What upcoming plans do you have for your server estate?

And what do you do with your old stuff?

By Jon Collins, 17th November 2009

Mini Poll It's coming up to budget setting time again. As many of you are likely to be making changes to your server estates, we would like to know what plans you have for the coming year. Do you intend splashing out on new kit or will you be carrying on with what you have? Of course, if you are buying new stuff, the question arises of what will you do with the existing kit?

If you have a couple of minutes available, please have a go at answering the four questions below. We will get the results back to you at the end of the week.

READER POLL

1. What are you planning to do with your server estate in the next twelve months? (Please check all that apply)

Replace entire estate as part of major server refresh/consolidation project
Acquire new servers as required to keep up with demand for new services
Utilise virtualisation tools to increase capacity in existing server estate
Retire some old kit and replace with new as part of rolling programme
Reduce estate as virtualisation reduces need for footprint
Stay much as we are
Haven't got a clue what will happen next
Other (please state)

2. Which roles in your organisation have influence on plans for change in the server estate? (1-5 where 5 is critical and 1 is not really)

	Not Really			Critical
	1	2	3	4	5
CEO/MD
CIO/Head of IT
CFO/Finance Director
Business managers holding IT budgets
A "steering" committee made up of IT and business staff
External consultant(s)
It's a mix depending on circumstances
Other (please state)

3. What do you do with "old" servers that are being replaced, in the main? (check the one which is most relevant)

Reuse internally
Sell on the second hand market
Pass to third party for reselling/recycling
Throw away
Pass to third party for sanitisation and resell/recycle
Return to vendor at end of life
It's too complicated to say – we decide on a case by case basis
Other (please state)

4. Do you "clean" your servers before disposal? (Please tick all that apply)

Remove data
Remove applications
Remove OS
"Shred" contents so that recovery is impossible/very difficult
Don't do anything – It's someone else's problem
Other (please state)