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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

#91

Post by vrt_ »

reincoder wrote: post #82

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…

Interesting challenge! My first thought: 70k probes is a lot and having to set that up is quite a task. Why not develop an phone app with exit node capabilities (similar to Tailscale) so you can use that for probing? The real win is that people move around, obtaining you even more data points from other network.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#92

Post by c0balt »

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…

> Edit: Maybe this is what github is doing :P

Announcing the new "mobile" tier on azure.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#93

Post by linsomniac »

Any recommendations on inexpensive colo for personal projects/servers? A few years ago ran across a few links for places to host a box and I didn't save them, and have regretted it.

ISTR one was basically just industrial office space that was running a lower-tier colo, and another was some guys in a metro area that got a rack in a data center and were spreading the cost around with other like-minded folks. At my work I have machines in an Iron Mountain facility, but for personal projects I don't need anything like that, but I'd like something that's more capable than AWS that I'm paying $80/mo for a couple VMs.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#95

Post by simoncion »

nrdvana wrote: post #88
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> ...no remote management interface...

I bet colos will plug a KVM into your hardware and give you remote access to that KVM. I also bet rachelbythebay has at least one article that talks about the topic.

> ...can't scale if you suddenly had a surge of traffic.

1) If your public server serves entirely or nearly-entirely static data, you're going to saturate your network before you saturate the CPU resources on that laptop.

2) Even if it isn't, computers are way faster than folks give them credit for when you're not weighing them down with Kubernetes and/or running swarms of VMs. [0]

3) https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/hotos15/hotos...> (2015)

[0] These are useful tools. But if you're going to be tossing a laptop in a colo (or buying a "tiny linode or [DO] droplet"), YAGNI.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#96

Post by dylan604 »

oceanplexian wrote: post #87
dylan604 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn't really think that any of what I wrote would be taken seriously to the point of needing a retort. I mentioned blade servers and knew rack unit measurements which as context clues would have suggested I was familiar with actual data center equipment.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#97

Post by reincoder »

vrt_ wrote: post #91
reincoder wrote: post #82

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…

Interesting challenge! My first thought: 70k probes is a lot and having to set that up is quite a task. Why not develop an phone app with exit node capabilities (similar to Tailscale) so you can use that for probing? The real win is that people move around, obtaining you even more data points from other network.

We actually have app-based data collection capabilities and initiatives. Our goal, or more appropriately, vision, is to map the internet in real time. This involves SSH access to devices to run different forms of measurements at a very high frequency and have control over those devices.

Managing 70k probes is not going to be super hard.

Managing 1,400 servers is just a normal business operation, not a technical challenge. Each probe has a standard OS-level configuration. Automation and configuration are deployed from a central system. Each probe is actively monitored and troubleshot. Data is dumped to a data warehouse. We make incremental improvements to our network. When servers go down, we talk to vendors.

We do a lot of novel engineering things from the infrastructure, data, and research team. Having a very identical set of servers really allows us to focus on product and performance engineering, not troubleshooting engineering. With application-based probing, I assume it will complicate things quite a bit, as there are different operating systems, different devices, etc.

For us, lately the challenge is not technical. It has been exclusively procurement. This quarter (https://ipinfo.io/blog/probenet-q1-2026-expansion), we exclusively focused on regional diversity which involved outreach to national ISPs or telecoms. Securing servers from telecoms is an extremely bureaucratic and expensive process. So, we are hoping to partner up with eyeball networks and the larger NOG community.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#98

Post by arjie »

The core density is really low. You can run a 96 core Epyc from the previous generation at 700 W and that’s a lot of compute. It makes sense for a home server (and I have an old Mac playing that role at home) but otherwise I don’t think it makes sense unless you’re taking off the display and racking them super tight.

Even then, you’re probably better off with Cloudflare tunnel and using it as a home server.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#100

Post by j45 »

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…

It could be a pre-sales site to estimate demand.

Colocating itself, though isn't new at all. Lots of different ways to host, including servers, mac minis, laptops are conceivable too because they share the same kinds of parts that mac minis might have.

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