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

Posted by timothy on from the give-it-a-piece-of-my-mind dept.

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.

133 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Crypto! by chucklebutte · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    --
    Visit my Forums?
    1. Re:Crypto! by witherstaff · · Score: 1

      Unless you hit one of the alt-coins that doesn't have a GPU miner. A variety of those are around.

    2. Re:Crypto! by TeknoHog · · Score: 2

      Yeah, CPU-only coins last for about 48 hours before a GPU miner is released. As far as crypto-coins the fact is, a modern graphics card is faster than almost anything a CPU can do.

      This applies mainly to those that simply choose a semi-standard hash algorithm, such as one of the SHA3 contestants or a combination thereof. Often there is GPU code already available, and building the miner is all about reading some specs and writing some glue code*. Also, most of these coins are based on Bitcoin and simply change the hash algo.

      However, most Cryptonote coins (using the Cryptonight algo) have lasted for ages without an open GPU miner. For starters, they are not forked off Bitcoin. Boolberry is a Cryptonote coin with a different algo, which makes it faster to sync, while still aiming for GPU resistance. An open GPU mining codebase was released just a few days ago, and there's still work to do for general distribution. Besides, Boolberry's algorithm needs several MB of fast cache, which is OK with GPU texture cache at the moment, but it will grow over time, possibly making GPU mining unfeasible again.

      *(I wrote a GPU miner for JH-256 coins in a few days with no prior GPU/OpenCL experience. Endianness is a bitch.)

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    3. Re:Crypto! by catmistake · · Score: 2

      I'm pretty sure swapping the space as a time-share with a new and adventurous Japanese family of 3 from Tokyo would be more financially secure and lucrative.

      --
      The Admin and the Engineer
  2. Raspberry Pi by philip.mather5551 · · Score: 1

    ...a baking tray full of them for HA obvs.

  3. Offer it to archiveteam to use in the mean time. by djsmiley · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We need help in every form we can get.

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

    --
    - http://www.milkme.co.uk
  4. Keep It Ready by binarylarry · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    --
    Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    1. Re:Keep It Ready by rogueippacket · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Keep It Ready by multimediavt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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!

    3. Re:Keep It Ready by sjames · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:Keep It Ready by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

      "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."

      So those are the only two choices then? You probably could make a small fortune as a security consultant looking for abusive sysadmins wasting company assets for dubious gains. All you'd have to do is throw around a few buzz words and use some marketing speak to the same idiots that made the decision to "move to the cloud". That being said, let us not confuse "making a fortune" with "being competent".*

      * You only had to read as far as ""Obviously something revenue generating is great" to realize that he wasn't planning on pocketing the bitcoins, etc.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    5. Re:Keep It Ready by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    6. Re:Keep It Ready by rogueippacket · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    7. Re:Keep It Ready by rogueippacket · · Score: 1

      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!".

      I don't know of many small-to-medium sized businesses who migrate to the cloud because it's shiny. They all do it because they either read somewhere or were told by someone (most likely a salesperson) that it would save them money. Contrast that with the sysadmin constantly reminding them of the need for more hardware, more licenses, more overtime, etc.
      Anyone who tells you an IaaS migration is about something other than cost is probably trying to sell you IaaS. Fear of running your own infrastructure is just another way of saying that you don't know how to model your costs accurately, which I can guarantee 99.9% of MBA's do not.

    8. Re:Keep It Ready by houstonbofh · · Score: 1

      If you trust essentially your entire business exclusively to another business, you are foolish. They could fold, go out of business, change business model or be raided and shout down by the US government. Have a backup somewhere else, period. Or look at the failed companies and projects that didn't... Code Spaces anyone?

    9. Re:Keep It Ready by jythie · · Score: 1

      *nod* something we did in the past was when moving stuff to "cloud" infrastructure we mirrored all the input going to the cloud version back to the physical rigs. Not only did it give us a hot failover, but it also provided a good production-like environment for doing performance testing and wargames with realistic loads and data. If nothing else, having a production scale staging area to test things out in was a godsend since some stuff only starts going wrong when you have a lot of big systems talking to each other.

    10. Re:Keep It Ready by sjames · · Score: 3

      They move for the imagined savings. The shiny is what keeps them from examining the 'savings' as closely as they should. It frequently turns out to be much smaller once you see past the dazzle.

      It has it's place, it's just not all it's cracked up to be.

    11. Re:Keep It Ready by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Ether they are right or they are wrong (cloud services saving them money).

      For some companies the cloud will save them money and increase availability. Don't work for those companies as IT (janitor), work for them as IT (software developer).

      Outsourcing development is something else again. But until they succeed in outsourcing backups etc you can safely assume that development is a non-starter.

      In general outsourcers won't save you money if your IT department is competently run (outsourcers need to make a profit), but for the 90% of other cases your job is in danger.

      Then there are the cases where the outsourcers are incompetent (cough EDS, Oracle cough) at IT but competent at sales. The only thing I can say is never work for anybody stupid enough to sign a contract with those companies. Run away, don't walk.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    12. Re:Keep It Ready by 1s44c · · Score: 1

      Nah. Get rid of the kit and use management direction changes as an excuse to buy better kit.

    13. Re:Keep It Ready by 1s44c · · Score: 2

      You really should reserve judgment until you know what his company does. For a lot of companies owning physical servers doesn't make sense.

    14. Re:Keep It Ready by 1s44c · · Score: 2

      Few people use IaaS because they fear owning servers. Some people really like or need the flexibility. Some people have done the calculations and it does save them money. Some people don't want the hassle of looking after servers and want to concentrate on their core business.

      You try and build a reliable and fully redundant data center for less than amazon charges. It's not so easy.

    15. Re:Keep It Ready by mlts · · Score: 1

      I might add on to that. Keep it ready, and if it does get pushed to the cloud, keep the half-rack as a "disastrous recovery" [sic] site.

      At the minimum, one can buy a small tape library (a single drive HP one that is 2-3U can store 300 TB, all encrypted, using LTO-6 tapes.) Add to this a 1U machine via a SAS card, and you now have archiving capability. A HP or Dell drive array is also 2-3Us, so add that onto the machine via your protocol of choice (SAS RAID 6), and now you have a place to stash critical data for long term backups. That way, if the cloud storage provider dies, you still have access to database dumps, old purchase orders [1], payroll records, and other critical info.

      Even with the assurances of "we have 'passwords' and 'firewalls'" that cloud providers give, it is wise to have core company data in two physical (or realistically one physical, one logical) locations. Mainly because of the "all eggs in one basket" item. It is only a matter of time before some criminal organization hits a large cloud provider and dumps all the client data [2]. No large business trusts one data center completely, so why should one trust a cloud provider (which is likely just one data center, but might be without any oversight how it gets run.)

      Other uses of that half-rack of space can be to have a VM farm. The drive array is changed out for a SAN with two drive controllers, a switch is added, and 1U servers using 10gigE iSCSI are put in. If density is an issue, an HP Moonshot can be tossed in for 45 blades in a 4.3U chassis [3]. That way, one may only have a half rack, but still be able to spin up plenty of VMs as scaled down critical hosts (be it AD DCs, Exchange replicas, database cluster nodes, and so on.)

      Of course, this won't fit every situation, but if something happens to the cloud services, the half-rack can be used to keep the company limping along on the short term until things get restored.

      Even after moving to the cloud, I'd keep that half-rack, if only as a place to archive data for the long term.

      [1]: The receipts and POs will come in handy if the BSA comes a knocking and decides to demand an audit.

      [2]: Could be for any reason. Any group who does cause a major, unrecoverable outage at a first name cloud provider will forever get their name on the map and in front page of the press, day after day.

      [3]: The remaining 0.7 of a U can be plugged by one's method of choice in a hot/cold aisle. Plenum grade pipe insulation (which basically is a brown pool noodle that has a fire rating) is one way. The Moonshot is mainly for VDI, but when one is needing to replicate an entire enterprise's configuration on a scaled down basis, this is also a good use for this type of architecture.

    16. Re:Keep It Ready by sjames · · Score: 1

      Actually, I was just expanding on the list of possible reasons.

    17. Re:Keep It Ready by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      This.

      I'm not surprised Christian Gainsborough is getting outsourced. We mix Watch-guard firewalls, which are known on the market for being pretty and providing only the appearance of security, with Cisco R&S . CCNA who needed a firewall solution and didn't know what they were doing much? Then we have "HP G Series" servers; there are no "G-Series" and never have been. There's DL, ML, Moonshot, Microservers and Bladesystem; the G is for Generation. If you have a DL380 G4, that's probably a 10 year old rack-mount Pentium 4 Xeon system.

      Here's a hint: if moving your servers to the cloud results in reduced costs of your existing equipment and reduced labor, then either you spent too much on your gear upfront, or your administrators didn't have things configured properly from the get go. That's if you do it properly. If there's been no trial run and no dimensioning done, start job searching. Not because they'll fire you, but when things blow up and you fix them, once they are back up, you then go to management with a few job offers and ask "Why should I deal with your bullshit?". Now if management comes back with any other response than a raise, you leave.

      So what this one boils down to is management is clueless, and wants to bring in contractors. Management likes contractors, because they are easy for accountants to control, because it's easy for management to understand SLA's, and if the contractor fails, they aren't paid. Problem is if you get to that point, you might as well be doing things with pen and paper, because you are headed to that point rapidly.

    18. Re:Keep It Ready by TWX · · Score: 1

      Yup. It's one thing to offload a bunch of the processing and systems to a third-party, but one should always keep one's finger in the pie, at least in the form of backups or DB mirrors. One might not be able to go operational instantly if the cloud provider goes down, but if one's data is intact then one can either spin-up with some capital investment or can migrate to another cloud provider. If one doesn't have one's data, one can't do that.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    19. Re:Keep It Ready by Sarten-X · · Score: 2

      I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're not a business manager.

      There are several reasons to switch to cloud services. Reducing current costs is one, but there are others.

      A business may be facing a market change. The IT needs may grow or shrink rapidly, depending on external factors. Rather than hiring extra personnel and planning servers for needs that might arise, and adding training to the burden of the existing admins, it may just be simpler to migrate to a cloud provider while needs are worked out, then possibly even move back in-house to reduce overhead and external risks.

      Clouds also offer more flexible expertise. When archival data starts to outgrow what basic storage will support, will there be enough spare time for a sysadmin to become a SAN expert to build an in-house storage system? Or would it be better to use outside expertise that's available now, without waiting through the delay of a hiring process?

      --
      You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
    20. Re:Keep It Ready by zippthorne · · Score: 2

      In general outsourcers won't save you money if your IT department is competently run (outsourcers need to make a profit), but for the 90% of other cases your job is in danger.

      What if your needs are small enough that having whole person doing it is 90% more people than you need? An outsourcing company could aggregate several businesses in the same situation, resulting in more efficient use of the staff and equipment.

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
    21. Re:Keep It Ready by shri · · Score: 1

      I seriously recommend this blog from Rackspace to those who are so caught up in cloudy-cluster-off-premises-corporate talk.

      This rising complexity and cost on the multi-tenant cloud is hitting customers in four main ways:
      - They spend more on engineering time and talent to architect for failure on the multi-tenant cloud, which is complex and hard.
      - They also spend more on engineering to deal with inconsistent performance, which is even harder.
      - They spend more on infrastructure, because over-provisioning is one of the major ways to compensate for inconsistent performance.
      - They spend more through the virtualization tax, which can diminish disk and network performance by 5 percent to 20 percent.

      KEEP your existing hardware as a live back up for when it starts raining in the cloud. Better yet, build in cost for new hardware on your rack over the next year to lower costs / maintenance and get some experience in building and operating your own in-house cloudy thing.

    22. Re:Keep It Ready by Karl+Cocknozzle · · Score: 1

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

      Indeed. The cloud fad is already starting to pop as executives find out "Holy fuck, you mean when something goes wrong there's no amount of screaming I can do to make them prioritize our service?" and other things that weren't in the brochure. "You mean we're on a shared infrastructure so when one of the other tenants gets DDOSed we're down too? "

      Or (my favorite) "You mean to actually have high availability we have to spend almost double the quoted price to run identical machines in another geographic-zone"?

      --
      Who did what now?
    23. Re:Keep It Ready by Gob+Gob · · Score: 1

      Have to say I am in this place right now. We have 10RU for a small buisness and the only compelling reasons to go 100% cloud is:

      1) aviod playing with hardware and phyisical failures
      2) Cheeper storage w/o buying disks
      3) Cheeper bandwidth

      From a compute / storage / flexibility POV @ $800 / month we have 40 cores, baremetal speed for DB, 48 GB RAM and a relationship with the owner of the facility.

      Priced up the same way we would get ~ 7GB RAM, 2 Cores + 4GB RAM MySQL Server + data and storage in the cloud (Thats a rough Google cost but I spent 4 hours reading sites yesterday).

      If I way a lone dev wanting to start somewhere or had a budget that I could/wanted to increase then it would be cloud all the way. But while I still know how to admin my servers, have a real business and the cost is on par with moving (excluding any outage / client relations costs) then there is nothing compelling about going to cloud (yet).

      YMMV

    24. Re: Keep It Ready by sjames · · Score: 1

      Bank the money saved by owning the server vs cloud. By the time the server fails you'll have enough to buy 2 or 3.

      OTOH, definitely consider the cloud as a DR measure.

    25. Re:Keep It Ready by sjames · · Score: 1

      I have been maintaining infrastructure for over a decade. I know what's involved.

      When you mention flexibility, you're getting somewhere. If I needed a temporary capacity bump, the cloud would make a great deal of sense. It's not a bad DR plan either. But for the everyday capacity (the base load if you will), ownership is cheaper and offers better control.

    26. Re:Keep It Ready by zippthorne · · Score: 1

      No, that job is 10% of an IT staffer. It might require 60% of the CEO's time, and that's assuming the CEO even has sufficient knowledge to be that effective.

      It might further be the case that the CEO could be using that 60% time more effectively to improve the company than is saved by not having an IT person. Avoiding that opportunity loss would be worth hiring an entire IT person to take care of it, but then you're back in the 90% time wasted position, and while having some slack time is good, that is not going to be a very satisfying job for any professional.

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
  5. of course by sercasti · · Score: 5, Funny

    porn, every flavor

    1. Re:of course by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The storage, it's insufficient! They better call Seagate before implementing this solution.

  6. backups by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    your ass will thank you when your cloud goes kaput.

  7. Darknet. TOR router. by ALeader71 · · Score: 1

    Build a darknet. Maybe a TOR router? Donate CPU time to charity or some great number crunching project.

    --
    Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
  8. Turn them into cash by UrsaMajor987 · · Score: 1

    There are lots of firms who buy used equipment. Get a quote from them. Sell the surplus equipment and buy something you do need.

    1. Re:Turn them into cash by oneiros27 · · Score: 2

      There are places that will rent the rack space, but you provide the hardware to go in it. It's useful as you can more easily move the hardware to a new location, should they give you bad service. ... so just because a lease was mentioned, doesn't necesarily mean that they're leasing the servers.

      --
      Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
    2. Re:Turn them into cash by drkim · · Score: 2

      "[...] until our lease runs out."

      This makes selling the equipment an even better ROI.

  9. The only sensible thing to do by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Transition all our servers from the cloud back to your physical servers.

  10. Bitcoin mining? by Media+Archivist · · Score: 1

    Maybe mine a coin or two?

    1. Re:Bitcoin mining? by kbdd · · Score: 1

      Yeah, probably the most sensible thing to do considering the short time frame.

  11. power, so no, not really? by SuperBanana · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Please help metamoderate.
    1. Re:power, so no, not really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Clearly you are unaware of what he means with offer it to the archiveteam for now. The archiveteam writes scripts/programs that go download old sites that are being shuttered and tries to get a backup of as much data as possible. The way the OP can help is by giving the archiveteam access to those servers to go download defunct sites and temporarily store them before shipping them off to archive.org.

    2. Re: power, so no, not really? by s4m7 · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

      --
      This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
    3. Re: power, so no, not really? by djsmiley · · Score: 2

      You sir are correct :)

      --
      - http://www.milkme.co.uk
  12. City Agriculture by Mikkeles · · Score: 4, Funny

    Make a mini-grow-op.They'll never flag the extra power used for lamps.

    --
    Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
  13. CPU time for charity by Ken_g6 · · Score: 1, Insightful

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

    --
    (T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
    1. Re:CPU time for charity by skids · · Score: 1

      This suggestion would probably be the least work to set up and then tear down. Assuming the existing hardware is running a supported platform, it's just packages and a small amount of configuration and can run in an unprivileged account. When you get towards the end of the unplug date, start disabling new jobs from tasks with long-running jobs so you don't leave too many unfinished ones. And yes the WCG does have tasks that need storage, not just CPU.

      --
      Someone had to do it.
  14. Seriously? by nospam007 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    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.

  15. Good luck by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

    With the numbers that ASICs are doing these days can you even get one coin using CPUs alone?

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    1. Re:Good luck by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      You can't even get one coin using ASICs alone, unless you buy some three-thousand-dollar monster box packed with row upon row of them. And even then it would take weeks.

      Bitcoin mining now is done using pools.

    2. Re:Good luck by kbdd · · Score: 1

      I would think 20 XEONs for 3 months should get close (or at least used to), but these machines are optimized to move packets, not number crunching...

  16. tor exit node by Haven · · Score: 1

    do it

    1. Re:tor exit node by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      Yeah, 10 Meg isn't tremendous, so a Tor exit is probably as good as you can get. It's too small for a mirror host or a torrent seeder.

      I'm assuming you're unwilling to incur 95th percentile charges on your burstable. Tor allows easy bandwidth limiting right in the .conf.

      Still, that's only one machine - 10 meg is easy to saturate.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  17. Do absolutely nothing to implicate yourself. by NemoinSpace · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  18. G is for Generation by CAPSLOCK2000 · · Score: 1

    As far as I know there is no such thing as the HP 'g' series. The 'g' stands for 'generation' and is used for all their llines. HP uses two letters for the line, for example BL, DL or ML.

  19. Re:porn by mister_playboy · · Score: 3, Funny

    This is just half a rack... I'm more of a full rack guy.

    --
    Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law ::: Love is the law, love under will
  20. Search for aliens by jchoyt · · Score: 1

    http://setiathome.berkeley.edu...

    --
    Sometimes the truth is arrived at by adding all the little lies together and deducting them from all that is known.
  21. Re:Bitcoin, rent, tor by thieh · · Score: 1

    For tor, if who you rent the server from has a policy for exit nodes, run some non-exit nodes

  22. mine protein structures by goombah99 · · Score: 1

    install the rosetta @ home boinc project and predict and desing protein strucures.

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    1. Re:mine protein structures by greenfruitsalad · · Score: 1

      silly. in current weather, i'd put a couple of pillows in there, take a Kindle and wait for the summer to pass me by.

  23. Internet Service Provider by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    According to legend at one Fortune 500 company I worked at in Silicon Valley, a data center administrator ran an Internet Service Provider (ISP) when dial-up was still king by using the spare server and bandwidth capacity. This gig went on for a number of years until someone in the corporate office noticed that the data center was far more active than it should have been and ordered an audit. The administrator skipped town and retired to Mexico as a millionaire before the audit got completed. Not wishing to draw public attention to this oversight, the ISP went away and the data center got a new administrator.

    1. Re:Internet Service Provider by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      In the late 90s, Intel found one of the nets largest/most active porn sites hiding in the network.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  24. What would I do? by cold+fjord · · Score: 1

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

    As long as it was a fresh half rack I would cover it in a nice rub and slow roast it for about 8-12 hours on low heat. Then I would slice and serve it to 3-4 of my friends with a side of asparagus, fresh rolls, and a nice Chianti.

    --
    much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    1. Re:What would I do? by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Half rack, 4 people? Less than two ribs each?

      8-12 hours for ribs? You like overcooked ribs. 6-8 for St Louis style, 5-6 for baby backs.

      8-12 hours if for shoulders and briskets.

      Chianti with ribs? Roast not smoke? I'm just nit picking on a bad joke...I'll shutup now.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    2. Re:What would I do? by cold+fjord · · Score: 1

      Some of us like dry, badly seasoned, overcooked meat with badly paired wine, you insensitive clod! ;D

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
  25. Re:Bitcoin, rent, tor by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

    TOR exit nodes are in very short supply, and as a company you already have the protection of incorporation that prevents the biggest fear of exit operators (and the reason there are so few), being caught up in an investigation by police who kick down doors first and ask questions later.

    Legally safe, if you've enough storage, Freenet could use more massive-storage cache nodes. Freenet has no exit to the non-freenet web, so you're not risking getting caught up in any investigation. But neither of these options involve making a profit, so you're dependent upon having someone in management who buys the ideological argument.

    Really, the best options I can imagine for them profit-wise are to either flog the gear on eBay or to repurpose it into some new useful role. Perhaps a local backup server, in case of cloud or connectivity failure.

  26. mbs/Mbs by starless · · Score: 5, Funny

    I doubt you can do much with a 10 milli-bit per second connection...

    (Sorry, but I'm a scientist, units are important to me...)

    1. Re:mbs/Mbs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If you were a scientist, as you claimed, then you would know the difference between mbs (milli-bit seconds) and mb/s (milli-bits per second).

      Idiot.

    2. Re: mbs/Mbs by s4m7 · · Score: 1

      As a scientist, you definitely want to be precise with your fractional bits.

      --
      This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
    3. Re:mbs/Mbs by starless · · Score: 1

      To be fair you're not very scientific about the whole thing. You are whing about a convention (and i do share your analattitude towards m/M conventin), but mili-bits doesn't make any sense. a bit is a 0-1 atomic unit. Atomic as is cannot but cut into smaller pieces. So mili-bit doesn't make sense.

      But as a rate millibits per second could make sense. One mb per second would be equivalent to transmitting one bit every one thousand seconds.

    4. Re:mbs/Mbs by EvilJoker · · Score: 1

      Not when measuring traffic speed. 10mbps is 10,000,000 bits per second.

      Source

  27. TOR Project by ChadSmith4920 · · Score: 1

    Donate to TOR

  28. Learn hadoop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You have the makings of a mini-cluster there. Take the opportunity to learn to install/maintain/query hadoop.

  29. Folding@Home, SETI@Home by sehlat · · Score: 1

    Folding@Home

    SETI@Home

    These guys can ALWAYS use more cycles.

    1. Re:Folding@Home, SETI@Home by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Give it to folding@home, make a corporate team and use it to generate good press for your company.

  30. Get a life? by Rob_Bryerton · · Score: 1

    Ignore them and get on with life?

  31. Re:SETI@home or similar by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

    A search for Management Intelligence would certainly be fruitless at his company. That much is certain!

    --
    Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  32. One of the most common failover mistakes... by SuperBanana · · Score: 3, Interesting

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

    Did you miss the part about them trying to cut opex? *siiiiiigh*

    Even that aside...Maybe the latter, but not the former. One of the most common mistakes of failover environments is using the "old stuff" for failover/backup.

    That works great, until you exceed the computing/storage capacity/bandwidth of the original hardware.

    Let's say in a year traffic is up 30%. Something goes wrong, big time, with Teh Cloudz. You've done a good job of keeping the old hardware current and replicated. You 'flip the switch'...and the old environment promptly chokes...oops.

    --
    Please help metamoderate.
    1. Re:One of the most common failover mistakes... by binarylarry · · Score: 1

      You must not understand what "keep it ready" means.

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
  33. install Eucalyptus by WarJolt · · Score: 1

    I'd install Eucalyptus and develop an application. Then when my lease ran out I'd redeploy it on AWS.

  34. Re:Bitcoin, rent, tor by SuperBanana · · Score: 1

    TOR exit nodes are in very short supply, and as a company you already have the protection of incorporation that prevents the biggest fear of exit operators (and the reason there are so few), being caught up in an investigation by police who kick down doors first and ask questions late

    LOL....

    --
    Please help metamoderate.
  35. Fish Tank by bistromath007 · · Score: 1

    n/t

    1. Re:Fish Tank by TheDarkener · · Score: 1

      Show me a 21U fish tank. Seriously. That would be awesome.

      --
      It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
    2. Re:Fish Tank by i.r.id10t · · Score: 1

      Tall and skinny... tricky to do.

      With appropriate lighting, etc. you could maybe duplicate part of a kelp forrest/bed w/ one or to plants going all the way up and then the wee beasties like sea horses, etc.

      --
      Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
  36. Re:porn by bigfinger76 · · Score: 1

    They tend to downgrade themselves rapidly, unfortunately. Tragic.

  37. anything that cpus are good at by surd1618 · · Score: 1

    Write an AI in Lisp.

  38. Best strategy depends on where it is located by StripedCow · · Score: 1

    If it is in San Francisco area, take out the servers, furnish the rack, and rent it out.

    --
    If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
  39. Setup a VPN and bypass FIOS throttling of Netflix by sideslash · · Score: 1

    n/t (with unique-ifier that Slashdot demands).

  40. backups, then continuing ed... by joshuao3 · · Score: 2

    If this were for my company, I'd want to do two things with the hardware. First, use it to back up the cloud environment. Maybe not the applications, but definitely the data. Disaster recovery is always paramount in the corporate world.

    Second, I'd want the hardware used to try out some new software, techniques, file systems, media servers, etc. It's never too late to learn new skills, and what better to learn on than servers you don't mind wiping if they get messed up. Using them to mine bitcoins is far less valuable (in a corporate environment) in the long run than using them to learn new skills, and exposure to new software.

    --
    Monitor bandwidth usage on IIS6 in real-time: http://www.waetech.com/services/iisbm/
  41. Re:OG slashdot response by sjames · · Score: 1

    Actually, no. Some beowulf clusters such as the Stone Souper are built that way. Most are built from brand new top of the line hardware.

  42. TOR relay by jmd · · Score: 1

    Because it is not just a job.. it is an adventure!

    1. Re:TOR relay by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      Sounds like a great idea

      https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

  43. Re:Offer it to archiveteam to use in the mean time by djsmiley · · Score: 2

    We graved all of yahoo videos in 3 days, we can move fast when needed to.

    --
    - http://www.milkme.co.uk
  44. Depends on what data center by Giant+Electronic+Bra · · Score: 2

    If its in say LD4 in London, or NY7 in New Jersey then I'd make a crapton of money leasing it out or selling VMs to brokerages. If its in ho-hum Dallas Rackspace somewhere or whatever then its not that interesting. Still, its a lot of iron to be idle in a big DS for that long. You could run a pretty serious web site on that sort of infrastructure. Maybe find some startup and leverage it, give them a leg up in return for some cheap equity. If it goes bust its no worse than leaving the rack idle and if it takes off you make some bucks.

    --
    "Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
  45. Bitcoin mining? by nuckfuts · · Score: 1

    I don't know if those machines are capable of competing for bitcoins, but it might be fun to try. Years ago I used to configure underused computers to do distributed computing stuff like SETI@home. Now there are programs like Folding@home where you can donate resources to medical research.

  46. Re:Bitcoin, rent, tor by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

    It's an issue. It's routine practice when investigating internet crimes to execute search warrants via raids in order to prevent destruction of evidence. If they knock nicely, the suspect can have time to overwrite files or destroy media. Storming the home and forcing everyone to the ground at gunpoint may seem a bit heavy-handed (And occasionally there is a misunderstanding resulting in a shooting) but it's the only way to ensure evidence isn't destroyed.

    The concern with Tor exit nodes is that if someone does get up to something illegal via your node, it'll be traced back to you. There have been a couple of well-documented incidents, usually involving distribution of child pornography. Nothing that would stick in court, but even for the innocent getting caught up in such an investigation is a disaster. Reputation tainted, a permanent mark on the record that makes getting a job harder even if no charges are filed, and the loss of everything you own with a hard drive or flash memory - at least until the police forensics finish with it in about five years.

  47. Beer! by ctrl-alt-canc · · Score: 3, Funny

    Remove the unused CPUs and disks, fill the free space with beer bottles, and take advantage of the cooling capabilities of the rack!

  48. Install one of those cool laser beam tripwire by jpellino · · Score: 1

    alarm spider web thingies to protect what's left. They seem to attract really cool burglars like Catherine Zeta Jones, Antonio Banderas and that guy from Ocean's Twelve.

    --
    "Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
  49. Help Science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Set something up to help researchers with protein folding simulation.
    http://folding.stanford.edu/

  50. Each server is worth $189 or less. by Animats · · Score: 1

    If you want more servers like that, Wierd Stuff Warehouse in Sunnyvale, CA, has the same HP series G Xeon servers for $189. (2 3GHz quad-core Xeons per server! Hard drives are extra, but cheap.) Wierd Stuff has huge supplies of previous-generation data center equipment.

    It's amazing how cheap computer hardware is now.

  51. World Community Grid by IBM by millertym · · Score: 1

    I like putting my idle processors to work using IBM's World Community Grid. Basically get them cranking on solutions to various scientific projects submitted to the IBM for calculation on member processors.

  52. Public Service by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

    I know how you can generate revenue! Sell it all to me for $100.

    1. Re:Public Service by Frobnicator · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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!

      --
      //TODO: Think of witty sig statement
  53. Assuming they are your personally: by toygeek · · Score: 1

    Since you're asking this question, I'll assume that you have the freedom to do whatever you want with them. We'll assume they're your servers, personally. In that case, keeping them at the ready in case your cloud solution turns into a hurricane is a great idea that was mentioned previously.

    Otherwise, a couple of things come to mind:
    1) Start a web hosting company, using Linux and cPanel
    2) Start a Private VPN service
    3) Beowulf Cluster! (this is slashdot, after all...) or the modern version: OpenStack
    4) Profit!

    --
    Nobodies Prefect
    Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
  54. Pushing this even further... by PhilRich · · Score: 1

    Pushing this even further --- I have inherited a (mostly empty) 3,000 square foot data center (almost Tier III - but it shares a wall with the outside or so I'm told). I'm using (maybe) two racks. Any thoughts on what to do with the empty space?

    1. Re:Pushing this even further... by TeknoHog · · Score: 1

      Pushing this even further --- I have inherited a (mostly empty) 3,000 square foot data center (almost Tier III - but it shares a wall with the outside or so I'm told). I'm using (maybe) two racks.

      Are you a Nigerian prince?

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    2. Re:Pushing this even further... by PhilRich · · Score: 1

      Actually no. Bought a company - happens to have a lease on a data center - don't know (exactly) what to do with it.

    3. Re:Pushing this even further... by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      Take the racks out, turn the aircon up to full and turn it into an ice skating rink?

      You could hire a snow machine and make snow men too

  55. Proxy by mwvdlee · · Score: 1

    Not a network expert, but wouldn't some sort of internet proxy with caching be a simple way to help?

    Other than that, the sad truth is that obsolete hardware is usually most productive when it's not using up valuable energy.

    --
    Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
  56. Count positions in the game of Go by john.tromp4295 · · Score: 1

    Try to count the number of legal positions in the game of Go, as described on http://www.cwi.nl/~tromp/go/le... How much memory is available per machine?

  57. Science, of course by bromoseltzer · · Score: 1

    Run BOINC. Discover pulsars, gravity waves, prime numbers, cure cancer. Isn't that enough?

    --
    Fiat Lux.
  58. Seed! by rrohbeck · · Score: 1

    Obviously.

    --
    thegodmovie.com - watch it
  59. Easy! by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

    Rent out the processing/storage as a cloud service!

  60. Re:porn by AlCapwn · · Score: 1

    I'm a triple rack guy. It'd host one video and it would be the 3 breasted broad from Total Recall.

  61. Re:mine bitcoin? by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

    Not your bitcoin, MY bitcoin!

  62. Build a Cloud Service by Benson+Arizona · · Score: 1

    You could use the hardware to build a cloud service and sell it to gullible businesses that don't know any better than to store their corporate data on such a service. Just to be on the safe side, you could back it up to your new cloud storage, along with your own data. Hmmm...

  63. Rearrange... by kybur · · Score: 1

    Rearrange your server room so that the bottom-most servers from each cabinet are moved into the open space. Then you won't lose as much hardware when your data center floods due to global warming.

  64. Re:mine bitcoin? by RJFerret · · Score: 1

    bitcoin, mine!

  65. forget about it by bokmann · · Score: 1

    I'd forget about it, let the lease run out.

    First, I'd be afraid that anything I tried to use it for would become 'mission critical' once it existed, then I'm the one 6 months from now saying "Yeah... we can't get rid of that as we planned in the budget..."

    Second, if you ever need something like that again, would you rather lease all new shiny stuff, or mess with rebuilding what you have as leftovers into something usable?

    Its legacy stuff. get rid of it.

    If you must, do something like run the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search on it.

  66. do your job by Osgeld · · Score: 1

    and quit worring about wasting time on some goofy me me me project that's only temporary

  67. Re:Outsourcing Exchange is always a PLUS by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

    If you EVER had to do destkop support 1/3 of your calls our HELP MY PST IS CORRUPT I MUST HAVE IT ALL BACK!

    It is great when the average person receives over +110 emails a day with a 100 meg quota is thrilling! People at work lose them all the time when their .pst hits 18 gigs and go all the way to SVP of IT to demand that billly gates fix it because they need every email for the past 10 years. ... ok rant off.

    But with the cloud quotas and .pst files are a thing of the past. At least I would want to outsource this as these users will never accept lost as an answer.

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
  68. Resell/donate by iamacat · · Score: 1

    Since you don't have a specific use for these servers, it's best to find someone who does. This could be a godsend for another small company that will be able to start it's services immediately rather than waiting for presumably more expensive new servers to arrive.

  69. Host Slashdot without ads by issicus · · Score: 1

    -nt

  70. Re:Outsourcing Exchange is always a PLUS by sjames · · Score: 1

    Nah, they'll just demand that you do something anyway. They'll go ballistic when the cloud service has a glitch and be absolutely certain you could fix it if you just tried hard enough..

  71. Host your Resume by VonSkippy · · Score: 2

    You should use them to host various flavours of your resume, because once everything is settled in to the cloud, your employment will be the next thing to expire.

  72. Most alt.coins are designed to be ASIC-hostile by billstewart · · Score: 1

    For Bitcoin, ASIC is the only way to go, but most of the interesting alternative coins are designed to be hard or impossible to build ASIC miners for. (They're also designed to be GPU-miner-hostile, but some of those have been worked around.) One of the tradeoffs with that is that CPU-only mining is botnet-friendly; it's harder to abuse botnet machines' GPUs (especially in cloud servers or routers that don't have GPUs.)

    I avoid the whole problem by mining Dogecoin; it's close enough to no value that it's seldom worth stealing (though there was a botnet in the news recently that actually got $200K from mining it.)

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  73. Openstreetmap, Nominatim, OSRM by tonique · · Score: 1

    You could consider donating server space and bandwidth to Openstreetmap projects. There's a wiki for OSM but it's quite confusing at times. Then there's Nominatim, the name search; it requires lots of computer resources. Open source routing from OSM data can be done with OSRM, which is quite fast.

    Perhaps extracts of OSM data for downloading would be nice, eg. just roads, waters; see what's already available.

  74. Rent it out... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Depending on where it is, it might make a nice-sized New York studio apartment. You could get $2500/month.

  75. If it hasn't already been sugested.. by dragon-file · · Score: 1

    You could use https://secure.slicify.com/ to sell some of that processing power for real $.

    --
    Whenever a player quits EVE to go play WoW, the Average IQ of both games increase.
  76. Help the World Community Grid by jdashton · · Score: 1

    I also recommend humanitarian research via BOINC, specifically using the World Community Grid, which hosts an excellent selection of worthy projects. https://secure.worldcommunityg...

    --
    -- Daniel Ashton - PGP key available - ICQ# 9445142