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Giving away servers

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by theonlyrick

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Hi all,

At work we're getting rid of some old servers. I would like to offer these to a charity that a friend works at, and the charity would gladly accept them.

My boss isn't keen on this because he says there's a lot of admin needed (a 'Change of Ownership' form, amongst others).

Is this right? Maybe for audit (Sarbanes-Oxley) purposes?

Would we really have to produce much paperwork? We're an American company in the UK, if that helps.

Thanks,

Richard

4 replies

by robo_dev

In most cases, if the old equipment is 'off the books' (no longer being tracked as a fixed asset) and the relevant manager has approved of the equipment disposal, it goes out the door and it's gone.

The only big caveat would be data and licensed software.

Most organizations would wipe all hard drives or destroy them before anything goes out the door.

Software would go on a case-by-case basis, but most app licenses apply to the 'original purchaser' only, while some others, like the OS can be more complicated, from the standpoint of legally allowing the charity to use the OS on the machine.

The biggest issue can be liability. A large company here donated some laptops to a historic church. One laptop overheated and caught fire, causing extensive damage to the church. This ended the charity donation program instantly.

by oh smeg

You need to wipe the HDD involved in the servers with products like Boot & Nuke

http://www.dban.org/

or Kill Disc

http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm

The Boot & Nuke option is the better of the 2 but if there are RAID or SATA Drives involved Kill Disc is easier to use.

You should never give away a working system or at the very least a Working System with a Used HDD. We junk the HDD's in any systems that we give away and if necessary fit new unused ones tot he case so that the unit can be used.

In the past I have seen cases where Data has been recovered from a old HDD on disposed hardware and from the Rulings from the court cases the new owner is the proper owner of that Data they they recovered. Not very good for a business who can and most likely will be sued for not showing [b]Due Diligence[/b] in securing their Data.

Disposing of old unused hardware from Secure Environments is always hard and depending on what procedures are involved it may prove impossible. But with the push to recycle things just throwing this stuff in a dumpster isn't acceptable either. However provided that there are no HDD's int he units there is very little chance of Data being let out of the business.

In the past I have fitted new HDD's and given the install Disc's to some charities when I have disposed of obsolete Hardware. HDD are cheap these days and there is not a massive expense involved with Donations of this kind. But if you have to load and setup the servers that is a different story. ;)

Col

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