As technology changes and trust us we know how fast it does. What to do with old hardware or to keep using it is a common question for web hosting companies. At one point we did calculate the risk vs reward of running older hardware, this was about 9 years ago (2005). It was one day after a server crashed that we decided never to risk any old hardware again and to make a mantra for DWHS to constantly upgrade our shared and dedicated servers to the best possible hardware.
But with this, our problem was we had a lot of old servers and parts that were taking up space. This brought up another question; aren’t we wasting this older server? So to keep our mantra to always be upgrading but not cause waste, we got together with Ryan Holmes down in Costa Rica. He runs a school in Costa Rica for kids that have it rough, or I should say just don’t have a lot of money or resources available. To be honest, these kids were much happier than a lot I know here in the States. He brought to our attention that there are thousands of places that would love our old computers, mind you our old servers are faster than most new PCs.
But we ran into a problem, Costa Rica wanted to charge a tax for us for bringing in old servers. Luckily, Ryan knows how to deal with the local government, and they agreed to waive the tax. Now we just had to find a way to get it there without paying more money. After several ideas, one of our employees said he would drive it down. Many risks are driving through third-world countries, but Sean was more than willing (and he spoke Spanish) so he felt o.k about it. Two of his friends went along as well for backup up, lol. After 2 days of long driving they arrived, made it through customs, and now we are happy to place 30 plus computers assembled from the old hardware in schools around Costa Rica.
After the success of this, we found some schools, universities, and colleges around Los Angeles that happily wanted some servers to work with.