How Do I Put Unused Servers To Work?

olyar writes "I worked for an internet start-up last year and during the 'we have plenty of money' phase, a lot of server hardware was purchased. Eight months later, there is very little money, but we're still plugging along — using only a fraction of the hardware. We just cleared out a co-lo and I now have a stack of 17, 1U servers in my garage. Each of those has 2 servers, each of which is a 2-processor, dual-core box with 8 GB of RAM. Add that up and I have 136 processors and 272 GB of RAM with nothing to do. The IT guy in me thinks that's a waste of FLOPS. The wanna-be businessman in me thinks its probably a waste of money as well. So I've been brainstorming ways to put all of that power to good use. Any ideas?"

Comments

Re:Donate to At Home Projects

[cgenman]

Have you thought about just selling the servers?

Let's say the 17 U1 servers cost 2,500 each. And let's say that selling them now would gain 1,250 each. That's 21,250 dollars available there.

Now let's say that Moore's Law continues to hold. And that you need the additional capacity when the economy makes a miraculous turnaround in 2 years. By that time, it should cost you less than 21,250 to get the same capacity back. And you would be doing it in half of the number of servers, which implies a space and power savings.

In that case, it is downright advantageous to sell now, buy back later. It all depends upon when you think you will need the capacity again. Too soon, and you will pay through the nose for selling. Too far away, and not selling now saddles you with old hardware.

Other options ---

If you're set on keeping them, I see only a few other options. One would be to see if any established small-to-medium sized businesses would like to lease the capacity of your servers. Perhaps those companies who sell time on private servers on video games could use them when the next one releases. Web hosting is probably a bust, but I wouldn't be surprised if a local university would be interested in leasing the iron for better rates than your garage pays. There is also cpushare.com and other cloud computing projects, but it doesn't seem like they're paying out at all.

Re:Self-employment

[mcrbids]

Twenty thousand dollars investment in a startup on overpurchased server equipment isn't all that bad. You should figure that a company with a dozen people should be pulling about a $million/year gross, against which $20,000 to ensure sufficient delivery capacity is a pretty wise investment.

I figure that having at least 100%-200% additional capacity on-hand at all times is a good idea - computing power is relatively cheap, while the cost of downtime can be astonishingly high. Personally, I start upgrades when load averages approach 50% at the highest usage part of the day. (For me, about 10:00 AM)

That said, if the servers really aren't needed, every day they lose value. Put 'em up on Ebay and get what you can for them before they depreciate any further. Space them a few hours apart over a week or so, so that you don't depress their sale price.