Re: I think the headline ...
Some companies have to keep older kit alive.
We have such a case. It's five sets of two master/slave systems, essential in controlling safety-critical systems. These master/slave systems are not safety-critical themselves, but if both members of a set fail the actual control systems will go into a safe state, which means stuff gets halted. And if stuff gets halted there will be ministerial questions.
As the hardware these systems run on will be out of support end of this year, and the software for the replacement systems will not be ready until mid 2018 at the earliest, we have to keep these systems alive for two more years with most of them already having done eight years running 24/7.Fortunately we have at least 20 similar systems, decomissioned over the past year and a half. They will be configured to be identical to the current sets, tested, and then five of those will be put in the computer rooms next to the existing sets, one spare per set. Up and running with just the OS and monitoring software, so that we're not going to get caught with one of the active set failed and then trying to boot a spare and find that it won't. Each of those spares will be set up so that they can take over as either of its associated master/slave set, and all of this can be done remotely. The only manual operation necessary is the moving of a crossover cable from the failed system to the newly active one some time in the next 48 hours or so. Then one of the remaining systems will get taken from stock, tested, set up as the new spare for that location and moved there.
I think we'll manage.