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To comply with licensing rules I need to use dedicated physical servers for a particular solution. These can be relatively low spec. Due to physical hosting considerations I need to maximise the number of physical servers I can squeeze into the available space. What's the best solution?

To give an example, Dell's m1000e chassis is 10U, and provides 16 slots, so that's 0.625 U per server.

Thanks for your help!

user1379351
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  • I need more requirements, or is everything els unnecessary? Maximum Power consumption, throughput, disk capacity, Network Bandwidth, connectivity (USB,PCIe,Firewire,SATA/SAS,ect), heat production/cooling requirement... – Daywalker Aug 21 '13 at 11:04
  • Otherwhise Raspberrys, Intel Atom Boards, Sheevaplugs, or even Smartphones could be A possible Server. (i forgot to mention if the price per Unit/as a bunde is a requirement/limit?) – Daywalker Aug 21 '13 at 11:33
  • Questions seeking __product__, service, or learning material recommendations are off-topic __because they tend to become obsolete quickly__. – TheCleaner Aug 21 '13 at 12:55
  • The smallest standard physical server is 1U. Blades can be substantially "smaller" (in a "machines per U" sense) while still fitting into a standard rack (and most tools/licensing schemes consider the blade to be a physical server -- check with your vendor though). From there your options move to "non-rackable" systems (Mac Mini, Raspberry Pi, etc.) -- Given no other information I'd say go with blade systems like the Dell m1000e or similar IBM/HP solutions. – voretaq7 Aug 21 '13 at 14:07
  • Fair enough that this is off topic, and I appreciate the reasons given. However, wouldn't it be useful when making such judgements to suggest alternative websites to post such a question? It's a valid question that the sys ad community are bested placed to help with. – user1379351 Aug 21 '13 at 16:06
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    @user1379351 HP's moonshot blades maybe? – Shane Madden Aug 22 '13 at 06:50

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A bunch of raspberries would do the job :D If you strictly want to spare on rack units i'd check Supermicro microclouds up to 12 Blades in 3 RU.

user1293137
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    lol. Had thought raspberries, but then I remembered customers occasionally tour datacentres. You could imagine their faces when they saw what they were hosted on... – user1379351 Aug 21 '13 at 10:36
  • You could hide a bunch of them in a wonderful chassis full of blinking leds and fans :D – user1293137 Aug 21 '13 at 12:34
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    Maybe there's a market for a pi-chassis. – user1379351 Aug 21 '13 at 16:08
  • @user1379351 If they were mounted in a professional-looking custom chassis I wouldn't see a problem. (Then it's a box full of circuit boards, which is what literally every other server is) – user253751 Oct 08 '16 at 07:57
  • I know of a Dutch provider offering [Raspberry Pi colocation](https://www.pcextreme.com/colocation/raspberry-pi). – SQB Oct 13 '16 at 12:23