asked on

Matching hardware on an old server

My chiropractor (also my customer) has an old server. I believe everything is adequately backed up, all the data, but if some day the server dies I want a second server mirroring the first closely enough that I could simply take the hard drive from the first server, put it in the second, and we’d be back in business again

But the server isn’t off the shelf. It was put together by another IT guy years ago. Where can I buy another server close enough to the first that if I were to take out the hard drive and put it in Microsoft wouldn’t scream about new hardware or we wouldn’t get a BSOD.
It doesn't have to match exactly. It could be a better/newer server. But I must be able to switch from one to the other seamlessly. My back depends on it. (LOL)

Following are the specs for the current machine:
AMD Athlon 64 processor 3400+ 2.20 ghz 1.93 GB ram
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 32bit standard edition, service pack 2.
RAM 2GB single channel DDR @156mhz
Motherboard K8m800-m2 Socket 754
Grahpics 64MB VIA/SBG UniChrome JGP(elitegroup)
Hard drive: 466GB Seagate ST3500 (sata drive).
Audio Realek AC97 Audio for VIA Audio Controller.
K8m 800 m2(socket 754) chipset vendor: VIA Chipset Model VT8237
Southbridege version 00
BIO Phoenix Technologies LTD
Version6.00 PG Date: 12/20/2005
Realtec RTL8169 gigabyte ethernet.

Thanks,
Al

SOLUTION

David

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

Alan Silverman

ASKER

The drive is newer. I don't think they had 500GB drives back then. I was surprised it was even sata. I thought it might be pata since the memory is straight DDR. He has an external drive for data backup and also a cloud drive. Money is the issue. He doesn't have a lot of it. To buy a new computer and pay me to set up a virtual machine in it (which I have never done before) is beyond his means. Simplicity has its benefits and the simplest thing would be to find a machine that I could mirror the current machine to. I would hope they'd be cheap, if I can find the right one.
Thanks,
Al

SOLUTION

Sandeep

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

David

reach2sandeep: Thank you for the follow-up on licensing requirements - It was not my intent to cheat anybody of licensing revenue. In my case it was a personal use system that never even needed to be accessed over the network.

But point was when you have older hardware and software that you have to maintain for years, and downtime can shut you down, then you need to virtualize.

Then you can snapshot back it up, archive it, and in event of an emergency, run the whole system on a laptop, any laptop, as long as it has enough disk space, in 5 minutes + time it takes to copy the directory containing the VM from a backup.

Plus you get speed and RAID1 protection, no risk of data loss in event of a drive failure. You can even use Mozy or an online backup product, and for a few hundred bucks a year, you have offsite backups that are automatically maintained.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

Alan Silverman

ASKER

coral47, thanks for the info. I was hoping that with all the old hardware out there a compatible system would be easy to find, that someone could say, "Go get this". If that's not the case then the chiropractor will just have to pray his old server lasts a long time. A lot of small businesspeople out there are hanging by a thread but there's just so much you can do for them.
Al

SOLUTION

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

Alan Silverman

ASKER

Thank you all,
Alan

Thank you much. : )