File server is out of warranty, replace or move to cloud
Replacing four-year-old hardware reopens the same debate from four years ago, and cloud pricing has not gotten worse since. Do not auto-buy another box.
Try this first
- 1Calculate true cost per year: hardware depreciation, licences, backup, admin
- 2Compare to SharePoint plus OneDrive or an Azure Files share, including one-off migration work
- 3Add the extras: 24/7 failover, off-site backup, and what an outage now costs in productivity
- 4Make a plan with cutover date, parallel period, and a date when the old box goes off
When to bring us in
For apps that lean on SMB paths or NetBIOS names, refactoring those is often more work than the server itself. Plan it as a separate project.
See also
- One DC or two DCs for an SMB office?Two is almost always the right answer; one DC is a single point of failure for logon, DNS and GPOs.
- Should I split FSMO roles across two DCs?For a small domain all on one DC is fine; with two DCs splitting is tidier but not required.
- How do I know my AD replication is healthy?Replication errors creep in silently; they only surface when logins or GPOs misbehave.
None of the above fits?
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Or skip the DIY entirely
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