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Old Servers
Out of curiosity, is there a market to rent out older servers like the X5550 CPU's etc? If so, how would you even price these older servers when companies like Zare can do the latest ones for next to nothing?
Would anyone ever rent a 2 x X5550 server with 32GB DDR3 RAM for example and what would they expect to pay?
Comments
Question is where? In London, with the cost of power and space, selling the old server simply doesn't make sense.
Manchester is every more expensive given the backhaul costs...
Yes, there is still a market, dual X5550 is around 9k passmark which is quite respectable, though the power consumption may make it unprofitable. Rental value might be in the $50/month range depending on disks, network, and location.
Ok so for example, if one was to offer:
2 x X5550
32GB RAM
4 x 600GB SAS
Dell R410
10TB Bandwidth on a 1Gbps Port
Based in London
What would someone be willing to pay for that?
Joe offers dual X5650's for $54. Yes, there is a market for them if the price is right. The problem is going to be space and power. If you can find a way to make a profit then go for it.
It all depends on the price, do you have a rough idea on what you would be after?
You would have to do it at scale to be profitable, and even then considering power costs in the UK the ROI would still be quite long.
If at all possible assuming $54 / mo and London location as per the OP, even if attempted in a converted office space to a DC.
If you have one or two of those boxes and are asking about renting them out to generate some side income, it's almost certainly not worth your while and you're better off selling the hardware and pocketing the cash. If you have a few hundred of them (or anyway 20+) it gets more interesting. You're doing more work, but the revenue starts to be enough to make up for it.
How much can be the difference (money in average) for the power consumption compared to a modern CPU? Just curious, IT department at work has some X56xx.
It's a 95 watt cpu according to ark.intel.com so 2 of them is 190W while an E3-1230v6 is 72 watts plus it's faster. So you're looking at maybe an extra 100 kWH per month scaled for speed, which can be $20 or more depending on what you pay for data center power.
From my experience, you can expect these machines to draw near 250-300W at full load. So realistically, you’d be making $15-$30/month after deducting power costs, rack space, etc.
So in the UK if one was to offer for £65~/mo no VAT added no one would want that? 32GB RAM, dual quad core CPU, 4 x 600GB SAS (raid 10)?
For that pricing I'd take a server with similar performance from @clouvider, as I know that he's hosting it in a proper DC, not in a shed.
Furthermore, it would be on newer hardware with all the benefits that gives.
Not to mention their excellent network, recent peering with Tata and zayo and quick support that Dominik single handedly manages to provide.
Pointless, you can get better for the same price.
Would you rather pay £10,000 for a 2007 Ford Focus or £10,000 for a 2016 Ford Mondeo?
TDP has nothing to do with power consumption
for the same money you can get SSD and better CPU, so not enticing. but then you wouldnt be the first host to offer sub-optimal product
Plus they are better suited to it, doing it in Kent, where costs are significantly easier on them.
Thanks guys, appreciate your comments
Have a lovely day.
Whats the problem with a DC in a converted office space?
It naturally depends on a Datacentre? Are we talking a specific one ?
What.
I would pay ~15-20 GBP for this. You can get a modern E3/E5 + 32 GB for your asking price.
Power + cooling might cost more.
It all depends on the company and how much they are willing to invest in converting a space into a data center, to date I can't think of any that have succeeded.
My point exactly.
I've worked in one, not huge but with maybe 30 racks (a few thousand servers). Used for a single website that you've probably heard of, in the Alexa top 500 but nowhere near the tippy top. Not used for hosting. Mostly done on the super cheap, and works fine.
Also not what I meant. There are plenty of companies who have servers hosted in closets for their services and websites, I don't count those though.
This was a DC, we called it a DC, it looked like any other DC from the inside, it has the usual DC stuff like Juniper fiber switches iirc, it has 1000s of servers, it has fulltime staff looking after it, it uses 30+ gbit of outbound bandwidth and something like 1MW of power. It is not a rack in a closet connected to Comcast Business. So I don't understand what distinction you're making.
DC is far more than network. Power distribution, cooling, cooling distribution, UPS systems, generators, power protection for the cooling, physical security in and around the facility, fire prevention, diverse fibre entry points, resiliency of paths and fibre routes available and then at least N+1 resiliency in all this, among many others. That is what I, at minimum consider a DC.
Of course a conversion can be done right, but at a hugely less efficient (overall more expensive) way. This doesn’t work on the cheap and I’ve seen to many screw ups in my life for anyone to even attempt to tell me otherwise, period.
Naturally supplier of Equinix calibre can, but let me remind you that Equinix charges about double for the rack space and power, and even then their converted buildings have a huge power density limitations (like LD8 in Docklands, even after refurbishment upon purchasing from Telecity).