databases, one in AD and one in O365. That sounds like a nightmare to me.

I see. This may be a dumb question, but how do you users authenticate to Office 365 without AD? Do they have to login each time? Or do they login to AD and then used cached credentials to access O365?

@JaredBusch said:

Very little in the SMB space authenticates to AD. Not even Office365.

Oh really? Why not? Does that not make user management and control a lot of hassle? Not a problem if you had half a dozen users, but if you had a 100, or even 50, I'd expect issues.

Don't you use AD to control access to your cloud applications? Or if you don't, how to do you control and secure multiple cloud applications other than having to have a different user account and password for every application you use?

Any issues migrating a VM from a G8 server to a G6 (and vice versa). I recall there can be issues when running different CPUs, although am I right in think that this only effects vMotion? We don't have vMotion, and so shut down the VMs and start them up on the new host.

@scottalanmiller said:

New servers typically make sense over upgrades. Upgrades have a huge price premium on parts, new servers have discounts.

New servers are smaller, faster, more reliable and more power efficient.

Really, is there much of a difference between the 6th and 8th generation Proliants? They seem to have similar parts to me. I can see that moving to solid state drives will make a difference (but that's still very expensive), but otherwise?

@alexntg said:

Why are you still on ESXi 5.1?

Because upgrading requires coming in on a Sunday and doing an upgrade that I'm not completely comfortable with. Basically, I don't like working Sundays and always put it off. It's not like I'd get paid or get time off in lieu, or if anyone I work with would even know I'd worked on Sunday.

TL;DR...I'm too lazy.

We have specialist machines for testing our products. The software that these run on only runs on XP. I'm not sure why, maybe it's a 32-bit thing., It is provided by the Italian manufacturer of the machines. We don't have access to the code and I don't know much about it. They may be ripping us off, for all I know.

We also have a number of DOS and dBase III applications. I'm not sure what the DOS applications were written in. We don't have the code. We have the code for the dBase III applications, for what it's worth. These are all bespoke applications written by former employees of companies that we've bought. The programmers have long since disappeared. This is the downside of allowing employees to write custom applications. dBase III! It's ridiculous that a company is relying on dBase III in 2014, but there you go. It is a least rock solid.

Not sure. I've worked for loads of small, relatively low-tech manufacturing companies in the UK, and they all sounds like the description in the link to various degrees. It is a source of constant frustration to me. Sometimes I think I'm in the wrong industry and would be better off elsewhere. But mostly I love it. I love small manufacturing companies and have made it my life's work to drag them kicking and screaming from the 18th century to the 21st century. And this is now what I do. I could move to another manufacturing company but I'm sure I'll be faced with the same challenges and frustrations.

We still have a number of bespoke legacy applications that only run on XP. The cost to replace these is around $70k, which is a massive sum for a company our size. I'm not too worried about security (but a little). I've disabled internet access on them, which I'm hoping prevents the majority of problems (correct me if I'm wrong). I don't think we're making poor business decisions - it's a decision based on the cost of mitigating the risks, which is something we have to do all the time.

@Dashrender said:

Upgrading the RAM and the drives is probably 60-70% of the cost of a complete server replacement. The last purchase I made, the server and second power supply was under $3K compared to the nearly $4k for RAM and disk.

I'll need to do some sums. But given that we can capitalise a new server over 5 years, but couldn't capitalise new RAM and disks for the old server, a new server may make the most sense financially.

Good questions. I do need more space and memory, which is the main reason I was going to replace the oldest server. However, I'm now thinking I can just replace the eight 146GB drives with eight new 300GB drives and upgrade the RAM from 12GB to 32GB. That wouldn't cost too much and should give me everything I need.

I can, and have, restored VMs to another host. I like having 3 servers, rather than one, for redundancy. Two servers might be the ideal, but then you have to run them at a maximum of 50% capacity to allow for redundancy, whereas with 3 you're running them at 66% capacity. I'm not sure about the advantages of consolidation, but need to consider it some more. I'm not comfortable about mixing older G6 Proliant servers with a new Gen8 server - I prefer all our servers to be the same generation, but I'm not sure if it makes any difference.

If you're confident the servers will last for 8 years, then that's what I'll do! I should have moved to Office 365 by then, at least. Thanks for the advice as always.

That link doesn't really help at all I'm afraid, as HP provide post-warranty maintenance agreements, so the servers won't run out of warranty any time soon. I don't know how long HP continue to support Proliant servers, but it's a lot longer than the initial 3 year warranty that comes with them. I also don't know how long VMWare will continue to support older servers (anyone know?). I certainly wouldn't expect to replace new servers running ESXi or other hypervisors after just 3 years. One of the advantages of virtualisation is the ability to safely extend hardware life.

So, the server infrastructure at our main office is three HP DL380 G6s, running ESXi 5.1 with local storage only, plus a 4TB ReadyNAS 2100 for extra storage for the file server.
Two of the DL380s were purchased in July 2010 and one was purchased in June 2009. The NAS was purchased in 2011.

It's all working fine. We haven't had any major software upgrades or business growth, so everything is working as well as it was when first installed, although there's is less free disk space than I'm truly comfortable with. Several faulty disks have been replaced plus a RAID controller battery, but we've had zero unplanned downtime. Carepacks are around $1k per server per annum.

I was just wondering when the best time to replace is. Is 5 years too old for a server?

I'm definitely replacing the oldest server within the next 12 months, as it only has 146GB drives and 12GB RAM (it only runs one VM which is our ERP system), is over five years old now, and I need some extra storage and RAM to install our new ERP system and run it in parallel with our old ERP system.

I had assumed we would all be cloud based by now, but we're not there yet. At the same time, I'm reluctant to invest too heavily in our physical on-premise infrastructure as I don't know how many more years such a physical environment will be valid. Our new ERP system will be Microsoft Dynamics NAV and I was hoping to go for a hosted solution, but hosted appears to be considerably more expensive than on-premise at the moment, so I'm not sure it will happen.

Is there any sound reason for replacing 5 year old servers? I'm not a hardware guy, so haven't a clue. How long do Proliants last before they start failing too regularly? At the moment, they all seem to be working fine, and I'm inclined to think if it ain't broke don't fix it.

You should watch his video on how to build a lab for testing. Basically, you should avoid virtualisation because you'd need $10k for a SAN and instead should buy half a dozen laptops from flea markets and use those. Erm...interesting idea.