[HN Gopher] Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers
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Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers
Author : argentum47
Score : 108 points
Date : 2026-04-09 18:22 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (colaptop.pages.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (colaptop.pages.dev)
| argentum47 wrote:
| A friend of mine sent it to me and it seems like an interesting
| option now that hardware pricing has gone insane?
| malux85 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| I worked for a place that did something akin to this in the
| early 2010s. Someone figured out how to add 32-bit company
| laptops to the virtualization cluster (likely because they were
| using one as a stand in for a server that at the time would
| have been in the works but not yet purchased) and so once that
| work had been incurred they just kept "retiring" unserviceable
| company laptops to the cluster. Imagine a standard wire metro-
| rack crammed in a telecom closet beside a normal server rack.
| Now imagine that metro rack literally full of Toshiba Satellite
| Pro's from about 2005-9. The cluster hosted virtual machines
| for testing.
|
| No fires, no hardware problems. No special cooling other than
| the mini-split that was in the closet to cool the server rack.
| They just kept trucking. But modern hardware is much more high
| strung and I don't doubt you'd have weird failures.
|
| Edit: Back then VMs were how things were done and RAM was
| seemingly always the bottleneck by a mile, so the cluster did
| add up to a meaningful amount of extra performance compared to
| not having it.
| opengrass wrote:
| pages.dev, you can't be serious.
| darrylb42 wrote:
| Looks like an April 1st article, but there is no date on it.
| sixothree wrote:
| Say what you want about an old laptop, they sure are a lot faster
| than a $150/mo azure VM. And to be clear, I mean a _LOT_ faster.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| That's saying a lot about azure, not the laptops.
| donohoe wrote:
| Great idea but is this real?
|
| Its a page hosted on CLoudFlare's "pages.dev" service. Their
| method of contact is a Google Form which does have an email
| address on this domain "CoLaptop [dot] com", but that as a web
| address does not work.
|
| I'm not sure they have their act together.
| schlecht_ wrote:
| This seems fishy...
| optimus_banana wrote:
| lots of proxmox clusters in basements run on old laptops. my pile
| of t480s beats any cloud vm (except when my ISP goes down).
| cat-turner wrote:
| I presently use an extra laptop to compute and run for batch
| jobs. Easy, fast.
| tiku wrote:
| Yeah for dev purposes perhaps. Production would be another story.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| > Your old laptop packs more CPU power, RAM, and storage than
| their entry-level offerings - and with us, you'll pay just
| EUR7/month for professional hosting
|
| This 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
| foobarian wrote:
| Not sure how Hetzner works, but do they have IDRAC type access
| to their servers and/or remote hands available to fix stuff?
| Guess you'd be on the hook for that sort of thing here, making
| the Hetzner price more appealing if they do include that kind
| of functionality.
| folmar wrote:
| For physical machines of course yes.
|
| The linked one is VPS, so all trouble fixing is easier.
| QuantumNomad_ wrote:
| > I bet it's also less reliable than Hetzner's servers, and is
| likely to suddenly die some day
|
| I'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 wrote:
| 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_ wrote:
| 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.
| lizardking wrote:
| This is the most vibe-coded looking website possible
| aerhardt wrote:
| It's as if Claude Code and Bootstrap 3 had had an illegitimate
| child.
| danesparza wrote:
| Does anybody know if they also accept mac minis? Or is the
| keyboard/display a fundamental requirement to their offering?
| whalesalad wrote:
| tons of places do mac mini colo,
| https://www.macminivault.com/mac-mini-colocation/
| bombcar wrote:
| Marco tells us that if you have 48 Mac minis, buy them
| yourself and rent a rack.
| gowld wrote:
| How does that work if you don't live near the colo?
| corvad wrote:
| This seems very sketchy. Give us your laptop and we promise we
| won't keep it...
|
| > (c) 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.com
|
| Also 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 wrote:
| The premise was kinda dumb, wouldn't be surprised if its just a
| scam.
| tosti wrote:
| More likely a prank.
| type0 wrote:
| I would like to put my Raspberry Pi Pico in colocation,
| would it work?
| QuantumNomad_ wrote:
| 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.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| What if it's a compute Ponzi scheme?
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| 1) You don't have to keep copyrights up to date (and in fact
| you don't have to put them at all), 2) Every single startup
| i've seen on HN is sketchy af. Racking laptops in a cage at a
| Hetzner DC is probably the least sketchy product i've seen
| here.
|
| And honestly, not a terrible idea, I have old laptops that
| would work as a VPS. $7/month for somebody to host a public
| server for me, and not on my crappy residential isp? All I have
| to lose is an old laptop I haven't touched in 5 years? Sign me
| up
|
| (they do need a real domain before i'll give them money tho,
| lol)
| whilenot-dev wrote:
| > Website copyright is out of date by two years...
|
| Can you explain how a copyright can be "out of date by two
| years"?
|
| I always thought the copyright notice should reflect the year
| of creation, and that it's actually bad (from a legal POV) to
| always show the current year through scripting.
| kube-system wrote:
| > > (c) 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
|
| That's exactly what it should be then. A copyright notice lists
| the year of publication. Not the current year.
|
| > A proper copyright notice consists of three elements: a (c)
| symbol, the year of publication, and the copyright owner's
| name.
|
| https://copyrightalliance.org/faqs/what-is-copyright-notice/
| JVIDEL wrote:
| Wait, whats the point of this if I can have my old laptop running
| in my garage?
| gowld wrote:
| They can't profit from your garage.
| arm32 wrote:
| In theory--the data center they'd put your laptop in has a much
| faster, and more reliable, internet connection than your
| garage.
| kube-system wrote:
| Colocation has reliable power, reliable environmental
| conditions, and internet connections that are better suited for
| running servers.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| Hmm, there's might something to this:
|
| + The usual limiting factor in data centers is power, so laptops
| could be more optimized for greater cycle efficiency per power
| than comparable old servers.
|
| + Laptops are generally compact and so achieve greater rack
| densities than individual co-lo servers. I'm thinking about 34 or
| 51 laptops could be stored in 9 or 10U either 2 or 3 rows deep by
| 17 wide.
|
| + Shipping a laptop to a co-lo data center is cheaper than a 1U
| server.
|
| ~ Reusing electronics saves e-waste and reduces unnecessary
| consumption, either old servers or old laptops.
|
| - Laptops lack ECC RAM.
|
| - Laptops typically don't use nearly as fast CPUs or RAM as
| contemporaneous servers.
|
| - Laptops are limited in their storage options.
|
| - Laptops lack remote, lights-out management of real servers.
|
| - Repairing old failed laptop components is more difficult than
| old servers.
|
| ~ Old laptops tend not to have usable batteries, so there's
| unlikely to be much an inherently distributed battery backup
| capability.
|
| - Old laptop batteries of various origins could be a li-ion NMC
| fire hazard at scale.
|
| ~ Reusing old stuff at any sort of scale would prefer
| standardization, and it's sometimes difficult to amass many of
| the same discontinued model.
|
| Conclusion: Do it if it works for you. It's kinda cool.
| saltcured wrote:
| I think it's one of those ideas that only works with nostalgia
| or hoarding impulses to support it.
|
| I think normal virtualization approaches are far more power
| efficient, at a fleet level, than any kind of cluster of laptop
| scenarios. You can pile in the cores and amortize the costs of
| memory controllers etc. over a large set of guests.
|
| It is a funny way to get features of both worlds. One reason to
| want colo (rather than VMs) is for predictability, but laptops
| still give you the funny throughput problems, because of
| thermal throttling instead of competing guests.
| 0x457 wrote:
| Aside from this probably being a scam or dead project, but they
| do say they either remove or disable batteries. Either way
| battery can be removed.
|
| > - Repairing old failed laptop components is more difficult
| than old servers.
|
| I think "run it until it's dead" kind of thing.
| ctippett wrote:
| Collocating a bunch of lithium-ion heat pillows all in one place,
| what could go wrong!
| prmoustache wrote:
| Most laptops work perfectly fine with the battery removed and
| for those who cannot replacing it with a large capacitor is
| usually a solution.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| uh yeah i mean we 'colo' at work because its cheaper than buying
| a windows server with multiple RDP licenses. We have some legacy
| stuff that must be run on site.... so we buy $200 laptops and
| people can remote in for years.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| 7 euro a month and unlimited bandwidth? Seems unlikely.
| tracker1 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 card
|
| Not 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 wrote:
| It's not about your battery, it's the battery in all the other
| laptops that would have me concerned. Plenty of fire risk.
| rcakebread wrote:
| > We're based in Amsterdam and aim to work with Hetzner
|
| I 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.
| perrygeo wrote:
| 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.
| GTP wrote:
| They aren't targeting big companies for sure, but maybe a small
| or medium-sized office could make use of this.
| perrygeo wrote:
| I don't see it. Hobby projects can use a VPN tunnel to make a
| data center from local equipment. Real projects that choose
| colocation have uptime requirements that simply can't be met
| by random consumer hardware. The venn diagrams don't
| intersect.
|
| There's no middle ground where you try to run a real business
| on old laptops. That's insane. You either keep things
| small/hobby and stay simple, or graduate to production-grade
| equipment once you have real requirements.
|
| The middle ground, taking on production colocation problems
| plus the unreliability of random hardware, sounds like the
| worst of both worlds. There are both simpler and more robust
| options.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| The problem with hosting locally is using residential
| internet.
|
| In Australia, for example, we're capping out at 100Mbit/s
| upload speeds on plans that cost ~US$70/mo and regularly go
| down for maintenance.
|
| In other countries with cheap symmetrical plans this may
| make more sense.
| Nyr wrote:
| This is CLEARLY a scam.
|
| There is no way they are partnering with Hetzner, or charging
| just 7EUR/month flat rate... they specifically want to know the
| model of the laptop, and offer to send send a courrier to your
| door...
| IshKebab wrote:
| I would be really surprised if this was a scam. It doesn't have
| the smell of a scam at all. Who would target a _very_ tech
| savvy audience just to get old laptops?
|
| Given that the "sign up" link goes to a survey form, my guess
| is this is just some idea someone had and they made this page
| to see if anyone actually wants it before they put any effort
| into making it happen.
| Nyr wrote:
| Colo scams are pretty common. Some percentage of people will
| offer to send expensive laptops, and the scammers can discard
| the rest of "interested customers".
|
| It is inviable to colo old laptops, a regulatory nightmare -
| Hetzner would NEVER accept those in their datacenters. It is
| also absurd to think they are partnering with Hetzner to
| begin with.
|
| It makes no sense to believe they will even EXPORT laptops
| from Europe to the US if you choose the US location. It just
| makes no sense, so I don't get why I am getting downvoted.
| shikaan wrote:
| Is this how we bring "works on my machine" in production? /s
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