EEVblog #691 - Dumpster Dive Xeon Servers

[EEVblog]

More Dumpster Diving.
This time for some HP ProLiant ML330 and ML110 G6 servers with Xeon processors.
Will they work?
What should Dave do with them?

Datasheets:
http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=c04286629
http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=c04286597

[_Sin]

If you're planning on selling them on, I'd seriously consider selling at least some of that RAM separately - i.e. sell on the large machine with 12G, and sell the 24G as different lot. It's a lot easier to post, and is probably the most valuable bit of the machine.

[EEVblog]

If you're planning on selling them on, I'd seriously consider selling at least some of that RAM separately - i.e. sell on the large machine with 12G, and sell the 24G as different lot. It's a lot easier to post, and is probably the most valuable bit of the machine.

Good point, thanks.

[madires]

Those are entry level servers of the better kind. Maybe you'll get 200-250 bucks. The good stuff got dual CPUs and redundant power supplies.

[Sylvain]

This is clearly an interesting find but as madires said these are "entry" level servers and they don't cost as much as you may think (when they are new)
I.e. I recently ordered a Xeon E3-1226v3 (7324 pts at cpubenchmark) server with 16 Go of ECC Ram and 2x500Go entry level entreprise class HDDs.
This "only" costs a bit more than 750 € (20% VAT included). The final cost is clearly a lot higher (additional hard drives, aditional waranties, licensing costs ...) but yours don't have that.

The 4 GB RAM sticks may have some value but the servers by themselves might be a bit hard to resale (there's not many clients for that kind of things).

Sylvain.

[BrianDagobah]

DAVE!

I just did a blog post about re-purposing old servers as dedicated storage appliances using FreeNAS. http://www.dagobah-system.com/node/27 I'm also presenting on the topic in spring at an education technology conference here in the states. Check it out.

That ML330 would be perfect, especially with a raid controller in it. You could use the second box as a mirrored replication partner or even an second smaller appliance. GREAT find! I did my example with a Dell PowerEdge 2900 which I obtained much the same way you did. A VERY similar box to what you got.

Let me know what you think!

Brian
http://www.dagobah-system.com

[elgonzo]

While i agree with madires' and sylvain's value assessment, i would not be surpised if someone on ebay will shell out a few good aussie dollars and some more for these things. As the saying goes: There is a sucker born every minute... Actually, i would not be surprised either if the shipping costs (these babies are quite large and heavy, i guess) would be more of a deterrent for a potential ebay shopper than a high asking price... but hey, that's just me always seeing the best in people 

[BrianDagobah]

While i agree with madires' and sylvain's value assessment, i would not be surpised if someone on ebay will shell out a few good aussie dollars and some more for these things. As the saying goes: There is a sucker born every minute... Actually, i would not be surprised either if the shipping costs (these babies are quite large and heavy, i guess) would be more of a deterrent for a potential ebay shopper than a high asking price... but hey, that's just me always seeing the best in people 

This has been my experience too. Unless you can ship super cheap, it's going to be hard to find a buyer. As a previous poster said, the memory is probably the most valuable thing in there and THAT ships cheap. If it were me, I'd keep it, part it out, or try to sell it locally.

Brian

[rob77]

that ML330 is a real winner  probably you could keep it... 36G of memory in 3 channels is a real beast

[free_electron]

ADSL modem teardown !!!! i can talk for weeks about that stuff.. Spent 9 years of my life fidgeting with that stuff

[janengelbrecht]

Here in Denmark Dumpster Diving is actually illegal
Well the big HP server i would sell localy because of shipment costs, sell the RAM seperatly on the Bay and yes...try a video benchmark first of course ....it could be a keeper

[gudenau]

How much could I buy this for?

[deephaven]

ADSL modem teardown !!!! i can talk for weeks about that stuff.. Spent 9 years of my life fidgeting with that stuff

I would love to hear something about that. Having that data rate down what was originally meant as a speech grade audio line just don't seem right 

[Grapsus]

Haha everybody (including me) is so jelly of your dumpster room 

It might be surprising to see 36 GB enterprise grade machines tossed, but when you work at large companies who do IT or have a large IT unit you quickly understand how this happens. Everything is about having precise procedures and responsibilities. Some team is responsible for the high level software service, another team is in charge of networking, system administration and hardware. The only way to achieve certain reliability is to have maintenance contracts with the manufacturer. With Dell, HP or IBM when a machine has a hardware fault, they send you a replacement board or a technician within 24 hours, no questions asked. Those contracts usually run for 2 or 3 years. After that the renewal of the contract might be more expensive than buying a new machine, which is understandable because the manufacturers want to get rid of the old stuff.

It's as simple as that, serious companies don't run production services on hardware without maintenance contracts. Some of them recycle those machines for testing or some internal services that have no SLA, but the hardware always ends up unused, occupying space with everybody just wanting to get rid of it. I even saw this happening for > 20k hardware, the only difference is that people hesitate longer before tossing it, so it can wait five or ten year in some storage room before it looses all of its value.

On the practical side, the machines you got just scream for becoming storage servers :
  - CPUs are entry-level but they have pretty low idle power consumption
  - the CPUs are fanless, an arbitrary level of silence can be achieved by adding more low speed fans
  - they have ECC RAM, this is absolutely critical for any serious storage service

So if you don't know where to store your raw video footage, don't hesitate to populate those with big HDDs and some fancy filesystem like ZFS !

Edit : Also I think that in your video, you overestimate the reliability of those machines. As I explained they all run under maintenance contracts and every critical machine will have a spare running aside or stored somewhere nearby. It might be better in some respects than average consumer stuff, but you see servers fail all the time. Sysadmins won't cry all over the web about how bad their motherboard is, they'll just call and get a replacement with no fuss.

[rob77]

Haha everybody (including me) is so jelly of your dumpster room 

It might be surprising to see 36 GB enterprise grade machines tossed, but when you work at large companies who do IT or have a large IT unit you quickly understand how this happens. Everything is about having precise procedures and responsibilities. Some team is responsible for the high level software service, another team is in charge of networking, system administration and hardware. The only way to achieve certain reliability is to have maintenance contracts with the manufacturer. With Dell, HP or IBM when a machine has a hardware fault, they send you a replacement board or a technician within 24 hours, no questions asked. Those contracts usually run for 2 or 3 years. After that the renewal of the contract might be more expensive than buying a new machine, which is understandable because the manufacturers want to get rid of the old stuff.

It's as simple as that, serious companies don't run production services on hardware without maintenance contracts. Some of them recycle those machines for testing or some internal services that have no SLA, but the hardware always ends up unused, occupying space with everybody just wanting to get rid of it. I even saw this happening for > 20k hardware, the only difference is that people hesitate longer before tossing it, so it can wait five or ten year in some storage room before it looses all of its value.

On the practical side, the machines you got just scream for becoming storage servers :
  - CPUs are entry-level but they have pretty low idle power consumption
  - the CPUs are fanless, an arbitrary level of silence can be achieved by adding more low speed fans
  - they have ECC RAM, this is absolutely critical for any serious storage service

So if you don't know where to store your raw video footage, don't hesitate to populate those with big HDDs and some fancy filesystem like ZFS !

Edit : Also I think that in your video, you overestimate the reliability of those machines. As I explained they all run under maintenance contracts and every critical machine will have a spare running aside or stored somewhere nearby. It might be better in some respects than average consumer stuff, but you see servers fail all the time. Sysadmins won't cry all over the web about how bad their motherboard is, they'll just call and get a replacement with no fuss.

that was a care-less company who tossed the machines..

big companies are leasing the hardware - in most cases directly through the financial services provided by the vendor. after 3 years the financial services are offerring you new hardware and they'll take the old one - for you it's a service, you just pay th emonthly lease cost and they'll take care. and it's more often that really big companies are buying the whole infrastructure as a service (give us x servers of y computing power with z SAN storage , hosted in a network compartment connected through a vpn/mpls circuit/whathever to our IT infrastructure).

and regarding the HW contracts, yes those can be incredibly expensive for older hardware - in most cases even more expensive than a new hardware (yet some companies are still using old hardware because of old appliactions not supported on newer platforms).  the reason why the HW contracts are so expensive for old hardware is the fact that the vendor has to have all the parts on stock - right in the service centre where the contract belongs to (in order to have the part onsite at the customer's place in 4 hours)...

and you must be kidding with the ZFS to archive stuff you HAVE TO choose the MOST RELIABLE filesystem. ZFS is fancy with a shitload of features, but definitely not mature enough for archiving

[sergey]

to archive stuff you HAVE TO choose the MOST RELIABLE filesystem. ZFS is fancy with a shitload of features, but definitely not mature enough for archiving

In what circumstances ZFS is not reliable?

Also, for most reliability you should go with proper hardware raid with enough of redundancy. You can't just bet on FS here.

[rob77]

to archive stuff you HAVE TO choose the MOST RELIABLE filesystem. ZFS is fancy with a shitload of features, but definitely not mature enough for archiving

In what circumstances ZFS is not reliable?

Also, for most reliability you should go with proper hardware raid with enough of redundancy. You can't just bet on FS here.

who and where said ZFS is not reliable ? i said it's definitely not mature enough for archiving

[sergey]

who and where said ZFS is not reliable ? i said it's definitely not mature enough for archiving

Eh well, misunderstood then, sorry For archiving it's just an overkill to use ZFS, but technically speaking it's more mature than Ext4 (which i personally choose for own archives and external backups, plus always redundancy!

[Grapsus]

big companies are leasing the hardware

What is the point in describing a scenario which absolutely doesn't explain how Dave gets so much stuff in his dumpster room? I never said that 100% of all world companies function in this way. I live and work in France and I saw many major companies buying their server hardware with maintenance contracts. The leasing scheme sure exists but it's a more recent trend. And it depends on how the company finances work : in somes cases IT departments absolutely want leasing, in other cases it has some financial advantage to buy stuff.

and you must be kidding with the ZFS to archive stuff you HAVE TO choose the MOST RELIABLE filesystem. ZFS is fancy with a shitload of features, but definitely not mature enough for archiving

Now this must be some kind of troll... Modern file systems like ZFS or BTRFS do have embedded redundancy features with user-settable safety factor. Saying that a filesystem isn't mature enough is definitely saying that it's not reliable and your shit can get lost somehow. It might have been true for BTRFS a few years ago (for performance not data loss), but ZFS ? seriously ?

[sergey]

Grapsus, i wouldn't personally trust BTRFS. It still have some issues on the machines i'm testing it here. ZFS indeed could be considered not mature enough for Linux (which basically only exists as a patch which would never be accepted by upstream because of CDDL, and fuse-based implementation just suks). In BSD i never had issues with ZFS tho, but BSD is not something installed on my desktop as well. So yeah, kind of depends on which exact ZFS we're talking here

Also, wouldn't really suggest relying on a FS level redundancy -- it doesn't protect from hardware failures (which does happen). Much more reliable to have two disks (well, depends on importancy of the data as well).

Anyway, are we even on topic? =)

[Grapsus]

OK, you're right, sorry for going out of topic. (I was talking about BSD ZFS and it does handle drive faults, the documentation advises to put it as close to the real hardware as possible and let it do its thing.)

[rob77]

big companies are leasing the hardware

What is the point in describing a scenario which absolutely doesn't explain how Dave gets so much stuff in his dumpster room? I never said that 100% of all world companies function in this way.

it was a reaction to your

It might be surprising to see 36 GB enterprise grade machines tossed, but when you work at large companies who do IT or have a large IT unit you quickly understand how this happens. Everything is about having precise procedures and responsibilities.

explaining how it's done in large companies... in a large company eitherthe hardware is leased or will be collected by a compeny specialized in recycling..... it would never end up in a dumpster.... that was my point. so Dave should say a big thank you to one of the care-less companies (not a large or big one) for scoring that gem

and you must be kidding with the ZFS to archive stuff you HAVE TO choose the MOST RELIABLE filesystem. ZFS is fancy with a shitload of features, but definitely not mature enough for archiving

Now this must be some kind of troll... Modern file systems like ZFS or BTRFS do have embedded redundancy features with user-settable safety factor. Saying that a filesystem isn't mature enough is definitely saying that it's not reliable and your shit can get lost somehow. It might have been true for BTRFS a few years ago (for performance not data loss), but ZFS ? seriously ?

well... i'm in the IT industry for quite a long period of my life and honestly i seen a very few BSD systems with ZFS in production environments and even less systems in production with BTRFS... the redundancy is done by the storage arrays for SAN storage and local raid controllers for local drives.. the required flexibility or even extra redundancy is provided by means of logical volume manager LVM, and the filesystem is doing the filesystem part ONLY. (and i'm on a multi tenant environment with 2k+ blade servers !)
and btw... all archiving solutions i worked with were linux hosts with san storage with many smaller ext3 filesystems (2TB is a smaller filesystem) with DB & managing sopftware on a separate cluster and the whole thing backed by lto tapes - regular tapes for short retention and WORM tapes for 10yrs retention.

[elgonzo]

Haha everybody (including me) is so jelly of your dumpster room 

Two very smart German brothers told me what is going on there with Dave's dumpster diving.

It is a magic dumpster room which Dave has discovered. One day in the past (some days before Dave moved into his current office), someone said the magic words "Dump, little dumpster, dump" while standing in this magic dumpster room, and the dumpster room started to fill with dumped items. However, for whatever tragic circumstances the said person somehow forgot to utter the magic phrase: "Stop, little dumpster". (Most probably that person suddenly died from a spider or snake bite. Australia!) And thus, the magic dumpster room continues to produce dumped items to this day. Luckily, Dave came along and regularly took and still takes some dumped items away to make room for the many more items the magic dumpster room will churn out. Happy end!

...But... wait... one day in the future (not that far away), Dave will have gotten old with grey hair and a grey beard and can't dumpster-dive anymore. But the magic dumpster room will still fill with dumped items. It will flow over and spill all those dumped items over the whole of Australia. Then, the dumped items will eventually spill over and cover the entirety of New Zealand, and they start filling the Pacific ocean, and it will form something that will become known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Unless... Unless someone will muster the courage, face the magic dumpster room and say the magic words: "Stop, little dumpster"...

[Towger]

Leasing might make sense in some countries due to their tax systems. Here it would just be paying a middle man extra money, unless you were a startup who could not afford to pay up front.
 It would be common for a company to buy servers with the full (metal jacket) 3 year support warranty. After 2.5 years the servers are replaced and a month or two later when happy with the new servers, the old servers 'dispose of'. Most of the time they would be sent for recycling, but I have pickup rack servers and UPSs with still a few months warranty left on them, for next to nothing.

[n45048]

As others have suggested, they would make good file servers for archiving all your raw footage. Even if you don't want to go to the expense of SAS drives, you can pick up some very decent, enterprise level SATA drives which do the job just fine.

I use Hitachi Ultrastar drives in my server at home. They cost more than your bog-standard consumer drives (like WD Caviar Black) but I've found their performance and reliability to be outstanding. Over the years I've had 1 Hitachi drive fail (it was still readable but developed some hard read errors so the RAID card spat it out of the array) where as I've probably had 5 WD drives fail and 3 or 4 Seagates.

Especially if you're looking at a proper hardware RAID set up (not software RAID masquerading as hardware), you will need 'proper' drivers for this purpose. The built in error recovery in some drives doesn't play nice with hardware RAID controllers (also known as TLER in WD drives). Essentially what it means is when the drives own firmware detects an error, it will attempt to recover from it before timing out and carrying on. If the drives error recovery time exceeds that of the RAID controller, it will see this as a drive failure and will spit it out of the array.

You can toggle error recovery on/off and adjust the timeout on some drives, but I would just buy drives designed for enterprise gear to start with.

[dexters_lab]

nice score dave 

is it me or is something clipping your audio, it dont sound right... or maybe you were too excited!!

[darko31]

Dave, have you met your wacky company neighbours? If they throw away things like that, who knows what goodies they are using.

[darko31]

Well, now that you mention it.

No, I meant more of a sneak peek of the stuff they're using, meeting the IT crowd behind the scenes or something like that.

[synapsis]

Question for the IT pros: Why is there an SD card slot directly on the motherboard of the ML330 machine?

[Monkeh]

Question for the IT pros: Why is there an SD card slot directly on the motherboard of the ML330 machine?

You may choose to run an OS entirely from the SD card, so that all the drives can be dedicated to storage. It has a USB port, too.

[Howardlong]

Question for the IT pros: Why is there an SD card slot directly on the motherboard of the ML330 machine?

You may choose to run an OS entirely from the SD card, so that all the drives can be dedicated to storage. It has a USB port, too.

Would that not be horrendously slow? Sorry, been out of enterprise IT for a couple of years, maybe things have changed on that front.

[Monkeh]

Question for the IT pros: Why is there an SD card slot directly on the motherboard of the ML330 machine?

You may choose to run an OS entirely from the SD card, so that all the drives can be dedicated to storage. It has a USB port, too.

Would that not be horrendously slow? Sorry, been out of enterprise IT for a couple of years, maybe things have changed on that front.

Why would you need to access the SD card after boot? This is what RAM is for.

[n45048]

In any case using these servers to archive video that Dave hardly ever accesses is a silly suggestion. They use more power, take up more space and make more noise than plugging a USB drive in on the occassion it is needed. I'd sell them and buy a USB drive or two.

Why? Who said they need to be running all the time? They can be powered on when needed but it he did choose to run them 24/7 they can double as file/print servers for his office or act as off-site storage for his home stuff. With the added RAID capabilities, a dedicated storage server has several advantages over single USB drives.

I know RAID isn't a substitute for a good backup regime but it's a good start.

[warp_foo]

Question for the IT pros: Why is there an SD card slot directly on the motherboard of the ML330 machine?

You may choose to run an OS entirely from the SD card, so that all the drives can be dedicated to storage. It has a USB port, too.

Would that not be horrendously slow? Sorry, been out of enterprise IT for a couple of years, maybe things have changed on that front.

I'm not sure the SD slot is intended to run Windows. You could, I suppose. In general, we install vmware on the SD slots (dual slots, mirrored), and then deploy guest VMs on the HD or SSD storage. (Or preferably, on NAS or SAN storage.)

m

[Tothwolf]

I'm not sure the SD slot is intended to run Windows. You could, I suppose. In general, we install vmware on the SD slots (dual slots, mirrored), and then deploy guest VMs on the HD or SSD storage. (Or preferably, on NAS or SAN storage.)

I run many servers and embedded systems with Linux on SD and CompactFlash cards. Some of them also originally came with Windows XP Embedded or Windows XP Professional on them, so yes, you can run Windows from a memory card. They can also be helpful as a recovery device, so you could store a backup copy of the OS, or a system recovery partition, etc separately from the RAID array.

[Tothwolf]

Dave, in addition to potential use as a fileserver, the ML330 would also be a good machine for post processing and OCR work if you ever decided to start scanning your large collection of vintage electronics magazines and books. For that fact, with two machines, assuming your internet connection in the lab would allow for it, you could use one machine for post processing and internal file storage and use the other as a publicly accessible archive. Another potential use for a smaller machine would be gps locked ntp or you could run your own internal network services such as dns, dhcp, etc. I've found an embedded machine with a Pentium M can work very well for network services on a small network though, so even the smaller of the two machines would really be overkill for that task.

HP will generally also supply restore DVDs for these machines if you contact them. The original OS might not be something you'd want to run, but the utilities and configuration software would still be worth having. Of course if you decide to sell the machines, the restore discs also add a good bit of value too.

The thing that puzzles me about the ML330 is that it has 3ea 8GB and 3ea 4GB memory modules. Usually these should be installed in matched sets so the system can use a faster interleaved memory scheme. If the modules lack an extra HP sticker on them, I suspect they might have been customer upgraded/replaced and they didn't know that they really should be installed in matched sets. Of course another explanation is that someone else beat Dave to the machines and nicked the hard drives and a couple of memory modules...

[n45048]

Another potential use for a smaller machine would be gps locked ntp

If you're that serious about time sync, you're better off with a NTP appliance. They come in 1RU form factors and are very low power compared to a PC. Not cheap though. It might not be possible in his office to run a GPS antenna where it has proper LOS to the satellites.

For everyday applications though, you can just connect through to a public time server provided by NIST or similar. DHCP has a user-definable value which allows you to specify the time server address to clients.

[Tothwolf]

Another potential use for a smaller machine would be gps locked ntp

If you're that serious about time sync, you're better off with a NTP appliance. They come in 1RU form factors and are very low power compared to a PC. Not cheap though. It might not be possible in his office to run a GPS antenna where it has proper LOS to the satellites.

For everyday applications though, you can just connect through to a public time server provided by NIST or similar. DHCP has a user-definable value which allows you to specify the time server address to clients.

If you plan to make a time service available outside of a local network, you generally need something with more CPU than a standalone ntp appliance can offer. In addition to being quite expensive, such ntp appliances just don't have much in the way of CPU and can't handle lots of requests. Often you'd pair up one of those appliances with a larger server to create a stratum-1 or stratum-2 ntp server. I've built ntp appliances from scratch before and have a newer pair of stratum-0 gps/ntp devices in the late parts gathering stage.

There are indeed lots of public servers available, but sometimes their reliability can be questionable and they are never going to be as accurate as a local gps locked stratum-1 ntp server. The rule of thumb with ntp is if you have more than a couple of local clients, you really should also consider running your own internal stratum-3 ntp server to decrease the load on the public servers too.

[n45048]

Really? A 'couple' of local clients? NTP isn't that intensive of a protocol. We run GPS NTP appliances at work that serve entire offices and radio repeaters. They aren't all that powerful. I'd say one of our 1RU appliances serves a network of about 150 clients? That said the accuracy of 1 second or under is near enough.

[VK3DRB]

Some experiences with Xeons...

I did a course on the Intel Xeon processor and Sitka Server design way back in the mid 1990's It was a course run by Intel at a rented hotel opposite Manly Beach in Sydney in the summer. The students were so distracted by the young bikini clad women walking up and down the sand at the beach, Intel had get in some special screens to black out the view.

After the course I developed a machine at IBM that had 4 x 220MHz Xeon processors and SCSI drives totalling a massive 9GB. I cannot remember how much RAM, but the machines were priced at $48,000 each. Value today: 5 cents as a boat anchor if you are lucky. The Sitka motherboard was quite advanced and sported an independent 8051 based processor for health monitoring that could initiate a phone call (early SMS) if there was any problem.

In California there was a machine that made an after hours call to the techo to say one Xeon has failed with an over temperature fault (Xeons in the Sitka was designed for non-stop operation with redundant processors). Short time later another call with another processor going over temperature, then another. The techo then decided to go into work to find out what was going on with the machine. He arrived find the building was in fact on fire. 

[Monkeh]

Really? A 'couple' of local clients? NTP isn't that intensive of a protocol. We run GPS NTP appliances at work that serve entire offices and radio repeaters. They aren't all that powerful. I'd say one of our 1RU appliances serves a network of about 150 clients? That said the accuracy of 1 second or under is near enough.

Expose it to the web and advertise it and 'a couple' turns into 'a couple thousand' pretty quickly.

In California there was a machine that made an after hours call to the techo to say one Xeon has failed with an over temperature fault (Xeons in the Sitka was designed for non-stop operation with redundant processors). Short time later another call with another processor going over temperature, then another. The techo then decided to go into work to find out what was going on with the machine. He arrived find the building was in fact on fire.

So what you're saying is your Xeon machine set a building on fire.

[Tothwolf]

Really? A 'couple' of local clients? NTP isn't that intensive of a protocol. We run GPS NTP appliances at work that serve entire offices and radio repeaters. They aren't all that powerful. I'd say one of our 1RU appliances serves a network of about 150 clients? That said the accuracy of 1 second or under is near enough.

 

USNO NTP Network Time Servers --

"We request that you allow no more than three of your clients to poll our servers directly.  Organizations with many clients should obtain time from local stratum 2 servers."

[BrianDagobah]

Question for the IT pros: Why is there an SD card slot directly on the motherboard of the ML330 machine?

To add to what other folks have said about this. A very common config for ESXi hosts when part of a cluster, is to run the ESXi OS entirely from an SD card without local storage at all. All storage is done via iSCSI, FC, FCoE or whatever to a SAN(which multiple hosts share). This keeps the cost/power of the hosts down and when you're operating in a clustered ESXi environment, loosing a host due to a faulty SD card is really not a big deal. The FOM brings up the VMs on other hosts within a few mS. In most cases you don't even drop a single ping. On the failed host, you just reinstall ESXi (about 10 minutes worth of work), add it back to the cluster and you're back in business. Also, booting without local storage - directly to an SD card is REALLY REALLY fast.

Even in smaller environments where you've got maybe 40 ESXi hosts. Saving USD$1200*/machine on HDD's X 40 is a nice chunk of change.

*Vendor branded (HP)hot swap 600GB SAS drives are $600 each currently. CRAZY!

[max_torque]

Whilst it always amazes me what companies "throw away" there are good reasons for this.  As Dave mentioned, hardware assets will have be written down (depreciated) against tax over there useful (to the company, rather than absolute) life.  As such, at the end of that period, there value is zero, even if they have a small commercial monetary value.  Unfortunately, such is the way of modern accounting, if the company were to sell these assets, the resulting income would have to be declared, and would then be taxed (as it would not match the depreciated asset value).  And of course, an accountant somewhere would have to monitor, record and finaly declare that income on the appropriate years tax submission.  And the, admittedly slightly crazy, situation is that for a large company, that process costs more than the asset is worth.  In effect, they can chuck the asset out with no recompense, or sell it, make some income, but incur costs in processing that income that equal or exceed the net worth of that asset.  End result in both cases is the same, but one action also comes with a lot of in-direct costs, such as employees time!

Mad world we live in really........   

[madires]

The servers aren't thown away because they are written down. They are thown away because they are old and too slow. Desktops are good for 3-4 years and servers might run 5 years. And that's reflected by the official recovery periods for PCs and servers. If none of the employees takes the old stuff home, it's dumped.

[BrianDagobah]

The servers aren't thown away because they are written down. They are thown away because they are old and too slow. Desktops are good for 3-4 years and servers might run 5 years. And that's reflected by the official recovery periods for PCs and servers. If none of the employees takes the old stuff home, it's dumped.

RIGHT! And probably end-of-life. When a product is end-of-life, the manufacturer won't support it any longer and many times parts are no longer available. Companies that rely on that equipment to be running 100% of the time, can't risk having equipment go down without being able to get parts or service in a short amount of time. Every company I've worked for chucks everything at the end of the warranty or end-of-life. It's kind of sad to see that good equipment go. Which is why I typically re-purpose it for a DEV environment or slow/cheap storage. A few years later it ends up in the recycle bin, but at least I squeezed a little life out of it.

[casper.bang]

Here in Denmark Dumpster Diving is actually illegal

Yeah, because there's very strict control with the sorting - but that's a small price to pay for such a high recycling percentage of 60%-70%. That aside, I wonder if Dave has a hoarding problem. For an engineer he spends an obscene amount of time and energy on old crap - I'd rather he spend his time on fundamental Friday, tutorials, reviews etc.   

[Hade]

Yeah, because there's very strict control with the sorting - but that's a small price to pay for such a high recycling percentage of 60%-70%.

It's illegal in the UK too, but it has nothing to do with recycling. It's just illegal to take somebodies stuff, end of.
You can take stuff from a beach however, as there is an exception for beach combing.

I'd rather he spend his time on fundamental Friday, tutorials, reviews etc.   

Agreed. The video subjects have been crap recently. I'm getting bored. I love the repairs, teardowns and tutorials. I want to LEARN.

[casper.bang]

Agreed. The video subjects have been crap recently. I'm getting bored. I love the repairs, teardowns and tutorials. I want to LEARN.

Dave is of course entirely entitled to spend his time on whatever he wants. From following him a few years now, I get the impression that he is very little impressionable (I.e. there are many many requesting an update to the power supply stuff) so the way I try to influence is donate when I like his content - been a while though. A review of the Rigol DS1000Z series feels like slam dunk at this point and has been for a while. 

[VK3DRB]

In California there was a machine that made an after hours call to the techo to say one Xeon has failed with an over temperature fault (Xeons in the Sitka was designed for non-stop operation with redundant processors). Short time later another call with another processor going over temperature, then another. The techo then decided to go into work to find out what was going on with the machine. He arrived find the building was in fact on fire.

So what you're saying is your Xeon machine set a building on fire.

Not stated and not implied. The Xeons and their host server effectively acted as a fire alarm. By the time the technician arrived, the entire building was on fire and outside the building was teaming with firemen and fire trucks. The machine was incinerated, but it was faithful to the end.

Interesting that "firemen" is one word and "fire trucks" are two words. Looks like another bug in the English language.

[Monkeh]

Not stated and not implied.

Just a joke. Looks like another bug in the English language parser.

[LinkZ]

To those which throw away such things, just because they " need" to upgrade I wish they will need another one desperately someday . And I wish they cannot afford another one again, and have to beg for it  .  I really have no excuse for such behaviour, really! The should be ashamed, period. Those company should go OUT OF BUSINESS miserably, they are victims of planned obsolescence like the majority of us. What about to USE a little common sense? Do I REALLY need the last machine EVERY six months? Do I REALLY need the newest car every two years? The answer are CERTAINLY NOT. Those servers were NEW! Bloody bastards! When someone acts like those goddamns "big" companies, should loose his job and regret it for the rest of his life. And BTW, they WILL NEED those servers someday, trust me!

[Monkeh]

To those which throw away such things, just because they " need" to upgrade I wish they will need another one desperately someday . And I wish they cannot afford another one again, and have to beg for it  .  I really have no excuse for such behaviour, really! The should be ashamed, period. Those company should go OUT OF BUSINESS miserably, they are victims of planned obsolescence like the majority of us. What about to USE a little common sense? Do I REALLY need the last machine EVERY six months? Do I REALLY need the newest car every two years? The answer are CERTAINLY NOT. Those servers were NEW! Bloody bastards! When someone acts like those goddamns "big" companies, should loose his job and regret it for the rest of his life. And BTW, they WILL NEED those servers someday, trust me!

Rant rant rant and not a clue to be seen.

Those were four or five year old hardware and there are a variety of reasons they may have disposed of them.

[LinkZ]

A five years server is STILL fine. Even Dave will probably find a use for it. At least it could serve for secondary purposes, but throwing it away like garbage  . Really, this behaviour will be punished sooner or later!
Rant? No, no! I'm fine but the throwaway culture will came to an end, guaranteed! It may seem impossible today, but all the resource on this planet are limited and it's only a matter of time. Stay tuned and you will see that! And BTW the clue is "throw away a perfectly working machine (or whatever) is a shame typically performed by "modern" companies (or peoples) ignoring the background of production, environmental costs, human costs ecc" But again, nothing in this world is forever, and peoples/companies that are fine today, will not be the same in the future! It's a fact.

[Monkeh]

A five years server is STILL fine. Even Dave will probably find a use for it. At least it could serve for secondary purposes, but throwing away such garbage  . Really, this behaviour will be punished sooner or later!
Rant? No, no! I'm fine but the throwaway culture will came to an end, guaranteed! It may seem impossible today, but all the resource on this planet are limited and it's only a matter of time. Stay tuned and you will see that!

Once again, you have no idea.

What did they use those servers for? Did they need to upgrade for greater processing or storage capacity? Perhaps they no longer had a requirement for the machines at all.

Perhaps they required guarantees of uptime and they were no longer under a service contract. You don't know. Economic reality might one day come to slap you in the face.

[LinkZ]

Still this is not an excuse to toast them out like they were completely broken. A computer is always useful. They may sell them, and getting money back. But as throwaway company I think they don't understand the value of money. Support? Did you know what you're saying? HP stops supports for servers after 10 years or more.

[Monkeh]

Still this is not an excuse to toast them out like they were completely broken. They may sell them, and getting money back. But as throwaway company I think they don't know the value of money

I don't think you know the value of time.

Read the entire thread, have a think, and perhaps try running your own business some time.

[LinkZ]

You can sell on ebay in less than 5 min. Do you have an idea of what you're saying?

[Monkeh]

You can sell on ebay in less than 5 min. Do you have an idea of what you're saying?

You can sell on eBay in less than 5 minutes?

Sure. Now, clean it, package it, arrange shipment, handle payment, sort out the tax.. Deal with the inevitable scammers, shipping damage, and so forth.

Companies have their real work to get on with, you know.

[LinkZ]

Yeah, another 10 min for package what a waste of time! Let's fill the earth with (working) garbage

[Monkeh]

Yeah, another 10 min for package what a waste of time! Let's fill the earth with (working) garbage

Look, I don't like throwing out working stuff any more than you. But the world is not as clean cut as you think.

There are entire companies who specifically deal with disposal (resale, recycling) of this sort of equipment. They do not roll freely in oceans of cash. If everything were as simple as you think, they'd be richer than your dreams, surely? Everyone throws away perfectly good stuff worth money and it doesn't cost time or money to resell it, so surely they'd make lots of money?

[_Sin]

Kind of also depends on what happens to stuff left in the garbage room - if it's handled by a proper disposal company who will actually recycle what they can, or ends up in landfill.

These days there are often strict rules on that kind of thing, but I don't know Dave's local situation.

[LinkZ]

Monkeh, it's not (at least not only) a matter of money! Our planet is a landfill, and this will be a BIG problem for our children in the incoming future. I assume that those companies are made by peoples, the majority of those may have family, sons, nephews.. all those will pay for our behaviour, like we pay for the choices of our predecessors. Did you looked at the monitors that Dave showed? They are all throwed away...AWAY! Sometimes I really cannot believe when Dave says that he just found them on the road. So what we can (and should) do? Well, as an electronic blog we can SPREAD the REPAIR culture as much as we can and FIGHT the throwaway evil of our (fading) society based on the obsolete culture of the planned obsolescence.

[Monkeh]

Monkeh, it's not (at least not only) a matter of money!

But for a business IT IS!

If a business stops making money, it closes. Everyone loses their job, all the equipment gets disposed of. Game over. The reality is that you can't always do things the way you'd like.

Did you looked at the monitors that Dave showed? They are all throwed away...AWAY! ... Well, as a electronic blog we can SPREAD the REPAIR culture as much as we can and FIGHT the throwaway evil of our (fading) society based on the obsolete culture of the planned obsolescence.

Because people no longer needed those monitors. Sure, they could repair them (assuming they're broken).. or they could upgrade. Modern monitors use less power, have greater contrast, higher colour accuracy, higher resolution, and faster response times. But of course, we don't need any of that. We should just stop developing it and keep reusing the same stuff, never take the opportunity to move on..

[NiHaoMike]

A set of 3 RAM might be a hard sell when the majority of motherboards out there are dual channel. Similarly, a single RAM module would probably also be a hard sell.

For the bigger server, throw in a GPU and you'll end up with a nice workstation. A 750 will do if you're not planning on gaming or other GPU intensive apps.

[Electronics-Repairman]

I had my first type of dumpster score, I was delivering  to a house and the next door neighbour,asked me could I make use of a printer, I said yes, and made off with the treasure, when I stopped and had a look, it's was a HP laser printer,which I use now for making toner s track schematics for my pcb's definite winner,not only was I given the printer,I was also given 10 of each colour including black cartridges .

[Dave Turner]

Monkeh +x

I've worked for more than one company that learned not to consider IT to be a one time investment. What they have works so why change?

The necessity of the varied methods of communication in the modern world is what. It's for ever changing. If a company doesn't maintain yearly investment in IT it is becomes painfully expensive to upgrade when required.

It seems to average out at about 3 years for laptops and desktops and 5 years for servers. I never did figure out what is is for routers and switches, though I suspect say 7 years.

The companies I worked for tended to recycle rather than dump equipment but bear in mind it is a legal requirement to do so in the UK.

Also strictly speaking dumpster diving is illegal in the UK. Furthermore theoretically under the WEE directive discarded electronic equipment is meant to be, effectively, recycled.

[n45048]

I'll take them if you don't want them Dave. I can always drop in to Baulko after work.

[SeanB]

Get the monitors as well, you can never have too many monitors.

[EEVblog]

Agreed. The video subjects have been crap recently. I'm getting bored. I love the repairs, teardowns and tutorials. I want to LEARN.

There was a repair and troubleshooting video TWO VIDEOS before this one.
And the one before that was a how-to soldering tutorial of sorts.
And then THREE VIDEOS before that was a tutorial video.
People have very selective memories... 

[SeanB]

Agreed. The video subjects have been crap recently. I'm getting bored. I love the repairs, teardowns and tutorials. I want to LEARN.

There was a repair and troubleshooting video TWO VIDEOS before this one.
And the one before that was a how-to soldering tutorial of sorts.
And then THREE VIDEOS before that was a tutorial video.
People have very selective memories... 

What is this memory thing Dave, I cannot remember you ever making a video about BLAH BLAH BLAH...........    

[EEVblog]

These days there are often strict rules on that kind of thing, but I don't know Dave's local situation.

This stuff is not allowed in the garbage room, it's against strata rules. Same with office furniture etc.
But dump it they do, and take it away they do. I don't know what happens to it.

[Lightages]

I just had a thought.

Dave:

You receive all kinds of gifts and cool things from people all over the world. You also seem to have your office where gold falls from the skies sometimes.

There are maker spaces and underprivileged hobbyists all over the place but for you of course the ones that count would be near Sydney.

Why not take advantage of both of these opportunities and start redistributing the dumpster dive things you already have too much of to these needy places?

[Starblazer]

One thing to keep in mind if you find more of these big beefy servers....  sometimes there are microswitches in the main chassis to detect if a panel is off.  If there is a missing panel the fans will go HIGH until the panels are replaced or the unit is turned off. Even after you replace the panel, it takes a few minutes for the system to spin the fans down as it "trusts" the airflow again. The first high-speed spin-up is to obviously test the fans to make sure they can get to the rated speed.

[cdev]

Its my understanding that servers of a certain age are being tossed because the cost of electricity in the older machines is so high relative to the newer machines of equivalent CPU power thats its always cheaper to have a new energy efficient multicore server which uses less power.

The old machines are great running idle, though, or for use when somebody is working and turned off the rest of the time.

But fully loaded and running the economics favor newer hardware by a wide margin.

Newer 64 bit server hardware just uses a LOT fewer watts!