Discussion
Your Laptop | Our Datacenter
malux85: Eeek, I can't imagine what this is like if it scales. What happens to the fire risk when theres 20,000 laptops with aging batteries all sitting together? I hope they take the batteries out, however many laptops use batteries to smooth out power fluctuations.Laptops aren't designed to be servers - peg your laptop CPU and GPU at 100% and see how long it lasts, I've done this before and the answer is about "2 months", yep sure, this effort isn't targeting that workload, but how many bad apples does it take to start a fire? In their page they say "kubernetes server - no problem" kubernetes DOES keep the CPUs busy, not pegged, but busy enough so that they wont step down their frequency.I admire the effort to reuse old tech, but boy oh boy would I not want to be a sysadmin here!
skullone: My old Lenovo t420 has been running 24/7 pegged as a multi-camera DVR since 2011, no issues whatsoever. Of course the battery is removed, but I don't see many decent laptops struggling running under load for prolonged periods.
2OEH8eoCRo0: I run my home server laptop with battery removed.
tiku: Yeah for dev purposes perhaps. Production would be another story.
lizardking: This is the most vibe-coded looking website possible
aerhardt: It’s as if Claude Code and Bootstrap 3 had had an illegitimate child.
tracker1: Not sure if this is legit... I could see it working well enough if they require the laptop to support at least say thunderbolt3/usb4 then they can use a single connection interface to a management/dock interface that includes a network connection (1gb/2.5gb)The trouble is a lot of laptops won't power-on with the screen closed and have heavy sleep/suspend behaviors in general. Not to mention general airflow in whatever shelving system is used with the laptops, assuming 2-4 laptops per shelf, per 1u. Not to mention, one would probably want/need some means of ensuring appropriate driver support, or an appropriate Linux or other setup for said hardware.While I can see it working, depending on shipping costs can definitely see some problematic bits.
yabones: The folks that run the colo I keep our servers in would beat me to death with a shoe if I did either of these things:- Mount something in a rack not firmly attached to brackets or a shelf- Install anything with a battery larger than you'd find in a RAID cardNot to mention all the other ways this is sub-par in terms of airflow, density, serviceability, out-of-band management, etc.I get the allure of it, but I wouldn't really want my gear anywhere near a bunch of laptops stuck in a cabinet.
hsbauauvhabzb: It’s not about your battery, it’s the battery in all the other laptops that would have me concerned. Plenty of fire risk.
corvad: This seems very sketchy. Give us your laptop and we promise we won't keep it...> © 2024 CoLaptop. All rights reserved.Website copyright is out of date by two years... And the website has been online since then. https://crt.sh/?q=colaptop.pages.dev> Thank you for your interest. Please submit the form below and we'll get back to you within 2 working days.> - Team @ CoLaptop.comAlso colaptop.com is not even registered anymore. If I had to guess the pages.dev site stayed up but the domain and email are nowhere.
JVIDEL: The premise was kinda dumb, wouldn't be surprised if its just a scam.
tosti: More likely a prank.
type0: I would like to put my Raspberry Pi Pico in colocation, would it work?
QuantumNomad_: There are a number of places that colocate normal Raspberry Pi.https://lowendbox.com/blog/little-machines-in-big-datacenter...I am sure that some of them either already colocate Pico ones too, or are willing to do so if asked.
pinkmuffinere: > Your old laptop packs more CPU power, RAM, and storage than their entry-level offerings - and with us, you'll pay just €7/month for professional hostingThis is basically the same price as the cheapest options on Hetzner: https://snipboard.io/C9epWo.jpg. Sure my old laptop does have more RAM and a bigger SSD, but I bet it's also less reliable than Hetzner's servers, and is likely to suddenly die some day. So is the tradeoff really worth it? It's hard for me to believe that this is a genuine improvement for most things. The only definite winning case I can think of is if I have a process I want to run, but I don't care if it just suddenly stops working. But when would that ever be the case? and to save a couple dollars per month?Edit: Maybe this is what github is doing :P
QuantumNomad_: > I bet it's also less reliable than Hetzner's servers, and is likely to suddenly die some dayI’m a happy Hetzner customer but I have had servers that I rented from them die a couple of times.I rent physical servers from them that have been previously rented to other customers. At some point hard drives fail.However, I have solid backup setup in place (ZFS send and recv to other physical hosts in different physical locations) with that in mind, so I haven’t lost data with Hetzner. But if I naively did not have any backup then data would have gotten lost a couple of times.
KomoD: Well, yeah, but that's not really a Hetzner thing. That's just computers in general.Just monitor them so you can act proactively.
QuantumNomad_: Of course. Just pointing out that one can’t assume that just because the hardware might be server grade, doesn’t mean that the risk of hardware failure is negligibly low. And that one always needs to have offsite backups.
danesparza: Does anybody know if they also accept mac minis? Or is the keyboard/display a fundamental requirement to their offering?
whalesalad: tons of places do mac mini colo, https://www.macminivault.com/mac-mini-colocation/
rcakebread: > We're based in Amsterdam and aim to work with HetznerI wonder if Hetzner knows their aim.> We might modify your laptop to remove or power down the battery, wireless radios, etc. to ensure it can be used safely in the data center.Yeah, just use the DC's UPS.
Waterluvian: What if it’s a compute Ponzi scheme?
perrygeo: Old laptops as low cost servers? Absolutely, build a homelab in your own basement, rent a cheap VPS, set up wireguard and viola - instant data center for tens of dollars per month. It's not production grade but you'll learn a ton.But colocation?Strip away the learning component and add production uptime requirements - why would you even consider using crusty old laptops for this? If you have production grade needs, look to a standard cloud provider or, at the very least, a colo facility where you can put production-grade equipment.
Nyr: This is CLEARLY a scam.There is no way they are partnering with Hetzner, or charging just 7€/month flat rate... they specifically want to know the model of the laptop, and offer to send send a courrier to your door...
bombcar: Marco tells us that if you have 48 Mac minis, buy them yourself and rent a rack.
