I think i like the idea. But why specifically laptops, why won't they accept small computers like thinkcentres for example ?
Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers
191–200 of 258 posts
Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers
#192I think i like the idea. But why specifically laptops, why won't they accept small computers like thinkcentres for example ?
Why not old android phones? :-D
Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers
#193Have an old Mac book pro sitting in my office as a self hosted Mac GitHub runner and it works great.
My biggest complaint used to be that it would occasionally restart after a system update and I’d have to unlock FileVault in person, but macOS 26 now allows unlocks over ssh.
Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers
#194Let’s start a company that does this with old phones. If they’re recent waterproof models you could invert them in cold water and rack them pretty densely while managing heat easily. An ice water Beowulf cluster of iPhone 15s would be a lot of compute in one Yeti cooler.
i don't think phones are THAT watertight... they're not tested for long term submersion. usualy they don't even guarantee waterproof rating for more than first two years or when there are signs of wear. should work with some non-conductive oil or fluorintert tho...
Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers
#195I think i like the idea. But why specifically laptops, why won't they accept small computers like thinkcentres for example ?
I've wanted to do that with an old laptop and send it to be hosted at a friend's house.
The advantage I found with a laptop :
1. Only two cables, power and ethernet. Installation and removal is quick.
2. Comes bundled with keyboard and screen so no need for monitor
3. Usually very low power consumption and low heat.
4. Light, it can be stored anywhere.
So to answer your question, I'm guessing all of the above?
Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers
#196I had this idea for dirt-cheap colo where it's just a warehouse that has warehouse racks for putting whatever you want on the rack. Rates based on linear feet, bandwidth, and power consumption. Power would be delivered with a 15-minute uptime guarantee, meaning you have at least 15 minutes to gracefully shut down in the event of loss of power.
Advantage is reasonably secure location and quality Internet connection. Target market is nerds who don't want all that crap in their closets.
Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers
#197Maybe I'm in the minority... but this seems like an extremely compelling offering for certain use-cases. Not for enterprises, but for individuals and small businesses. My off-site backup is a thinkpad x230 with a 1 TB HDD. It's currently at my friends house, and I access it with tailscale. 7 eur/month to colocate this in a datacenter with stable (and fast) Internet + power seems like a pretty good deal. I can underst…
I mean we literally did this in one of my previous places. We took all the old laptops that were to be junked by IT, and used them as a selenium test farm. We saved like $100k per month on the AWS bill at the cost of basically electricity. If all the machines were running Windows, the difference would've been even more drastic. What I dont get is that we have these autoscaling technologies that allow software to be f…
Been through this recently in a fairly large enterprise
We have some in house software which runs in k8s. Total throughput peaks at about 1mbit a second of control traffic - it's controlling some other devices which are on dedicated hardware. Total of 24GB of ram.
The software team say it needs to run across 3 different servers for resilience purposes.
The VM team want to use neutronix as their VM platform, so they can live migrate one VM to another.
They insist on 25gbit networking, and for resilience purposes that needs to be mlagged
The network team also have to have multiple switches and routers, again for resilience.
So rather than having 3 $1000 laptops running bare metal kubes hanging off a pair of $500 1G switches eating maybe 200W, we have a $140k BOM sucking up 2kW.
When something goes wrong all those layers of resilience will no doubt fight each other. The hardware drops, so the VM freezes as it restored onto another host, so K8s moves the workloads, then the VM comes back, the k8s gets confused (maybe? I don't know how k8s works).
It's all needlessly overspecced costing 30 times as much as it should.
But from each individual team it makes sense. They don't want to be blamed if it doesn't work, they don't have to find the money. It's different departments.
Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers
#198Maybe I'm in the minority... but this seems like an extremely compelling offering for certain use-cases. Not for enterprises, but for individuals and small businesses. My off-site backup is a thinkpad x230 with a 1 TB HDD. It's currently at my friends house, and I access it with tailscale. 7 eur/month to colocate this in a datacenter with stable (and fast) Internet + power seems like a pretty good deal. I can underst…
I mean we literally did this in one of my previous places. We took all the old laptops that were to be junked by IT, and used them as a selenium test farm. We saved like $100k per month on the AWS bill at the cost of basically electricity. If all the machines were running Windows, the difference would've been even more drastic. What I dont get is that we have these autoscaling technologies that allow software to be f…
> What I dont get is that we have these autoscaling technologies that allow software to be fault tolerant to hardware failure, yet companies still insist on buying expensive server grade HW for everything.
Simple: the cost of managing the hardware scales with its heterogenity and reliability. Even just dealing with the dozens of different form factors (air vent placement!) and power units of laptops would be a big headache.
Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers
#199Any 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…
EC2 is pricey if it's all you're getting from AWS. If you have wierd requirements, colo may be a good option. Otherwise, just get a VPS or 3 and be done with it. You'll get a virtual KVM that lets you boot it off an ISO and set it up the way you want. Vultr, DigitalOcean, Linode, ... are long established VPS players. I'm cheap and buy VPSes off deals on lowendtalk.com. e.g. my backups are on a VPS with 3TB disk, 2GB…
I'm familiar with Vultr, DO, Linode, none of them seem to have pricing that is compelling beyond EC2. OVH and Hetzner have some potentially compelling plans, but then I'm only saving a little bit.
The call-out for colo is largely to save me from having to engineer a setup at my house for getting my Dell R720 with 256GB RAM online (switching to bridging, setting up a firewall/load balancer with backup, segmenting the networks). That does become easier if I decide I'm ok with 1gig rather than bumping it up to 10gig.
Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers
#200Hey, this is great. Many of my old laptops become my "servers", so I'd definitely pay for this.
One question I have, in case someone from CoLaptop is reading:
So, one time I had this White "Chiclet" MacBook and I had it powered on all the time, I didn't know at the time but that destroyed the battery and when I unplugged it/plugged it again (because I moved it to a different place after like 4 years) it just didn't power up, fortunately I was able to extract the HDD and its contents.
Now I have one old MacBook Air and one old MacBook Pro as "servers", and I regularly disconnect them from power (but keep them on), I do this for like a day every 3-4 weeks, and haven't had that issue, battery health is still good etc...
So, what do you recommend for this? Or is this something you'll do as part of the CoLo service?