Weakest point of a server?

["Jason Lim" <maillist@jasonlim.com>]

Hi all,

I was wondering what kind of failures you experience with long-running
hardware.

Most of us run servers with very long uptimes (we've got a server here
with uptime approaching 3 years, which is not long compared to some, but
we think it is pretty good!).

We're looking at "extending" the life of some of these servers, but are
reluctant to replace all the hardware, especially since what is there
"works"...

Most of these servers either have 3ware RAID cards, or have some other
sort of RAID (scsi, ide, software, etc.). The hard disks are replaced as
they fail, so by now some RAID 1 drives are actually 40Gb when only about
20Gb is used, because the RAID hardware cannot "extend" to use the extra
size (but this is a different issue).

Now... we can replace all the fans in the systems (eg. CPU fan, case fans,
etc.). Some even suggested we jimmy on an extra fan going sideways on the
CPU heatsick, so if the top fan fails at least airflow is still being
pushed around which is better than nothing (sort of like a redundant CPU
fan system).

But how about the motherboards themselves? Is it often for something on
the motherboard to fail, after 3-4 years continuous operation without
failure?

Or is there some other part(s) we should look out for instead... would the
CPU itself die after 3 years continuous operation? Or maybe RAM? Or even
the LAN cards?

We keep the systems at between 18-22 degrees celcius (tending towards the
lower end) as we've heard/read somewhere that for every degree drop in
temperature, hardware lifetime is extended by X number of years. Not sure
if that is still true?

Any input/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

TIA.

Jas