Fauziah,
The HP "End of Life" is generally not a reliable milepost on when to make the decision to upgrade or replace.
It is common for various upgrades to be available and viable for many systems, despite their being considered "End of Life" for new systems sales.
In my experience (25+ years), the question of upgrade/replace must be made at the time the capacity question arises, not earlier. The economics are the important issue, and that cannot be known until that moment.
An example. If a set of upgrades for an rx2620 costs $ 5,000, and the newer replacement system with many performance and capacity related improvements is available for $ 5,500, it is generally not the best decision to retain the rx2620 (the new machine will get you more than just the single performance/capacity upgrade).
If the new machine costs $ 25,000, it may pay to upgrade the rx2620, even though it is technically "End of Life".
Systems are generally supported long after their last available for sale date. "End of Life", meaning actual, explicit, de-support is often far, far later. In the OpenVMS world, the original VAX-11/780 was only de-supported fairly recently, over 20 years since its introduction.
- Bob Gezelter,
http://www.rlgsc.com
