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Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

colaptop.pages.dev

21–30 of 258 posts

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#22
post #20

This seems very sketchy. Give us your laptop and we promise we won't keep it... > © 2024 CoLaptop. All rights reserved. Website copyright is out of date by two years... And the website has been online since then. https://crt.sh/?q=colaptop.pages.dev > Thank you for your interest. Please submit the form below and we'll get back to you within 2 working days. > - Team @ CoLaptop.com Also colaptop.com is not even registe…

The premise was kinda dumb, wouldn't be surprised if its just a scam.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#23
Hmm, there's might something to this:

+ The usual limiting factor in data centers is power, so laptops could be more optimized for greater cycle efficiency per power than comparable old servers.

+ Laptops are generally compact and so achieve greater rack densities than individual co-lo servers. I'm thinking about 34 or 51 laptops could be stored in 9 or 10U either 2 or 3 rows deep by 17 wide.

+ Shipping a laptop to a co-lo data center is cheaper than a 1U server.

~ Reusing electronics saves e-waste and reduces unnecessary consumption, either old servers or old laptops.

- Laptops lack ECC RAM.

- Laptops typically don't use nearly as fast CPUs or RAM as contemporaneous servers.

- Laptops are limited in their storage options.

- Laptops lack remote, lights-out management of real servers.

- Repairing old failed laptop components is more difficult than old servers.

~ Old laptops tend not to have usable batteries, so there's unlikely to be much an inherently distributed battery backup capability.

- Old laptop batteries of various origins could be a li-ion NMC fire hazard at scale.

~ Reusing old stuff at any sort of scale would prefer standardization, and it's sometimes difficult to amass many of the same discontinued model.

Conclusion: Do it if it works for you. It's kinda cool.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#26
post #22
post #20

This seems very sketchy. Give us your laptop and we promise we won't keep it... > © 2024 CoLaptop. All rights reserved. Website copyright is out of date by two years... And the website has been online since then. https://crt.sh/?q=colaptop.pages.dev > Thank you for your interest. Please submit the form below and we'll get back to you within 2 working days. > - Team @ CoLaptop.com Also colaptop.com is not even registe…

The premise was kinda dumb, wouldn't be surprised if its just a scam.

More likely a prank.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#28
Not sure if this is legit... I could see it working well enough if they require the laptop to support at least say thunderbolt3/usb4 then they can use a single connection interface to a management/dock interface that includes a network connection (1gb/2.5gb)

The trouble is a lot of laptops won't power-on with the screen closed and have heavy sleep/suspend behaviors in general. Not to mention general airflow in whatever shelving system is used with the laptops, assuming 2-4 laptops per shelf, per 1u. Not to mention, one would probably want/need some means of ensuring appropriate driver support, or an appropriate Linux or other setup for said hardware.

While I can see it working, depending on shipping costs can definitely see some problematic bits.

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