Very slow booting and running and braindead OS's 4529

So, if you get junk hardware, you get a maintenance problem. What else is new?

If over a year and a half you have a random mixture of IDE and SCSI, you are not paying attention.

Applications that stop working after an upgrade are a problem everywhere, whether it is big iron or PCs. This is even easier on a well managed collection of small systems. After, when preparing the new version of the software you are going to install, you can just as well test it (or get a few of the users to test it).

Node-locked licenses are something that should be considered only if you factor in the admin costs when the software is acquired. If you did factor in the admin costs, you have the budget to do the upgrade.

Yes, strict hardware purchasing and software install procedures are required. Of course it is not going to make you popular with people who want something done right now without any kind of planning beforehand.

Of course it is hard. Every time a computer system has to work reliably, it is going to be hard. The default mode of computer systems is to produce chaos.

-- That was it. Done. The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make. -- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency