This is corny, but thanks for being awesome! It feels so nice to see this community grow out of a shared vision of what the internet should be.
Standing up my little instance has been a blast! I’m not quite done with it, but your combined enthusiasm gives me hope for the future of the internet. 😊
Unfortunately no old cloud servers or switches on ebay. As such availability of used hardware is more limited in future.
you dont even need big old iron. I run all my containers etc on old business sff pcs and storage on synology. works great
I’m weird, so I have 10G/40G networking and half a rack that would burn 10 kW when all fired up. My major cost issue is power, which is currently 0.7 EUR/kWh though capped at 0.4 EUR/kWh for a while. I could use some more modern hardware but it’s no longer bountiful and cheap.
oldskool, for something like this you can throw an old nuc on the network
multiple cores is the norm even on budget hardware so a surprising amount of cheap hardware is quite capable.
highly recommend looking into 1L systems. I moved in this direction after realizing i was headed down the same path as you.
Maybe solar can help offsets the power cost? With enough sun and big enough panels, even without batteries you might run your servers for free if your electric company gives you credit for unused solar power during the day.
Just need to find the right sites. A couple places I’ve gone that seem to pick up a bunch of corporate PLM gear and refurb it are here:
I know about Servermonkey, and the prices there aren’t nice at all. I’m rather sticking with old servers with roughly the same specs, but perhaps twice the wattage and noise, which only run occasionally. The 24/7 stuff is already on a low-power footprint, though I don’t have a successor for that little Supermicro when it bites the dust. I’d rather pay way less than 1 kEUR for it.
I more stay with the other one for purchases, but if nothing else I like SM for their filters/build pages. I used to specifically try and build small and low power, but eventually it became simpler and more efficient to put everything on a couple big boxes and share resources rather than having a bunch of low power dedicated boxes. Does tend to make the office warm though with nearly 1Kw running the stack.
