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Paid off my server hardware, now it's actually cheap

Dedicated Servers by MeritBudi 14 replies 5K views
fanboy

Member

#11

Did anyone actually solve the labor tracking thing? I tried logging my hours for a quarter and gave up after three weeks. Reinstalling the iDRAC firmware at 2am because it bricked during an update doesn't feel like billable time when it's your own box.

kat_fold said:
The labor hours one is real.

Real and basically impossible to compare. My "maintenance" is mostly running Ansible playbooks I wrote two years ago while watching TV. Is that labor? The spreadsheet says zero but my weekend says otherwise.

Also 52 days late but @MeritBudi — did you factor drive replacement into your TCO? R740 backplane loves eating SAS cables around year three in my experience.

Joy

Member

#12

156 days quiet but this thread still relevant to me

MeritBudi said:
Breakeven already happen at month 14

Did you ever factor in the labor hours kat_fold mentioned? I am curious because my own R640 at InterServer colo still has 8 months left on finance, and I want to know if your spreadsheet included remote hands cost or you drive to the datacenter yourself

Also did you keep the same spec for whole 18 months or you upgraded RAM/disk somewhere in the middle, that usually breaks the TCO calculation if you are not careful

kat_fold

Moderator

Moderator

#13

Did anyone actually end up sharing those spreadsheets? 244 days and still curious what depreciation method people landed on.

MeritBudi said:
Breakeven already happen at month 14

Straight line or did you write the residual value down to zero? Asking because I never know what to assume for a R740 in year 5.

~be kind or be gone~
SingaporeRep

Member

Benchmark Addict

#14

449 days and nobody answered the actual question

MeritBudi said:
Who else already pay off their hardware? Share your number dong

I did the same math on a used InterServer box, breakeven at month 11 because I bought depreciated already

Labor hours are real though, that one weekend I drove to the datacenter at 2am because a DIMM threw errors

Still worth it, but only if you actually enjoy the hardware part

fio, iperf, geekbench. results or gtfo.
PetraSuper

Member

network boot believer

#15

I went looking for depreciation templates and came up empty.

kat_fold said:
The labor hours one is real.
This especially. I finally logged my time after a RAM swap last quarter and it was embarrassing. Two hours of troubleshooting what turned out to be a seated module, plus the drive to the data center. At my contracting rate that "free" repair cost more than three months of Vultr. Still wouldn't go back to renting though. There's something about knowing the NIC that makes debugging less guesswork.

boot anything, anywhere, anytime

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