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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Laptops as servers?
I had an "retired" Thinkpad running DNS. They definitely have less power comsumption that most other things, but I think the problem is mission critial redundancy. So they'd only be good for things like DNS and SMTP, that have fall backs built into the protocol, or for web servers clusters. It would be interesting to see a laptop with hotswappable motherboards, etc. -- James Smith, CCNA Chief Network/System Administrator DXSTORM.COM http://www.dxstorm.com/ DXSTORM Inc. 2395 Speakman Drive, Suite 2200 Mississauga, ON, L5K 1B3 CANADA Tel: 905-822-1957 (email preferred) Fax: 905-822-0680 1-877-DXSTORM (1-877-397-8676) "Feeling 'connected' with carbon-based dolts holds all the joy of being handcuffed to a dead zebra - it sounds special, but it can get old fast." - The Dilbert Principle - Engineers, Scientists, Programmers and Other Odd People On Wed, 14 Jun 2000, Bennett Todd wrote: > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > This whole rolling-blackout thing inspires me to ask: anybody tried > using laptops as servers for core functions? I'm thinking > infrastructure stuff like DNS and DHCP and Radius and so on, maybe > backup SMTP, whatever else can be shoehorned into it. Who knows, > maybe even Zebra one of these days. Logging servers. Firewalls. > > Sure, if a server job absolutely requires a big farm of fast disks > spread over a bunch of controllers, there's no point in looking at a > laptop. But many server jobs don't. Enough to maybe make some > blackouts hurt less? I'd _Sure_ rather provision UPS support for a > rack full o' laptops than an equivalent amount of compute horses > provisioned with traditional rackmount server gear. > > They've got their own internal UPS, making 'em insensitive to > switchover blips, and their running load is way less than normal > server. 'Specially when their little lids are closed and their > backlights and LCD drivers are all asleep:-). > > Seems like it might even be worthwhile investigating the possibility > of running 'em directly off e.g. 12VDC; I wouldn't be surprised if > the standard power supplies for use in cars didn't end up being more > efficient (spending less watts in the conversion) than the wall > warts. > > Hearing about the Google farm made me think, you know, it might be > slicker to tuck 4 or maybe even 8 laptops into a U than just a pair > of shallow rackmount servers. But then I'm weird:-). > > - -Bennett > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.0.0 (GNU/Linux) > Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org > > iD8DBQE5SEWUL6KAps40sTYRAnjVAJ4qFNB6CKSujOD0id5NgoxEzFpGtgCgg4XS > T6KK6V/pq6I1+WP08hWAeII= > =tykJ > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > >
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