Adam Barr of osOpinion.com has written an entertaining article based on the premise that the $300 Xboxes might be perfect for low-cost Web server farms running Apache.

The artical can be found here.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nf/20010411/tc/8895_1.html

Any opinion on this? :)

Regards,
Ivan Crnkovic

Promo Media d.o.o
Ignjata Dordica 6/II , Zagreb, Croatia
ivan@promo-media.hr
http://www.promo-media.hr

tech wise it's a cool idea...

business wise it's the stupidest idea I'd ever heard.

"Finally, who can discount the coolness factor? You are some big Web hosting company, trying to woo an important client. You bring them back to your facility, throw open the door, and show them -- a room full of rack-mounted Xboxes!! Tell me that wouldn't clinch any sale."

If i was that client I wouldn't be thinking two things...
1) This must be a second rate company for using game consoles as servers!
2) Who was dumb enought to think a game console would make a good server?

Originally posted by Dexter
tech wise it's a cool idea...

business wise it's the stupidest idea I'd ever heard.

"Finally, who can discount the coolness factor? You are some big Web hosting company, trying to woo an important client. You bring them back to your facility, throw open the door, and show them -- a room full of rack-mounted Xboxes!! Tell me that wouldn't clinch any sale."

If i was that client I wouldn't be thinking two things...
1) This must be a second rate company for using game consoles as servers!
2) Who was dumb enought to think a game console would make a good server?


I Agree !

I can see it now... a whole slew of low-cost hosting "companies" run on DSL connections and XBoxes.

If it works its a brilliant idea. Why pay $1500+ for a cobalt box when you can get an xbox for $300. Yeah, bring it on, all that processing power for so cheap!

PS, just got back from liverpool ;) not recommended on a thursday night. no way!

could be interesting.....

First off, Im not a big Microsoft fan so this post is due to be a bit harsh towards MS anyways :)


I can see it already... a box made by MS... and running MS software... anybody else thinking what im thinking?

Regards,

Mike

hah

You ever see that .mpg/.avi/.mov of Bill gates and his associate, introducing windows 98, and it blue screened in front of hundreds/thousands of people?

it was pretty funny
i'll try to find it and post the link sometime

Originally posted by node9
You ever see that .mpg/.avi/.mov of Bill gates and his associate, introducing windows 98, and it blue screened in front of hundreds/thousands of people?
Alas, one of the pitfalls of introducing new products at trade shows.

:)

I prefer the Bill Gates pie in the face video.

Sorta back on topic, I gotta admit that the xbox is a piece of work. I saw a mpeg of a game called HALO on the Xbox and it is one sweet looking game :)

Regards,

Mike

Originally posted by IntelligentHosting.com
Originally posted by node9
You ever see that .mpg/.avi/.mov of Bill gates and his associate, introducing windows 98, and it blue screened in front of hundreds/thousands of people?
Alas, one of the pitfalls of introducing new products at trade shows.

I HAVE to see that...that'd be funny! HAHA

That was one of the only funny blue screens of death - But then again trade shows are notorious for crashing hardware, I went to ECTS a couple of years back and after about 5 hours hardly any of the consoles were still running because they had crashed in the heat (Then again it was in the greenhouse of London - Olympia).

In theory it is a good idea, in practice you would be rideculed, if you can't afford the proper kit then what are you doing in the business (Resellers don't pick on me, I am assuming your upstream uses proper kit).

It is NOT a stupid idea because of the technology... In fact, for years I'v been trying to get ISP's to recognize that laptops are the perfect colocation dedicated box for many small business needs.

Obviously you can select a laptop that is tiny. less than 1U rack, 2 or 3 to a rack level. You could build a special rack suited to a particular model. They are cheap and easy to ship back/forth to customer... almost all laptops have removable hard drives, think about it.

They have built-in UPS systems, built in keyboards and monitors, often have no fans (massive heat sinks), etc. They also conserve power (especially with the screens off).

If someone made a Pentium 600 laptop with 256MB of RAM and a black/white display with a removable 8GB hard drive, they coud take over the colocation market! Most of the cost of modern laptops goes into the screen, get rid of it!

Just think of it. You would get a spare system for your house, and when you wanted to upgrade your colocation site -- you would mail the hard drive to your ISP and instruct them to change it out!

Think of how easy it would be to switch ISP locations.... one hour to run the hard drive across town.

The key is standardizing on 2 or 3 common models that have the right feature set. Especially one that had 4 PC Card slots for multiple Ethernet adapters, etc. Plus one that doesn't run too hot... but getting rid of the expensive color display would go some way toward that. Reliability might be an issue, but that is the company who makes them problem. There is no good reason they shouldn't be as reliable... Especially if you had them in a 60 degree air conditioned room...

Ive thought about those laptop ideas too, the problem is that its such a little case that your going to be insured of overheating problems, also the laptops use non standard components and are hard to work on so what happens when the motherboard frys etc....

Laptop and 1U server's have about the same heat issue :) If you can run 1U servers with 15K hard drives, believe me -- major heat issues :)

Just because a few bad laptops HAVe been built, doesn't mean that a good one can't be built. Like I said, laptops conserve power -- generate a lot less heat.

Every disagrees with the idea for one reason or another. I've never seen anyone try it on a large scale, it was just reference to a equal idea (xbox).

Laptops are 1/2 - 1/4 the size of 1u case's im not sure how your even comparing them.

1 15GB hard drive gives off more heat than an entire laptop, and is much smaller. Anyone heard of power conservation?

Haha, I gve up. Some ideas just can't be accepted by people because they haven't seen it done themselves.

I officially delcare it was a stupid idea and it can't be done :)

I officially delcare it was a stupid idea and it can't be done :) [/B][/QUOTE]

I hase been done all ready.:D You are just to late with this 'I officially delcare' stuff :)

Try This. http://www.aproimage.com/proddetail.asp?linenumber=223

You would definately have less BTU loss, and save a lot of heat with laptop architecture. I thought about it. Problem is this;
1) The 2.5" hard drives are limited for throughput, fail under heavy stress, and cost 3 times more than the normal size drives.
2) The platforms are very expensive, and anything not expensive would be far outperformed by a cheaper 1U box.
3) Your customers don't care if you are saving power, they are paying for colocation.
4) They are limited to 512mb memory, and it is usually very expensive memory, made by only a couple of vendors. (Forget about the ECC functions, too.)
5) If anything goes bad in the system, at all, you might as well throw it away. They are THAT expensive to fix. (Of course, the warranty was voided the second you tore it apart.
6) Check the sustained MTBF (Mean time before failure) on any laptop, and compare it to a server. They aren't made to run 24/7/365.

:homer: :homer: :homer: