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

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

Posted by timothy on Sunday July 27, 2014 @04:40AM 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.

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Crypto! by chucklebutte · 2014-07-27 04:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

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

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1. Re:Crypto! by TeknoHog · 2014-07-27 10:29 · 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.)
  
  --
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2. Re:Crypto! by catmistake · 2014-07-28 02:52 · 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.
  
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  The Admin and the Engineer
Offer it to archiveteam to use in the mean time. by djsmiley · 2014-07-27 04:44 · Score: 3, Insightful

We need help in every form we can get.
http://archiveteam.org/index.p...

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Keep It Ready by binarylarry · 2014-07-27 04:45 · Score: 5, Insightful

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

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1. Re:Keep It Ready by rogueippacket · 2014-07-27 05:13 · 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 · 2014-07-27 05:21 · 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 · 2014-07-27 05:38 · 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 TechyImmigrant · 2014-07-27 05:43 · 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.
  
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5. Re:Keep It Ready by rogueippacket · 2014-07-27 06:15 · 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.
6. Re:Keep It Ready by sjames · 2014-07-27 07:29 · 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.
7. Re:Keep It Ready by 1s44c · 2014-07-27 07:56 · 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.
8. Re:Keep It Ready by 1s44c · 2014-07-27 08:02 · 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.
9. Re:Keep It Ready by Sarten-X · 2014-07-27 13:16 · 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?
  
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10. Re:Keep It Ready by zippthorne · 2014-07-27 13:27 · 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.
  
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of course by sercasti · 2014-07-27 04:45 · Score: 5, Funny

porn, every flavor
power, so no, not really? by SuperBanana · 2014-07-27 04:53 · 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.

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1. Re: power, so no, not really? by s4m7 · 2014-07-27 06:11 · 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."
  
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2. Re: power, so no, not really? by djsmiley · 2014-07-27 06:26 · Score: 2
  
  You sir are correct :)
  
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  - http://www.milkme.co.uk
City Agriculture by Mikkeles · 2014-07-27 04:54 · Score: 4, Funny

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

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Do absolutely nothing to implicate yourself. by NemoinSpace · 2014-07-27 05:02 · 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.
Re:Turn them into cash by oneiros27 · 2014-07-27 05:11 · 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.

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Re:porn by mister_playboy · 2014-07-27 05:12 · Score: 3, Funny

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

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mbs/Mbs by starless · 2014-07-27 05:28 · 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...)
Learn hadoop by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-27 05:36 · Score: 2, Interesting

You have the makings of a mini-cluster there. Take the opportunity to learn to install/maintain/query hadoop.
One of the most common failover mistakes... by SuperBanana · 2014-07-27 05:43 · 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.

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Please help metamoderate.
backups, then continuing ed... by joshuao3 · 2014-07-27 06:07 · 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.

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Re:Offer it to archiveteam to use in the mean time by djsmiley · 2014-07-27 06:29 · Score: 2

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

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- http://www.milkme.co.uk
Depends on what data center by Giant+Electronic+Bra · 2014-07-27 06:32 · 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.

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"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Beer! by ctrl-alt-canc · 2014-07-27 07:00 · 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!
Re:Turn them into cash by drkim · 2014-07-27 08:50 · Score: 2

"[...] until our lease runs out."
This makes selling the equipment an even better ROI.
Re:Public Service by Frobnicator · 2014-07-27 13:25 · 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!

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Host your Resume by VonSkippy · 2014-07-27 16:49 · 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.