Xmas surprise

I got a call out of the blue from a financial services organisation. They contacted me through a friend of a friend etc. They had found a desktop/server under a desk, no keyboard or monitor attached, but it was on the network. They could not RDP to the server, but when they powered the server off one of the phone systems stopped working. They turned it back on and the phone system worked. When we started looking at the desktop it was quite old. They attached a keyboard and monitor to it (which was a drama finding a PS2 mouse and keyboard). The desktop was running NT4, luckily they had an admin password that worked and then we found that it was running SQL Server 6.5 SP5a. It was still running and working. More than likely it had been shutdown and moved a few times, but nobody owned it and was never on the radar to be upgraded or replaced. The databases were being backed up locally and it would more than likely keep running until a component broke. It was quite nostalgic looking at SQL 6.5 again.

It made me wonder how many other undiscovered servers there may be out there running old OS versions and databases? Maybe this was the last of its kind - but I doubt it.

They are now in a quandary as to what to do with this server.

The application provider no longer exists!

Nothing? Virtualise it? Go through an upgrade process? Look at replacing the application and database (a new application could be quite expensive)?

It will be interesting to see what they do.