Replacement policy based on reliability

[bumba]

Hello,

I am not sure if I'm posting to the right ng, but probably somebody
can point me to a good place.
I just get assigned a new job as Network Engineer for a company with
about 1500 PCs, internet access for every PC, dozens of routers,
bridges, switches, CSU/DSU and family.

My boss is asking me to get an exact topology of the whole company
with all possible info I can grab about this equipment.

The reason I am posting is that she wants me to get the estimated
lifetime of every equipment we have, so I can build the annual budget
of the IT department knowing which equipments are close to reach the
expected lifetime.

Where can I learn about this ? How people plan for this kind of things
?
What are the scientific methods that can back my decision of let's say
buy replacement for the 2-5% of the current replacement ?

My personal experience is that a Cisco 25xx for example, works
365/24/7 for years with no complaint (I had 3 in my old company, and
never broke in 5 years).
Should I invest in spare equipments or in new tecnology ?

Well, you should have an idea of what my concerns are by now.

Thanks a lot for any pointers,

REgards
Tummy

 

[CWatters]

Sounds like you need "asset management" tools and or "network topology
analysis". Try giving Computer Associates a call. Tell them the size of you
company and what you want to achieve and I'm sure they would come and give
you and the boss a free presentation of their capabilities. I suggest you
give CA some idea of your budget or they will make it all sound too
expensive and the boss will say no to the lot.

Ask about a subset of "Unicenter Asset Management "perhaps...

http://www3.ca.com/Solutions/Collateral.asp?CID=33237&ID=194
Quote: Unicenter Asset Management is a comprehensive solution for
proactively managing IT assets in a business environment. It provides
full-featured asset tracking capabilities through automated discovery,
hardware inventory, software inventory, configuration management, software
usage monitoring, software license management and extensive cross-platform
reporting.

Colin (not connected with CA and I've never used their products myself)

 

[bumba]

Sounds like you need "asset management" tools and or "network topology
analysis". Try giving Computer Associates a call. Tell them the size of you
company and what you want to achieve and I'm sure they would come and give
you and the boss a free presentation of their capabilities. I suggest you
give CA some idea of your budget or they will make it all sound too
expensive and the boss will say no to the lot.

Thanks for your reply,
I followed your link and I learned a lot about it.