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Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

colaptop.pages.dev

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Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#61

Post by 0x457 »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #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…

Aside from this probably being a scam or dead project, but they do say they either remove or disable batteries. Either way battery can be removed.

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

I think "run it until it's dead" kind of thing.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#62

Post by AussieWog93 »

perrygeo wrote: post #59
GTP wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't targeting big companies for sure, but maybe a small or medium-sized office could make use of this.

I don't see it. Hobby projects can use a VPN tunnel to make a data center from local equipment. Real projects that choose colocation have uptime requirements that simply can't be met by random consumer hardware. The venn diagrams don't intersect. There's no middle ground where you try to run a real business on old laptops. That's insane. You either keep things small/hobby and stay simple, or graduate to production-gr…

The problem with hosting locally is using residential internet.

In Australia, for example, we're capping out at 100Mbit/s upload speeds on plans that cost ~US$70/mo and regularly go down for maintenance.

In other countries with cheap symmetrical plans this may make more sense.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#63

Post by bombcar »

gowld wrote: post #54
bombcar wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marco tells us that if you have 48 Mac minis, buy them yourself and rent a rack.

How does that work if you don't live near the colo?

Most colos provide remote hands - a recent ATP talks about it.

https://www.colocrossing.com/managed-service/remote-hands/

Become the Cloud.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/04/07/giant-mac-mini-cl...

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#64

Post by kube-system »

tosti wrote: post #26
JVIDEL wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

More likely a prank.

I think it's most likely testing the waters for a real offering. It's not that weird. Many colo data centers already have policies about hosting laptops because it's already something that happens. It just isn't common and usually isn't for hosting servers.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#65

Post by justsomehnguy »

GTP wrote: post #46
perrygeo wrote: post #45

Old laptops as low cost servers? Absolutely, build a homelab in your own basement, rent a cheap VPS, set up wireguard and viola - instant data center for tens of dollars per month. It's not production grade but you'll learn a ton. But colocation? Strip away the learning component and add production uptime requirements - why would you even consider using crusty old laptops for this? If you have production grade needs,…

They aren't targeting big companies for sure, but maybe a small or medium-sized office could make use of this.

They aren't targeting no one (and looks like they aren't at all).

Just do the math: for a measly €2000 a month, a salary of a cashier in Amsterdam, you already need to have 285 clients - and this is without taxes and revenue.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#66

Post by kube-system »

JVIDEL wrote: post #22
corvad wrote: 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.

The title says PoC, so I presume it's a PoC.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#67

Post by PaulHoule »

JVIDEL wrote: post #22
corvad wrote: 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.

So many people want to believe in this sort of thing for various reasons that I get fatigued at the very thought of trying to explain to people who believe in it earnestly that it is not a good idea. (e.g. commercial hosting services are really competitive; for a long time the cost of computing has been going down over time though I don't know if that is reversing because we've hit the end of the real Moore's law [1] or if it is a temporary blip)

[1] the motor behind it is cost reduction, once that stops it stops because we can't afford it anymore!

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#69

Post by justinclift »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #33
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.

Not just the batteries. User supplied power bricks sounds like an incredibly bad idea at pretty much any scale.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#70

Post by justsomehnguy »

corvad wrote: 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…

> Website copyright is out of date by two years

It's fixed now.

And someone bought the .com domain: https://crt.sh/?id=25447880244

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