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Researchers have built server prototypes that re-use old components

(spectrum.ieee.org)
45 points rbanffy | 5 comments | 15 Nov 24 11:32 UTC | HN request time: 0.833s | source
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mistyvales ◴[17 Nov 24 00:52 UTC] No.42160997[source]▶
I find a lot of 10 year old Dell PowerEdge servers for basically free these days, some loaded with 128gb+ RAM. They work perfectly well with TrueNAS, pfSense, or even more powerful stuff. If you dont need a thousand cores, I always suggest them to people. Otherwise they end up in the dump..
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7speter ◴[20 Nov 24 07:14 UTC] No.42191466[source]▶
Where are you finding these systems?
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1. fiskfiskfisk ◴[20 Nov 24 10:06 UTC] No.42192393[source]▶
You'll find them readily available on Ebay, but there are also multiple companies that specialize in refurbishing servers (which usually will allow you to configure your actual needs - but this will be slightly more expensive in my experience).

Someone just moving decommissioned servers from a data center to new users without doing anything with the equipment in between allows you to find decent deals if you're looking for something to put in a rack.

Be aware that rack servers are usually rather power hungry, so they might be expensive to run over time.

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2. pdimitar ◴[20 Nov 24 10:47 UTC] No.42192649[source]▶
I found eBay to be strictly an USA thing, plus Canada at best for those who are OK with driving for half a day, or even two.

I have the app installed and the shipping costs to Eastern Europe where I live often surpass 50% of the price of the tech itself.

I'd love to reuse. A lot of us out there who are still oldschool-ish and can work miracles with older tech. But I am not about to spend the same money I'd spend on simply building a PC with EATX case and the ability to shove 12 HDDs in there. I'd still end up spending more on the local market, mind you, but we're looking at 10-15% maximum and I don't find that a worthy difference to wait 3 weeks for an older server, especially with a very high likelihood of also having to pay 20% of the value of it to customs.

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3. fiskfiskfisk ◴[20 Nov 24 11:20 UTC] No.42192830[source]▶
You'll find vendors in Germany, Spain, etc. within the EU. Not much I can say about customs - so you might want to check local recyclers. There's usually some sort of recycling program for old hardware that gets cleaned out and re-sold, but it'll all depend on your country's incentives.

Whether it's worth it will depend on what you're looking for.

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4. stereolambda ◴[20 Nov 24 11:24 UTC] No.42192849[source]▶
Similar region here, and there are unaffiliated "outlet" stores with their own websites which you can search-engine for, at least for workstations: I've never tried with servers. Also the discounts might be more in the decent than jump-to-buy territory. If you live in the Allegro land (i.e. Visegrad countries) or can import, you could also look here.

I expect there would be more of a glut of this stuff where there were lots of server farms and web tech businesses. If the scale was much smaller in your area compared to the US, then of course less servers are discarded.

5. pdimitar ◴[20 Nov 24 13:13 UTC] No.42193651{3}[source]▶
Yeah, I came to the conclusion that I should familiarize myself with the local market as well. Not very easy but not that difficult either.

Still not at all important for me, not until I move in in my own place which is due in 2-3 years. But after that happens I'll definitely want a few servers in a closet.