[Noisebridge-discuss] VA machines

[Dr. Jesus]

I just got back from VA software where Angela, their Director of IT
Ops, showed me the gear they're trying to find a good home for.

A rough inventory of what's on the menu:

1U Rackables:
  2x 2.66GHz P4 Xeons
  2GB RAM
  ATA disks
2U Rackables:
  2x 2.4GHz P4 Xeons
  4GB RAM
  4x 73GB 10K SCSI disks

There are about 150 of these in 4 racks.  Each rack has an internal
Rackable PDU with a 30A 250V plug, a foundry switch, and a console
server.  Each rack is roughly a ton.  Every rackable I saw had a
roamer OOB management card in it.

(Yes, these are the same machines mentioned here:
http://meta.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/18/1641203&tid=124)

~12 foundry switches, with mainly 10/100 blades and some gig fibre ones.
~20 VA P3s
~4 IBM xseries (P3s and P4s)
1 Arrowpoint CS800 with 3 10/100 blades
~20 random desktop boxes
SanMehat's box (was this the one you were looking for?)
Piles and piles of other miscellaneous datacenter gear, like UPSes
(mostly dead batteries), CSU/DSUs, rackmounted tray consoles, patch
panels, empty cabinets, disks, monitors, parts, etc, etc.

Here are her requirements:

 - These machines must be put to use, not just thrown up on ebay
immediately or used as furniture.
 - The disks absolutely positively must be wiped.  dding zeros isn't
good enough.  A multipass overwrite will be required.  We may or may
not have to pull the disks depending on whether she likes the software
I'll demonstrate tomorrow.
 - The machines must be inventoried, and MAC addresses is fine in lieu
of the serial numbers.
 - She must be present when we're working on the project.

What I'm planning on doing in the short term is setting these up at
the same place the DL380s went for the key cracking experiment.  I'll
have to run them only at night so the power is cheaper and I can use
outside air to cool them.  After that, I have a few ideas:

 - Do mythbusters-style tests of popular datacenter myths ("on this
episode, does spinning down your disks make them die faster?  stay
tuned!")
 - Kit them out to needy groups in the area.
 - Start a commercial key-cracking service.
 - Ask around if another hackerspace has free power somehow and see if
they want it.

I'm taking suggestions.