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Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

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Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#81

Post by kingstnap »

sixothree wrote: post #5

Say what you want about an old laptop, they sure are a lot faster than a $150/mo azure VM. And to be clear, I mean a _LOT_ faster.

I looked it up for specifics.

Right now the closest I can see is that $121/mo gets you 4 Xeon Platinum 8370C cores and 16GiB of RAM [0] (storage not included!).

Somebody Geekbenched that config here [1] 1274 single core 4256 multi core.

Thats kinda terrible ngl. A mini pc with last gen mobile parts like Ryzen 5 7640HS gets 2610 single and 10768 multi core [2].

[0] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-ma...

[1] https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/17547159

[2] https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/17541586

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#82

Post by reincoder »

I work for IPinfo and we operate a distributed network consisting of around 1,400 servers. I think we have reached a point where it is extremely hard for us purchase VPSes from interesting ASNs.

To support lots of ISPs, universities, and different organizations we have been asking them if they have an old laptop lying around that they can host our software on. Goal is to reach 70,000 probes within the next couple of years.

It is a simple probe software and we share some data or we can pay 20-30 bucks a month for it. We have a couple of NUCs in remote regions but no laptops yet. Basically, we are even happy if an ISP (or any one) hosts our software from a laptop dangling by a charging cable from a socket in some random corner.

We can send over a RPI or NUC, but with remote hands, and setup and all that it can get quite expensive. So, we always first ask if they have an old laptop lying around and can install our software there.

For us, at least, we are not interested in the hardware aspect. We are interested in the network. The old laptop approach only acts as a last resort. We will be more than happy to go with the predictability of a traditional VPS hosted in a traditional data center. Colocation, no matter what form it takes, involves a lot of moving parts.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#83

Post by burnt-resistor »

0x457 wrote: post #61
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.

Sure that can work for individuals and small groups with physical separate high availability. It maybe faster and simpler to find another replacement, but I'm thinking about it from a permaculture perspective of sometimes old parts inventory exist somewhere for cheap or it's only a small broken component that could be fixed to avoid unnecessary e-waste contributions and spending more money on consumption to fix a problem.

Typical enterprise server lifecycle is 4-6 years purposefully throws away uncertain remaining potential value because budgets needs to be spent, risk aversion to repairing what's considered "outdated", and possibly acquiring faster and more energy-efficiency equipment. I would guess it's about the same lifecycle length for enterprise and personal laptops too.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#84

Post by oceanplexian »

PaulHoule wrote: post #67
JVIDEL wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]…

Well, it exists, but it exists if you’re willing to buy server hardware on eBay, hustle to get old parts working together, negotiate a good deal on a cabinet, get space from ARIN and announce it and so on. There are probably 10-50x cost efficiencies vs. renting 5 year old CPU families on AWS at huge markup.

A laptop isn’t the way to do that though. And your typical VC-fueled startup isn’t going to know how to do it either. It takes a very narrow slice of competence to be able to do that correctly.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#85

Post by Theodores »

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,…

I have always dreamed of substituting a really expensive rack of servers with a couple of elderly laptops, with their built in UPS, handy screens, keyboards and trackpads. However, for pet projects, I now have a better way of being cheapskate.

Some ecommerce software stacks really need gargantuan amounts of RAM and CPU, which gets expensive on the cloud. However, it is possible with some software to have everything massively cached, with the cloud doing that, with the origin server in my basement, only accessible from the allowed cache arrangement, therefore having the setup reasonably secure and cheap.

Downsides to this, having customer details in the basement rather than a secure facility, but how many developers have huge customer databases just casually lying around on USB sticks and whatnot? It happens.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#86

Post by iJohnDoe »

This is never a good idea.

A ton of old batteries in one place. The batteries themselves are probably not a concern, but if something happens to the facility, then you have a ton of problems.

Security of the facility is a concern if someone can get in and walk out with an armful of laptops.

Laptops don’t scale from a stacking stand point. Sure, close the lids and line them up. Then you’ll have a lot of failures. Older laptops are intended to cool through the keyboard and top vents by the screen.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#87

Post by oceanplexian »

dylan604 wrote: post #76
kube-system wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If the battery in the laptop is still good, it comes with it's own UPS. My MBPs haven't had an ethernet port in a minute, so do you have to supply your own adapters as well??? You could fit ~15 MBPs on their edge in 9RUs. That'd be an interesting looking rack. Not quite a blade chassis. It'd be rather boring looking as there's no blinky-blinkies

Putting a UPS in a rack is a prosumer/corporate IT thing, it’s not done in real datacenters.

They typically have their own UPS in another room and multiple power lanes. And it’s going to be much more reliable than a laptop battery.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#88

Post by nrdvana »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #47
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…

1) You don't have to keep copyrights up to date (and in fact you don't have to put them at all), 2) Every single startup i've seen on HN is sketchy af. Racking laptops in a cage at a Hetzner DC is probably the least sketchy product i've seen here. And honestly, not a terrible idea, I have old laptops that would work as a VPS. $7/month for somebody to host a public server for me, and not on my crappy residential isp?…

Yeah but for $6/mo you can get a tiny linode or digital ocean droplet, and not worry about hardware failing. It's true that a laptop probably has more resources than the smallest VMs, but no remote management interface and can't scale if you suddenly had a surge of traffic.
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