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> HP probably believes that people will be sticking with older hardware much longer I really hope this is the case, and that a sustainable update model means I
by rch 13y ago
> HP probably believes that people will be sticking with older hardware much longer
I really hope this is the case, and that a sustainable update model means I can reasonably expect multi-decade lifetimes for utility grade systems. My main concerns would be lock-in, and process changes that artificially create a need for continuous updates.
- lsc 13y agoThe lack of BIOS upgrades is very rarely what kills a box. I have seen many boxes still in production that are more than a decade old. a good friend has a 10 CPU sun enterprise server from the first dot-com; He conned some poor ISP in davis into hosting it for him for $50/month. I'm certain that he is causing their power bill to go up more than $50 every month. That's the thing, though, today, I could give him 1/10th of a server that uses 1/10th the power, and he'd have more compute resources. That's the primary thing that kills old servers; It's not that they die (They become less reliable, but if it's good stuff and it's treated well, it's still 'good enough' for people willing to use "the cloud") What kills old servers is that newer servers use dramatically less power per unit of work done.
- rch 13y agoI'm looking into ways of using that waste heat. It's a feature :)
- lsc 13y agoI've had many discussions about how to monetize old hardware; a favorite idea is to set up some sort of "distributed grid computing" service in cold climates, where the servers are all older, but they run in buildings that would otherwise be electrically heated, making power costs zero. (I mean, there are lots of problems with the idea; it's not getting past the purest of fantasy stage, but it was fun to think about.)