World A German Cloud Company Is Offering Free Heat If You Have Room for Some of Its Servers

[tom_mai78101]

Another polar vortex may or may not be on its way, but winter means heat bills no matter what. Unless, of course, you get your heat for free from a cabinet full of servers that's sitting in your living room. If you live in Germany, it’s possible!

Cloud&Heat is a cloud infrastructure company that has started distributing its servers to people who want to store them in exchange for free heat in their homes or offices. Since serversgenerate so much excess heat and cloud companies have to spend a lot to cool them, the idea to repurpose the waste heat isn't new. In fact, Qarnot, a French cloud company, is working on a similar program to Cloud&Heat’s. But as Datacenter Dynamics reports, Cloud&Heat is ahead in terms of implementing the idea.

Customers pay to have a Cloud&Heat fire-proof cabinet installed in their homes or offices (the cost is comparable to installing a standard heating system). Then Cloud&Heat pays for the electricity and Internet service the cabinet needs and the owner gets to enjoy free heat and hot water. Plus Cloud&Heat has some clever fixes in place. If the servers do heavy data processing when no one needs the heat, the system stores hot water in a “buffering tank.” And the Cloud&Heat cabinets can also vent outside in the spring and summer.


Read more here (Slate)

 

[Slapshot136]

But.. what about the noise? server fans tend to be noisy (especially after X years)...

 

[Accname]

Hackers gonna love this. Now they also have physical access to the servers. Nice.

Furthermore, what about maintenance? Hardware failure happens very often with servers. The compancy would have to sent tech support to your house like every month.
And then just imagine what would happen if the company fails and goes bankrupt. You will sit there without heat. And you already paid for the installation. Good luck.