When should you upgrade your servers?

Small and medium-sized businesses are under constant pressure to do more with less, which is why so many of them needlessly struggle with servers well past their primes. Many assume that sticking with the same hardware for years helps them reduce IT spending, but this actually has the opposite effect. 

A report from data analysis firm IDC found that companies that hold off on server upgrades experience a 39% drop in server performance and a 148% increase in administration costs. Furthermore, older servers are prone to breaking under pressure, which puts your business at risk of downtime. 

Poor performance is a tell-tale sign that a computer is on its last legs. Slow or frequently crashing applications indicate that your servers may be lacking disk space, processors could be overburdened, or hardware components have gradually degraded over time. 

Studies show that server performance declines by 14% annually, which means you need to constantly monitor your infrastructure. The best way to determine if a replacement is needed is; to use monitoring tools to assess the health of your servers. Generally, if CPU and storage usage are at or below 70%, it’s time to upgrade. 

On average, warranties last for about three to five years, after which the manufacturer is no longer responsible for providing server support. Should an old server break down; there’s no guarantee that they will have any spare parts in stock, and even if they do, you may have to pay a higher price.

Aside from this, servers over five years old are at greater risk of breaking down. Experts’ estimates indicate companies that continue to use servers beyond their optimal life span experience over five hours of unplanned downtime throughout the year, which doesn’t like much, but can significantly affect employee productivity and revenues, and not in a good way.