i have two file servers that have been continuously and reliably operating since 2003 and 2010 -- a ken fs since 2003, and a venti-backed fossil fs since 2010. I have a third which is currently pickled -- an fs64 that ran from the time geoff created it in 2006 until about 2010.  all have been through power outages and in one case a disk failure. dedicate a machine to the file server.