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I wanted to know what do company do to their old tower or rack server when they upgrade to a blade server?

EquinoX
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    See: http://serverfault.com/questions/82467/should-old-servers-be-retired or http://serverfault.com/questions/3352/what-to-do-with-old-hardware – Mark Henderson Dec 02 '10 at 23:39

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I know our company likes donating older hardware to local schools or charities. It is a nice way to give something back to the community and you and your company may get good recognition for it.

Andy Shinn
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Blade servers sound nice, but they're not really any different to rack servers.

Personally I think they're worse, because faults with the chassis could take out or impact all the blades. They're no cheaper than the same hardware in 1RU formats.

The only benefit is possibly a saving on space in your rack. 12 1RU servers take 12RU, but 12 blades in a dell c5220 chassis take 2RU. (and only have 2 NICs per blade, and limited disk options, etc)

Answer: Depends how the hardware was funded.

  • Leased gear gets returned to the leasing company.
  • Owned gear may be redeployed in a second-life role.
  • Owned gear that is flakey may be scrapped and parts used to bolster other identical servers still in service.
  • I've deployed old servers into a completely isolated development/test environment for coders to stop breaking production kit.
  • Owned gear may be stored for emergency deployment or configured in a DR site.
  • If the gear is too old, recycling is a good idea. Server kit that is too old is too expensive to run, and it can be recycled for steel and gold etc. Drives that may have held secrets are commonly destroyed securely.
Criggie
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  • Don't forget that this question is 5 years old. Back then blades were a different beast to what they are today. – Mark Henderson Dec 24 '15 at 02:05
  • @MarkHenderson Agreed - but blades are still proprietary, expensive, and not particularly versatile. A rack of real rack servers is far superior and often cheaper than blades. The only saving on blades is space. – Criggie Dec 24 '15 at 02:20