Meta is extending the useful life of its servers to five and a half years – a decision that will save it approximately $2.9 billion in 2025 alone.
Meta previously extended the expected life of its servers by six months in Q2, 2022 – from four years. Two quarters later, Meta again added six months to expected server life, suggesting they would last five years.
The company is still being conservative compared to Microsoft, which in 2022 extended “the depreciable useful life for server and network equipment assets in our cloud infrastructure from four to six years."
Amazon followed suit in early 2024, also bumping life to six years,
Microsoft CFO Amy Hood explained on a Q4 2022 call that “investments in our software increased efficiencies in how we operate our server and network equipment” – this would save it $3.7 billion in 2023 she said.
Servers can last a lot longer than six years, but components like hard drives can start to suffer, and energy efficiency also become an issue.
As one observer, analyst Christopher Tozzi recently put it: “A server that receives routine maintenance, and whose hard disks are replaced as needed, could continue to run for decades – although it will likely not remain cost-effective for decades.” Many smaller firms do exactly this.
How often do you replace your servers?
