When you take a proactive approach Servers can be upgraded easily without having to touch every PC on your network which will save your business money. A network does not need to be completely redone to replace a Microsoft Server. There are options for small businesses that rely on Small Business Server products to run their network.

Even in a slow economy servers and computers still need to be replaced. RAM and Hard Drives still fail and monitors still fade. The technology you use to run your business does not seem to care that the money to replace it may be in short supply.

Servers are at the heart of any computer network and when one dies users suffer. When one computer on a network fails that user down, when a server fails everyone is down. That’s why you need to pay attention to that box that sits in the corner.

A dead Server will need to be recovered to recover all the associations it had with the other computers connected on the network or you will be forced to redo the network and all its associations from scratch. Recovering the data is actually a simpler procedure. Upgrading a server after a failure is always more costly than a thought out replacement and it’s not only the information that is critical.

You have to appreciate what your domain does for you to get an idea of what is required. Either you have to spend time repairing Active Directory or you have to restart from the beginning and spend time attaching each computer on the network to the new Active Directory Domain. All recent versions of Microsoft Server products utilize Active Directory to maintain the security between users, PCs and servers and their interaction with each other. Active Directory is a complicated structure and is not easily restored after a catastrophic malfunction. The complexity in recovering Active Directory is what increases the cost.

Small business servers run on hardware that degrades and will fail over time. The most common point of failure is with the Hard Drives. Hard Drives are continually spinning and with a server running operating 24/7 their clocks are always ticking. Servers also generate a lot of heat and because they are often forgotten in the utility closet this increased heat and friction adds to lessen their functional lives.

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

Servers typically have a 3 to 4 year useful life span and because 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.

When you plan to upgrade your server rather than when you are forced to upgrade your server, the transition is much easier and less expensive. A properly planned upgrade can be done over a weekend with no downtime to the users.

Even a Small Business Server with Exchange has 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 replacement of the server without having to ever touch a 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 improvement. The process we use allows you to replace a server without ever having to logon to a client PC. 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.

The process saves time and money by removing the need to change anything on the PCs. The workstations se no change in the server or its settings.

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. Depending on the licensing of the OS you could also use the same software on the new server and save that expense too. 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.