Recently, I visited a client’s site to do some necessary upgrades to their desktop computers. They were running a mix of IBM brand computers loaded with Windows 2000 mostly. The upgrade went smoothly and just in passing, I took a look at their Novell Netware v6.0 server which is running on IBM x250 hardware.

While this might sound like older hardware (it actually is) the fact that it’s still running strong is a testament to IBM’s server-class computers and the rock-solid nature of Novell Netware.

This server was purchased about 10 years ago and contained all the newest technology at the time. It uses what I like to call “redundant everything.” It has redundant, hard disks (4), processors (2), memory (2GB, Chipkill) and power supplies (2).

What surprised me is when I glanced at the server’s console screen the “uptime” metric read 1,097 days! That’s a little over 3 years of never being shut down.  I think the last time it was shut down was after a hurricane hit the area and the power was out for about 10-days on a stretch.

Because of examples like this, we always like to recommend IBM servers because we know they will last and run solidly for our customers in the long term. However, these days we recommend OpenSUSE Linux as the operating system. Free, solid and flexible.