Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

colaptop.pages.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 258 posts

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#31

Post by yabones »

The folks that run the colo I keep our servers in would beat me to death with a shoe if I did either of these things:

- Mount something in a rack not firmly attached to brackets or a shelf

- Install anything with a battery larger than you'd find in a RAID card

Not to mention all the other ways this is sub-par in terms of airflow, density, serviceability, out-of-band management, etc.

I get the allure of it, but I wouldn't really want my gear anywhere near a bunch of laptops stuck in a cabinet.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#33

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

yabones wrote: post #31

The folks that run the colo I keep our servers in would beat me to death with a shoe if I did either of these things: - Mount something in a rack not firmly attached to brackets or a shelf - Install anything with a battery larger than you'd find in a RAID card Not to mention all the other ways this is sub-par in terms of airflow, density, serviceability, out-of-band management, etc. I get the allure of it, but I woul…

It’s not about your battery, it’s the battery in all the other laptops that would have me concerned. Plenty of fire risk.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#34

Post by folmar »

foobarian wrote: post #18
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #15

> Your old laptop packs more CPU power, RAM, and storage than their entry-level offerings - and with us, you'll pay just €7/month for professional hosting This is basically the same price as the cheapest options on Hetzner: https://snipboard.io/C9epWo.jpg . Sure my old laptop does have more RAM and a bigger SSD, but I bet it's also less reliable than Hetzner's servers, and is likely to suddenly die some day. So is th…

Not sure how Hetzner works, but do they have IDRAC type access to their servers and/or remote hands available to fix stuff? Guess you'd be on the hook for that sort of thing here, making the Hetzner price more appealing if they do include that kind of functionality.

For physical machines of course yes.

The linked one is VPS, so all trouble fixing is easier.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#36

Post by QuantumNomad_ »

type0 wrote: post #32
tosti wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely a prank.

I would like to put my Raspberry Pi Pico in colocation, would it work?

There are a number of places that colocate normal Raspberry Pi.

https://lowendbox.com/blog/little-machines-in-big-datacenter...

I am sure that some of them either already colocate Pico ones too, or are willing to do so if asked.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#37

Post by QuantumNomad_ »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #15

> Your old laptop packs more CPU power, RAM, and storage than their entry-level offerings - and with us, you'll pay just €7/month for professional hosting This is basically the same price as the cheapest options on Hetzner: https://snipboard.io/C9epWo.jpg . Sure my old laptop does have more RAM and a bigger SSD, but I bet it's also less reliable than Hetzner's servers, and is likely to suddenly die some day. So is th…

> I bet it's also less reliable than Hetzner's servers, and is likely to suddenly die some day

I’m a happy Hetzner customer but I have had servers that I rented from them die a couple of times.

I rent physical servers from them that have been previously rented to other customers. At some point hard drives fail.

However, I have solid backup setup in place (ZFS send and recv to other physical hosts in different physical locations) with that in mind, so I haven’t lost data with Hetzner. But if I naively did not have any backup then data would have gotten lost a couple of times.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#38

Post by KomoD »

QuantumNomad_ wrote: post #37
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #15

> Your old laptop packs more CPU power, RAM, and storage than their entry-level offerings - and with us, you'll pay just €7/month for professional hosting This is basically the same price as the cheapest options on Hetzner: https://snipboard.io/C9epWo.jpg . Sure my old laptop does have more RAM and a bigger SSD, but I bet it's also less reliable than Hetzner's servers, and is likely to suddenly die some day. So is th…

> I bet it's also less reliable than Hetzner's servers, and is likely to suddenly die some day I’m a happy Hetzner customer but I have had servers that I rented from them die a couple of times. I rent physical servers from them that have been previously rented to other customers. At some point hard drives fail. However, I have solid backup setup in place (ZFS send and recv to other physical hosts in different physica…

Well, yeah, but that's not really a Hetzner thing. That's just computers in general.

Just monitor them so you can act proactively.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#39

Post by QuantumNomad_ »

KomoD wrote: post #38
QuantumNomad_ wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I bet it's also less reliable than Hetzner's servers, and is likely to suddenly die some day I’m a happy Hetzner customer but I have had servers that I rented from them die a couple of times. I rent physical servers from them that have been previously rented to other customers. At some point hard drives fail. However, I have solid backup setup in place (ZFS send and recv to other physical hosts in different physica…

Well, yeah, but that's not really a Hetzner thing. That's just computers in general. Just monitor them so you can act proactively.

Of course. Just pointing out that even if the hardware might be server grade, doesn’t mean one can assume that the risk of hardware failure is negligibly low. And that one always needs to have offsite backups.
Post reply on HN