Ask Slashdot: What Would You Do With Half a Rack of Server Space?

New submitter Christian Gainsbrugh (3766717) writes I work at a company that is currently transitioning all our servers into the cloud. In the interim we have half a rack of server space in a great datacenter that will soon be sitting completely idle for the next few months until our lease runs out. Right now the space is occupied by around 8 HP g series servers, a watchguard xtm firewall, Cisco switch and some various other equipment. All in all there are probably around 20 or so physical XEON processors, and probably close to 10 tb of storage among all the machines. We have a dedicated 10 mbs connection that is burstable to 100mbs.

I'm curious what Slashdot readers would do if they were in a similar situation. Is there anything productive that could be done with these resources? Obviously something revenue generating is great, but even if there is something novel that could be done with these servers we would be interested in putting them to good use.

Comments

Crypto!

[chucklebutte]

Mine the shit out of any crypto that tickles your fancy!

Offer it to archiveteam to use in the mean time.

[djsmiley]

We need help in every form we can get.

http://archiveteam.org/index.p...

Keep It Ready

[binarylarry]

Keep everything ready, so you can switch back when the cloud services fail and/or your management team changes.

Re:Keep It Ready

[rogueippacket]

Pretty much the only sensible answer in this discussion so far - and based upon the number of people (trolls? shills?) saying that the gear should be used for mining crypto-currency, I could probably make a small fortune as a security consultant looking for abusive sysadmins wasting company assets for dubious gains.
Let's not forget, your employer is moving to the cloud either because they do not see value in what you provide, or they want you focusing on more strategic initiatives. You should probably spend some time cooking up something amazing in the old environment or, worst case scenario, using it as an opportunity to brush up on your skills and certifications.

Re:Keep It Ready

[multimediavt]

Keep everything ready, so you can switch back when the cloud services fail and/or your management team changes.

That was going to be my suggestion as well. I would not "get rid of it" or "donate it", Hell, I wouldn't let the lease expire either! I would keep that half-rack-o-stuff around for at least the next two years to see how well the "Cloud" does for you with the provider of choice. Plus, it never hurts to have a set of backup servers around that you control (that mirrors the data in the cloud, at least!). I have absolutely no faith in third-parties controlling my data and critical services. I might take advantage of some services but I would NEVER, EVER put my data under someone else's control ... did I say EVER? It's just a really bad idea and experience will teach you why. Good luck!

Re:Keep It Ready

[sjames]

Or their management is from the cult of MBA and fears actually owning anything, or they just saw an ad for the cloud and got sparkly eyes and said "ooooooooh, shiny!".

Meanwhile, a good admin will normally be just a bit bored because everything is running smoothly. It doesn't hurt if they have a zero priority thing to fiddle with as long as they continue working on the real mission.

Re:Keep It Ready

[TechyImmigrant]

I'd be setting it up to keep a running backup of the data in the cloud, with the aforementioned 'keeping it ready' to serve from that data when the cloud gives way to sunshine.

Re:Keep It Ready

[rogueippacket]

Actually, no, there's only one reason any company moves to the cloud - because they think it will save them money. In-house disaster recovery is expensive. Employees are expensive. Refreshing hardware, licenses, and support agreements cost a lot of capital. The allure of trading all of that away for a fixed monthly cost is too strong to resist for most decision-makers.
I don't want to sound overly bleak here, but anyone asking the Slashdot crowd for ideas on how to generate revenue for their employer using commodity hardware is probably so far removed the actual business that their days are numbered. Your Infrastructure was outsourced to an IaaS provider because they don't want to pay for the iron. Next, it's PaaS - your hypervisors, databases, and operating systems, and you with it.
If you want some real advice, use it as a DR site (as GP stated) and make sure the business understands the risks associated with shutting it down, ensuring your ass is covered by having the CFO and/or CIO issue a statement to that effect (they will pin it on you when the cloud goes down regardless, because if you really read those IaaS contracts, the provider cannot be held liable). Then, walk away from it. Divorce yourself from the infrastructure discussions as much as you can, get involved with bigger and better initiatives so that once the salesmen show up with their PaaS offering, you're too well engrained in the big picture that they can't live without you.

power, so no, not really?

[SuperBanana]

Unless you're getting power donated as well, you definitely should not be accepting every machine you can get.

If this stuff more than a few years old, the power bill is going to quickly eclipse the cost differential of better hardware.

Electricity costs vary, but a ballpark of 1 watt/year = $1 is roughly right around here. That doesn't include cooling. A probably conservative but very rough ballpark power estimate would be 3kW for that equipment...I didn't count hard drives, the firewall, the router, etc.

Re: power, so no, not really?

[s4m7]

I thought the commenter's clear meaning was, "allow us to use the hardware in the racks during the remaining lease time."

CPU time for charity

[Ken_g6]

If you think good will for your company would go further than a few cryptocoins, you could do World Community Grid.

Seriously?

[nospam007]

Ebay! An then you have the space for a pool-room, a porn-station, a man-cave or another dozen things with a dash in it.

Do absolutely nothing to implicate yourself.

[NemoinSpace]

The case has already been made against the assemblage of substandard HP garbage occupying half a freakin rack! The person that was blamed for this probably doesn't even work at this company anymore. The best thing you can do is contact the sales guy at the data center and form an unnofficial alliance and work out some preliminary arrangement for a kickback when you reopen your account after the cloud plan goes up in smoke. Most importantly, tell no one about this. You have obviously stumbled into another exploit of the BOFH. Stay out of the office till this blows over, you don't seem to be the intended target, and are messing with forces you don't understand.

Re:Public Service

[Frobnicator]

That's similar to a BOFH story arc.

1. Configure the servers to serve as a 'cloud' resource using various open source software.
2. Show executives that this cloud computing system has much faster ping times than all the competitors.
3. Get the contract to provide cloud services.
4. PROFIT!