Tim Starling wrote:
Brion Vibber wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Anthony makes a good point. Hardware does break down over time, and has to be replaced. Even more likely is that it will become obsolete before it breaks down.
When that becomes a significant issue, then the model will need to be updated. I've been told that, so far, pretty much all the hardware we've ever bought is still in use.
I should point out that it hasn't been that long; we started the Florida cluster in early 2004 following the Great Double Server Crash of Christmas 2003.
The oldest machine we have in service is Larousse, an 866-MHz Pentium III which does some specialized and backup services, and used to be our secondary web server in the old California location.
Everything else is less than two years old, with the oldest generation being 2.6GHz Pentium IVs. Not quite obsolete yet!
A number of machines have had to go out for repair or replacement over time (usually faulty memory, sometimes failed disks), but most are still chugging away.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
I thought it was generally agreed upon though that rising costs on hardware could be compensated for, since users are more than willing to donate for hardware costs. Correct me if I'm wrong but couldn't wikimedia just adjust their donation goals to cover that and thus cover the cost of new hardware/repairs/upgrades, etc...?
-Jtkiefer