Managing Downtime In A School Environment

[Duke]

Hi all,

 

This a bit of a random one but I though I'd throw it out there and see how EduGeekers handle it:

 

What is your school's expectations for uptime, what maintenance windows are you given, and how do you manage planned and unplanned downtime, particularly on a school budget?

 

For example, some of the issues we are facing:

 

• In the past, pretty much all students would finish at 15:00 and after that we could do server maintenance that wouldn't affect staff. Most staff would be done by 16:30 or at least would understand downtime after then and so we could do maintenance at the end of the day. Now, lessons go on until 16:00 or 16:30 and controlled assessment goes until until 17:00 or 17:30 so we can't take anything down during the majority of school days.
   
  
• We used to be able to get away with quick reboots of devices at breaktime or lunchtime but clubs and activities now run through these.
   
  
• School holidays used to be free for us to do as much maintenance as we needed as long as we warned people, but now even a single day causes problems. We're in the Easter break currently and I spent yesterday from 7:30am to 6:30pm re-racking a server cabinet and despite the fact we warned people everything would be down (core switch was turned off) we still had a few complaints.
   
  
• I need a few more hours to finish re-cabling the above mentioned cabinet properly, and I'm currently either going to have to work a night or a weekend, and getting time off in lieu for that will be difficult.
  

 

The school basically expects close to 100% uptime, yet I currently have no budget, only half the funding I needed for virtualisation and no money for redundant storage or a proper backup solution.

 

Is this unusual, or are most schools facing this problem? Our school heavily runs on email and SIMS so any downtime in the day is seen as a major issue. A few months ago the network was down for most of the day (bad switching issue took out most of the network and was a nightmare to trace) and I'm still being reminded by management how big a deal that was and how it must never happen again.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Chris

[bodminman]

We were directed by SLT.

 

Basically 0% downtime between 8am and 4.30pm unless something has failed and needs fixing.

 

Any updates etc have to be done out of these hours. During the holidays I can pull the strings so long as I give 24 hours notice.

[Soulfish]

Hi all,

 

This a bit of a random one but I though I'd throw it out there and see how EduGeekers handle it:

 

What is your school's expectations for uptime, what maintenance windows are you given, and how do you manage planned and unplanned downtime, particularly on a school budget?

 

For example, some of the issues we are facing:

 

• In the past, pretty much all students would finish at 15:00 and after that we could do server maintenance that wouldn't affect staff. Most staff would be done by 16:30 or at least would understand downtime after then and so we could do maintenance at the end of the day. Now, lessons go on until 16:00 or 16:30 and controlled assessment goes until until 17:00 or 17:30 so we can't take anything down during the majority of school days.
   
  
• We used to be able to get away with quick reboots of devices at breaktime or lunchtime but clubs and activities now run through these.
   
  
• School holidays used to be free for us to do as much maintenance as we needed as long as we warned people, but now even a single day causes problems. We're in the Easter break currently and I spent yesterday from 7:30am to 6:30pm re-racking a server cabinet and despite the fact we warned people everything would be down (core switch was turned off) we still had a few complaints.
   
  
• I need a few more hours to finish re-cabling the above mentioned cabinet properly, and I'm currently either going to have to work a night or a weekend, and getting time off in lieu for that will be difficult.
  

 

The school basically expects close to 100% uptime, yet I currently have no budget, only half the funding I needed for virtualisation and no money for redundant storage or a proper backup solution.

 

Is this unusual, or are most schools facing this problem? Our school heavily runs on email and SIMS so any downtime in the day is seen as a major issue. A few months ago the network was down for most of the day (bad switching issue took out most of the network and was a nightmare to trace) and I'm still being reminded by management how big a deal that was and how it must never happen again.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Chris

 

I do know of schools that claim 100% uptime, but they also have very very large IT budgets and the backing to ensure that they have spares on hand for most things. I think the only realistic thing to do is to be honest, set out the true cost of a 100% (or 99.999%) uptime environment and then the cost of environments that get close to that with a few less 0's at the end of the price. Make sure you show them why it's impossible to expect the network to be perfect with a less than pefect budget.

 

I know that my last school IT had been heavily underfunded for many many years to the point where everything was being held together with gaffer tape. In the end I turned round to the head and the governors and showed them that they were expecting me to keep £1 - 2 million worth of IT equipment running without any money, when the majority of that equipment only had 3-5 year life spans and we were already past that with 80% of the kit. When asked what alternatives they had to investing money I was honest and told them the alternative was to remove IT suites and interactive whiteboards until we kit a level of IT penetration that suited the budget they had in mind. That shocked them a little, but the next day I had the green light for massive IT investment over five years.

 

I think many schools are still treating IT as something that can be strung along on a shoestring and as you point out there is an ever greater reliance on IT systems to the point where it's just not fesable to underfund to the levels that are sometimes talked about.

 

I hope my above ramblings helped a little

[localzuk]

The way I manage it here is this - I give notice of downtime, and do it. Its not possible to run the system otherwise.

 

I try not to do any downtime during term, as this would unfairly damage T&L, but out of term time I have to do it. I don't get paid to work evenings or nights, so I'm certainly not going to do it then.

 

The options as far as I'm concerned are as follows:

 

1. Do downtime as and when needed, warning people in advance, and work with existing budgets.

2. Demand a larger budget to allow you to cluster everything, and remove the effects of downtime.

3. Don't do any maintenance and watch the systems crash and burn, causing massive disruption and unwanted downtime.

 

The way to present it to SMT is this - you wouldn't let a small piece of rust on a car stay without treatment. You'd fix it as soon as you could, taking the hour or so required to fix it. If you didn't, that bit of rust soon turns into a massive problem and you end up with your car off the road for days.

 

Remember, whatever you do, you'll always get people complaining. Just remember Scotty's rule - estimate the time to do the task as being twice what you really think, then finish in half that time, and you'll forever be seen as a miracle worker.

Edited April 12, 2011 by localzuk

[Soulfish]

The way I manage it here is this - I give notice of downtime, and do it. Its not possible to run the system otherwise.

 

I try not to do any downtime during term, as this would unfairly damage T&L, but out of term time I have to do it. I don't get paid to work evenings or nights, so I'm certainly not going to do it then.

And to answer the original question properly - this is how I normally manage downtime. There are occasional bits that I may do out of hours during term, but I have quite a good relationship with my line manager so could reclaim TOIL during the holidays for this sort of thing.

The way to present it to SMT is this - you wouldn't let a small piece of rust on a car stay without treatment. You'd fix it as soon as you could, taking the hour or so required to fix it. If you didn't, that bit of rust soon turns into a massive problem and you end up with your car off the road for days.

 

Remember, whatever you do, you'll always get people complaining. Just remember Scotties rule - estimate the time to do the task as being twice what you really think, then finish in half that time, and you'll forever be seen as a miracle worker.

 

I'll have to remember tha analogy for future reference . And I follow a similar estimation rule - much better to deliver early and be thanked than deliver ontime/late and get complaints!

[jcollings]

We try not to do things (unless vital) between 8am and 4.30pm. If we plan to do soemthing later on I usually get someone to come in late and stay late but that's only for vital stuff. Other than that we have an agreement that the 1st Monday of the holidays the system is "at risk" - I confirm two weeks before the impending holiday if that means small areas down or a whole network outage while we re-arrange the server rack etc.

 

People seem happy enough to work with that. I think as long as people are given plenty of notice it's fair enough to take things down occasionally.

 

I do also end up remoting in at night to do some work too but the school are very flexible when it comes to time off so I can't complain.

[penfold]

I've worked in places which expected similar things of me and to be honest the ones who complained were generally the ones who didn't listen that maintenance was scheduled and instead would come in and complain that they couldn't use the system. You will always get people who complain but you have to ignore most of these, but then mostly downtime was kept to during the holidays. If people were warned that there was going to be downtime they should listen.

 

However as others have said, if you are being pressured into feeling that you need to provide 100% uptime of services you need to breakdown the true cost of this. Without sufficient budget these things often aren't realistic and highlighting what you can realisticly get with your budget should help the SMT realise they are asking too much.

 

In addition, I wouldn't work over for nothing either, the more you do that the more they expect you to do that. But is this your SMT that are making these demands or all staff? If this is your SMT and you have neither the budget nor the manpower then they need to revise what they expect you to do. If they still want you to provide support 24/7 then they need to give you the resources to do this. If it is all staff who are complaining tell them to speak to your SMT.

[TechMonkey]

We don't do anything that could affect the system between 8 & 16:00. Thursdays are marked down as maintenance or patch day with notice. So we let everyone know via a traffic light system whether it will be SIMS or the whole network. Summer we usually publish a week where the system will be unreliable so staff don't come in with the expectation of working. This allows us to drop the servers or switches when we want, do a full reboot of stations, etc, with out having to check everyone is ok.

 

I know the feeling though, more and more we are being expected to keep the system up & carry out anything in our own time, but with no overtime & TOIL is a joke. Same as you, holidays used to be our time with a few exceptions but now that is being eroded. Add to that we don't have that much time as we have to take holiday in holiday time, summer is restricted as that is when we do most and have to take xmas, it really is going to need a shift in expectations or school policy at some point.

[dhicks]

The school basically expects close to 100% uptime, yet I currently have no budget, only half the funding I needed for virtualisation and no money for redundant storage or a proper backup solution.

 

I had much the same issue, wanting as near to 100% up-time as possible on a limited budget. This is where I found open source virtulisation and storage comes in to its own - it turns out you don't actually need to spend any money at all on anything except hardware, all the software to do what you want is available for free.

[Duke]

Wow, thanks for all the quick responses everyone!

 

Basically 0% downtime between 8am and 4.30pm unless something has failed and needs fixing.

 

I can generally live with that and think no planned downtime in school hours (8:00-15:00) is perfectly reasonable. However, if I finish at 16:30 and can't do any maintenance between 15:00 and 16:30 then I'd have to either do a weekend (which I'm willing to do, but it inconveniences the Site Office having to take off alarms for me and I'd rather not make it a regular occurrence because it'll become expected of me) or work late (which I don't mind doing either, but again I can only work until 18:00 because of alarms and I don't want to make it a regular thing). If I don't do weekends or working late then it's 6 weeks between each holiday until I can do real maintenance.

 

I hope my above ramblings helped a little.

 

Definitely, thank you. Management are generally pretty good at realising we need proper funding, but that last three years have been pretty tight and everyone is facing budget cuts this year and next year. I've just been promoted to head of department so I'll be working out an IT strategy that'll lay out what budget we need - unfortunately because we haven't had much budget the last few years a lot of desktops really do need replacing while I've also got major infrastructure upgrades to do.

 

The way I manage it here is this - I give notice of downtime, and do it. Its not possible to run the system otherwise.

 

1. Do downtime as and when needed, warning people in advance, and work with existing budgets.

2. Demand a larger budget to allow you to cluster everything, and remove the effects of downtime.

3. Don't do any maintenance and watch the systems crash and burn, causing massive disruption and unwanted downtime.

 

I think management just have this idealistic view that it never breaks and never needs maintenance - I wish! (although I suppose that would put me out of a job) 1. = my preferred option, management have just made it very difficult to do. 2. = not happening this year or next year due to budgets. 3. = my conscience wouldn't let me.

 

Other than that we have an agreement that the 1st Monday of the holidays the system is "at risk". [...] People seem happy enough to work with that. I think as long as people are given plenty of notice it's fair enough to take things down occasionally.

 

I think I need to set up a day a month when maintenance is expected. Generally speaking people are fine with the downtime as long as it's properly planned, but yesterday's maintenance was calendared for a while ago, then cancelled because someone needed the network up, then it was moved again, cancelled for the same reason, and now I'm trying to fit it in when it should have been done a while ago.

 

However as others have said, if you are being pressured into feeling that you need to provide 100% uptime of services you need to breakdown the true cost of this. Without sufficient budget these things often aren't realistic and highlighting what you can realisticly get with your budget should help the SMT realise they are asking too much.

 

Completely agree, the realistic costs to match expectations will go on my new plans...

 

Thursdays are marked down as maintenance or patch day with notice. [...] I know the feeling though, more and more we are being expected to keep the system up & carry out anything in our own time, but with no overtime & TOIL is a joke.

 

As I mentioned, I think I need to organise a maintenance day - e.g. server reboots will be happening between 15:30 - 16:30 on a certain day. Don't think management will like this though. Technically my job doesn't get me any overtime pay or TOIL (except for weekends) now I've hit a certain grade, however management are flexible on this. My bigger concern is that it would become expected of me and it would be assumed I'd be happy to work whatever hours are needed.

 

I had much the same issue, wanting as near to 100% up-time as possible on a limited budget. This is where I found open source virtulisation and storage comes in to its own - it turns out you don't actually need to spend any money at all on anything except hardware, all the software to do what you want is available for free.

 

I agree up to a point. I find if you want true redundancy and failover then VMware offers some very nice options, but at the end of the day the biggest costs for this type of thing have been hardware which is hard to avoid if you want reliable kit with a full warranty.

 

Many thanks everyone,

 

Chris

[JBoyd]

It's the old story. Schools expect to have the latest kit but cannot afford it and it doesn't help that the government keep pushing for new IT courses which need up to date resources; the students and staff then get upset when it doesn't work or is so slow it may as well not!! We only reboot in term time as a last resort and then never during lesson time but we have the expectation that holidays can be used for 'proactive' maintenance and that there will be disruption for those who cannot bear to be away or have no life outside school!!

 

You could always be a but sneaky and have a 'practice' network crash and blame it on not having enough time for maintenance ;-)

 

Jim

 

Computers are stupid machines which can do clever things. Programmers are clever people who can do stupid things - this combination can cause mayhem!!

[glennda]

I agree up to a point. I find if you want true redundancy and failover then VMware offers some very nice options, but at the end of the day the biggest costs for this type of thing have been hardware which is hard to avoid if you want reliable kit with a full warranty.

 

If you pay out for the kit and then look at the free software - Linux KVM Which is an open source virtulization platform which can do things such as live migration. The only thing lacking at the moment is the automatic failover but i'm sure it will appear soon.

 

We currently run aprox 70% of the network on the platform and its alot quicker then esxi IMHO (plus a few articles on the net)

[dhicks]

reliable kit with a full warranty.

 

In my experience, a warranty is just there to stop you fixing stuff yourself. Modern computers aren't dangerious mechanical devices, they're just a bunch of standard components shoved in a case - build your own servers and you don't have to worry about invalidating a garuntee, you can just swap the broken component out and carry on. Saying that, modern off-the-shelf components are also, generally, very reliable.

[FN-GM]

In my experience, a warranty is just there to stop you fixing stuff yourself. Modern computers aren't dangerious mechanical devices, they're just a bunch of standard components shoved in a case - build your own servers and you don't have to worry about invalidating a garuntee, you can just swap the broken component out and carry on. Saying that, modern off-the-shelf components are also, generally, very reliable.

 

I disagree. For example on our dell servers we have a 4 hour warranty. If the motherboard dies in one they will be here within 4 hours to fix it, any time of the day.

 

If i was to fix it. I would first have to:

• 100% make sure that it is the board
  
• Find a replacement - may take a few days
  
• Replace the board myself - My take longer and may break something else.
  

 

Particular parts like motherboards can be hard to find when the computer/server is getting older. With a warranty you know they will be available fairly quick.

 

Meanwhile the days and hours are ticking and this will have a knock-on to lots children’s education.

 

You also have to take into account the time it takes you to do these jobs. You have to remember your not free.

 

The extra time that is spent resolving the issue could also be better used in improving the children’s education.

Edited April 12, 2011 by FN-GM

[bossman]

@Duke:

 

Downtime to any business is crucial and unless you have everything covered in total fail-over and redundancy then you are in fact going to incur downtime.

 

How you manage that downtime is something that you and the SLT are going to have to sit down and work out.

 

Then write up an SLA to which you and the SLT agree to and there you have it.

 

You as the NM are required to be as flexible as feasibly possible and the school also has to be flexible in its thinking, give and take should result in a very manageable process which gives both you and the SLT total faith in the IT infrastructure and the management of it.

 

Work life balance is something we should all be aware of and can lead to some serious health issues for people but if managed properly by SLT and yourself then it should be a progressive partnership.

 

The whole school then benefits from this and you will be recognised for the efforts of you and your team.

[dhicks]

For example on our dell servers we have a 4 hour warrenty. If the motherboard dies in one they will be here within 4 hours to fix it, any time of the day.

 

That's still 4 hours - with cheaper hardware you can afford to have spare capacity, so a hardware malfunction doesn't give you any downtime at all. In that situation it doesn't matter if it takes a day or two to get hold of some parts. Modern computer equipment does fail but relativly rarely - the chances of another server conking out while you're repairing the first one should be vanishingly small.

 

Particular parts like motherboards can be hard to find when the computer/server is getting older.

 

An excellent reason for using off-the-shelf parts - I can nip down the road to Maplins and get a motherboard, harddrive, etc, in under an hour, no problem - in four hours I reckon I could have an entire server built and ready to start running virtual machines.

[GrumbleDook]

There is a difference between downtime and routine maintenance. Downtime during the working day would only ever be for very clearly stated circumstances.

 

1- there is a fault which is already affecting most/all the school and it can only be rectified / fixed / worked around with some immediate action. The difficult choice comes when deciding whether it is better to do a work around (ie get the service running again even though there is a risk that the fault could occur again) or whether you should do a full fix. If you *have* to do a work around you should get an allocated period of time to allow you to investigate and plan on how to solve the problem on a permanent basis, and then get the allocated time to do that chunk of work too.

 

2- there is a significant risk (eg data protection, security, elf & safety, etc) which needs to be rectified otherwise the school may end up in breach of stutory / legal duties to staff, students, parents, etc.

 

3- you are instructed to do so by the legal authority in the school (Head or other person with delegated authority such as the Child Protection Officer), or an external authority with legal rights (eg Bailiff or Police).

 

All of the above will mean it covers you for zero-day exploits, virus attack, serious hardware failures, etc.

 

Scheduled maintenance should be what it says. The schedule should be authorised by you and agreed on by the Head (or the person the Head gives authority to). It should fit round T&L activities ... but it is a careful balancing act to ensure you get what you need done and the staff / students who are in during the hols can still do stuff. A change management group can help here. You don't have to shoulder the whole burden on your own.

 

A few things that can help.

Have a test system so you can show that in your planning you have fairly accurate data for how long patching / updating / work takes. The Scotty rule works well, but if you are always seen a miracle worker then they will always expect miracles. Managing expectations properly is better IME. When you publish schedule works also give a rollback time too .. So that if someone wants to stop you just as you start then you can let them know when you are past the point of no return, or how long it will take to get things back to where they were before.

 

Hope these help.

[GrumbleDook]

@dhicks ... a warranty is also about risk management ... You are putting the risk onto an external party and reducing your own. If you have the capability to do your own repairs and have the capacity then that is fine, but not everyone does. Most try to sit somewhere in the middle. It is sometimes cheaper to have a warranty than you own set of spare parts to use to fix things. I know on servers I would not expect schools to have a complete set of spares and the time to take to order a spare part is the same to get an engineer out to do the fix. For desktops most people will have spare parts (even if just cannibalised from old machines) which they can use until they get replacement parts in. A number of resellers / vendors like this and will make life easy for you, but the warranty is your backup on the desktop.

 

Warranty on other hardware is also vital ... Switches, projectors, etc ...

 

Horses ... courses ...

[FN-GM]

An excellent reason for using off-the-shelf parts - I can nip down the road to Maplins and get a motherboard, harddrive, etc, in under an hour, no problem - in four hours I reckon I could have an entire server built and ready to start running virtual machines.

 

Its not ideal if you are running something that cant be virtualised. For example you have a big SQL server. The board goes and you replace it with another board. the chances are you will have to reinstall the os and it will take more time.

[dhicks]

If you have the capability to do your own repairs and have the capacity then that is fine, but not everyone does.

 

That's the thing, I think if people skipped paying for 4-hour-response-time warrenties there'd be more than enough money to have spare capacity to cover in case of hardware failure.

 

It is sometimes cheaper to have a warranty than you own set of spare parts to use to fix things. I know on servers I would not expect schools to have a complete set of spares and the time to take to order a spare part is the same to get an engineer out to do the fix.

 

I don't see any reason to use anything much different in a server as a desktop, and therefore no reason not to have a spare power supply, harddrive, etc to hand. Servers are just computers, you can throw them together out of any old bits.

 

Warranty on other hardware is also vital ... Switches, projectors, etc ...

 

I guess this depends on the size of the school, the level of service expected and the importance attached to system failure, however I think there are a lot of schools that would manage just fine with having a half-decent spare switch (£300 worth of equipment) in case of the failure of another and a reliable next-day delivery company for projector bulbs. I get the impression lots of schools might be paying for somewhat over-the-top garantees that promise to replace equipment within 4 hours when there's no point - four hours is still the best part of a school day that you've lost, if you want proper reliability then go for spare server capacity and on-site spares ready to swap in.

[dhicks]

Its not ideal if you are running something that cant be virtualised. For example you have a big SQL server.

 

Why wouldn't you be able to virtualise a big SQL server?

[Duke]

Thanks again for all the replies everyone - nice to see I'm not alone in having to deal with these high expectations and budgets that don't necessarily match them.

 

I completely agree with all the points about planned downtime during the day, and let me make clear this isn't something we do here. My point about breaktime/lunchtime outages was if you really needed to reboot a server to get something working properly you could get away with it during lunch, whereas now there's no chance and I can't even do it at the end of the school day either.

 

Although I have no problem with open-source solutions and home-rolled hardware in the right situation, I do side with FN-GM and GrumbleDook on this on in most cases. I think a lot of it is about the peace of mind that things will work, and whose fault it is when something breaks. For example: If I build my own in-house web filter using off-the-shelf hardware - who gets blamed when an OS upgrade doesn't support the RAID card I've used, or when the open-source filtering project I use gets discontinued, or when the filtering doesn't catch something it should have and it becomes a child protection issue? I don't mind taking responsibility for my network, but at the same time I don't want to have personal responsibility for every single component and configuration on the network. I pay Company XYZ for a solution and support so that when it does break I pick up the phone and they deal with it in 4 hours or next business day - I don't have the time any more to know every single bit of hardware inside out and how to fix it and what to buy when it breaks.

 

Take our SAN for example - I could have built something using off-the-shelf components in a Backblaze-style device using FreeNAS or OpenFiler. However, the Oracle solution does everything for me, works extremely well, and I don't need to worry about keeping it running because that's what I pay them for. On the other hand, with budgets being so tight I wouldn't object to building my own D2D backup storage solution as it would have no immediate impact on users if it did break, so it depends on the scenario for me.

 

Chris

[dhicks]

For example: If I build my own in-house web filter using off-the-shelf hardware - who gets blamed when an OS upgrade doesn't support the RAID card I've used, or when the open-source filtering project I use gets discontinued, or when the filtering doesn't catch something it should have and it becomes a child protection issue?

 

You're confusing hardware and software issues there. Software, or the support of it - proper expertise - is worth paying for. A web filter should have no reason for not running as a virtual machine, though - your VM system should be able to assign a physical interface to a specific VM, ensuring that no network traffic can bypass the filter.

 

I don't have the time any more to know every single bit of hardware inside out and how to fix it and what to buy when it breaks.

 

The idea is that the hardware all works the same, it's just a bunch of off-the-shelf components. If something breaks you chuck it out and stick a new part in place.

 

Take our SAN for example

 

Exactly - why even have a SAN in the first place? Why not just mirror disk volumes between two servers? Depending on the size of the school, two servers to do processing could well be all you need, so you'd save on the running costs of a whole server as well as the purchase price of your SAN device. If one server went down, for planned or unplanned reasons, the other one could simply take over with no loss of service. Each VM would also have local-speed read access to its associated disk volumes instead of accesing data over an iSCISI connection.

[GrumbleDook]

There are a lot of risks and issues with building your own tech and then supporting it.

 

Firstly you have the time issue. My time is precious and was when I was in a school. Most people on here say they don't have enough time as it is so the time spent building your own desktops from off-the-shelf parts and then comparing any cost saving on that with buying pre-built kit from someone like Dell. If I am kitting out 2 rooms each year then it is a better value option to buy it pre-made.

 

This is before you get to the fact that off-the-shelf parts do not always stay the same ... and whilst I would love to say that you can just swap any hardware around, we all know that you can't. Some software does not like it ... and I am not going to spend days trying to rebuild a system just because a RAID controller is having a fit.

 

Then you have to remember that you may not be at that particular school forever. Every NM and Tech will have a slightly different skillset. As much as we would all love to say that we could build systems (and then document them, obviously) that *anybody* could come in and support, this is not always the case. I would be doing a school a dis-service by leaving them with a system that could not be picked up easily by someone else. By easily, i mean that should I win the lottery and go on a long holiday and my replacement comes in the day after I have gone, then when the admin server goes down on their first afternoon, it should be easy to get it going again. if the server was built 4 years ago and the PSU has gone, how the heck am I going to find a replacement PSU *and* motherboard to fit it? If we have already established that the cost of building yourself might not give you cost savings to have a spare of everything (why not have two servers then?) then you have to get this off the shelf kit from somewhere ... if the kit is no longer available then i am looking at building a new system when a warranty would have been an easier option.

 

It is a careful balancing act to decide which solutions can be home-made / school-engineered and which need the risk put onto the supplier ...

[SYNACK]

Transferability is a big one, my Windows sites could be easily handed off to someone else who could get to grips with most of the config even without documentation in a reasonably short timeframe. Linux is simply so customizeable that it can very quickly turn into an undecypherable maze of interlocking systems with enough config files to comfortably wallpaper the infinite chasums of hell.

 

Having gone into a school with a realitivly simple custom build of linux on it that had been built by one person then stumbled through by several others before I got to it the shear scale of the unknown elements is astonishing. That and the helpful linux community who take joy in just posting the man pages online make it a total horror show.

 

Give me a supported and somewhat standardised solution any day as at least that will not absorb so much time not only to build but to document and so much longer to transfer.