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Why You Need to Upgrade Your Network Server

When you take a planned approach Microsoft Small Business Servers can be replaced easily without having to ever touch any workstation on the network which will save your business money. A network does not need to be completely reconfigured to replace a Microsoft Server. There are options available for small businesses that use Small Business Server products to run their network.

The technology you use to run your business does not seem to care that the money to replace it may be in short supply. Even in a down economy servers and computers still need to be upgraded. Motherboards, Hard Drives and Memory modules still die.

Servers are at the heart of all computer networks and if one fails everyone on the network suffers. That's why you have to pay attention to that box that sits in the back room.

A dead Server will have to be recovered to recover all the associations it has with the other PCs connected on the network or you will be forced to rebuild the network and all its associations from scratch. Recovering the files is actually a easier process. Upgrading a businesses server because of a failure is always more expensive than a planned replacement and it's not just the information that is critical.

All recent versions of Microsoft Server products utilize Active Directory to maintain the security between users, computers and servers and their interaction with each other. You need to be aware of what your domain does for you to get an idea of what is involved. Either you have to spend time recovering Active Directory or you need to restart from the beginning and spend time rejoining each PC on the network to the new Active Directory Domain. Active Directory is a complicated structure and is not easily recovered after a catastrophic failure. This complexity with recovering Active Directory is what increases the cost.

Servers generate a lot of heat and since they are often forgotten in the utility closet this increased heat and friction helps to decrease their functional lives.Servers run on hardware that degrades and will fail over time. The most widespread point of failure is with the Hard Drives. Hard Drives are constantly spinning and with a server running operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week their clocks are always ticking.

The practice of using a beefed up PC as a server is absolutely a horrible idea. Server hardware is designed with redundancy to protect you against hardware failure and at very least should have Hard Drives configured in some sort of RAID array. If you do not have some implementation of RAID you need to fix that immediately.

Servers typically have a 3 to 4 year useful life span and since most server hardware has a 3 year warranty we suggest you replace a server between the 3rd and 4th year. Anything over 4 years old has a much higher risk of failure and components that age are also more difficult to find if they do need to be replaced. Any server over 5 years old is on borrowed time.

The time and effort in replacing your network server can be greatly reduced if it is done before it fails. A properly planned migration can be done over a weekend with no downtime to the users.

Even if you have a Server with Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 on it there are options for a smooth transition to new hardware. Microsoft Small Business Server has the limitation of only allowing one Small Business Server on a network at a time which makes it impossible to do a direct migration from old server to new server which means that you will need to join all the workstations to the new Domain and Active Directory. There are options used that allow a swap of the servers without having to ever touch a workstation.

The process we use allows you to upgrade a server without ever having to logon to a client workstation. The typical process is to start the process on a Friday night and finish up sometime on Sunday and when users come in and login Monday morning nothing has changed from their perspective other than noticing a speed increase. All the network shares are the same, the server name is the same and even Microsoft Exchange functions exactly the same as it did before the upgrade.

Active Directory is replicated completely so the server looks the exact to the workstations. Not having to modify the PCs saves both time and money.

Depending on the licensing of the OS you could also use the same software on the new server and save that expense too. Because of the benefit of not having to train users and not spending the time going to all the PCs you save a huge expense. It is not a requirement to get the latest version to run on the new server and if money is tight it is a viable option to reuse the software to save money.

Saving money by proactively replacing the server and reusing the server software is a great choice if you are cash strapped. Being better informed and having all the options and planning for the upgrade is the best choice and will save lots of money in the long run.

Article Source: http://articlebarracks.com

Nick Tobin has been setting up and troubleshooting business networks for the past 19 years. C-Net Systems is committed to helping our clients with their server upgrade, server migration and new server installs. We also offer Remote Support for any Server or computer issues through the internet with www.ExpertSupportNow.com

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