The Planet Server Challenge

In booth 303-305 on the 2010 SXSW Interactive Trade Show floor, Phil Jackson demonstrates how to complete The Planet Server Challenge: Rebuild our Pentium4 server as fast as you can.

The fastest server builder at the conference will win an ASUS Eee PC netbook, so if you think you've got what it takes, stop by and try it out!

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• The Planet
• SXSW
• theplanet
• server
• build
• competition

[theplanetdotcom]

All of that being said, the response we've gotten to this little trade show challenge is inspiring. We're definitely going to incorporate some of these comments in future iterations of the challenge, so keep the feedback coming.

1U server instead of a tower? We can probably do that. Having it post before recording the time? Probably not going to happen at a trade show. How do you think we can make the competition better given the objectives explained below?

[theplanetdotcom]

It's awesome to see such passionate comments, and some great ideas have been posted. This is the first time we've offered this kind of competition at a trade show, and the interest is clearly off-the-charts. The winner of the netbook ended up with a time of 30.7 seconds, and we'll be posting that video soon.

It should be made clear that in no way did we intend to represent that this was "building" a server. The Server Challenge was to "rebuild" the server given a few disassembled components ...

[theplanetdotcom]

The Server Challenge was designed with two purposes in mind: 1) Techs would jump at the chance to show off their expertise [which was done at the show and here in the comments], 2) We wanted to make the challenge appeal to as broad of an audience as possible, and 3) We wanted it to be short and sweet.

We opted for a tower server in consideration of the travel to and from the show (in a car driving from Houston to Austin), and it offered a little more space and familiarity for participants.

[theplanetdotcom]

No one in The Planet's booth at SXSW actually works in any of The Plane's 8 data centers ... we were looking to engage an audience that otherwise may have just taken some collateral and a t-shirt [that can be unfortunately misread when covered by a lanyard :-) ].

In that sense, it was a success.

[pacbowl]

But what about all the little case wires that control stuff like the power button, reset, HDD LED, etc....

That takes a lot longer than just plopping in a cpu, ram and hooking up some power and eide cables. What was shown are only the final steps in building a 10 year old box.

Make it real build competition, like mounting the MB, PSU, drives and seeing if it posts.

Also the floppy isn't hooked up.

[theplanetdotcom]

Thanks for the comment, pacbowl!

You're absolutely right about the time it takes to put together a server. This challenge was created specifically for a trade show environment where participants may be intimidated by the task and don't have much time to participate.

I'm not sure about the age of this particular server, but you're right that it's at least 10 years old. Given the number of people attempting the challenge, it's got zero chance of ever booting again. :-)

[Balefulmoon]

Tell me I'm not the only one who initially thought his shirt said

"Herpes without capes."

[sacramentalist]

HERPES WITHOUT CAPES?

[KabbishComics]

I was there (Russell Bishop) and got 42.7 !

[pacbowl]

It could be a contest with varying difficulties. Starting from beginner to very advanced or something. Maybe beginner could be the hd cable unplugged and that's it. Then it scales up to installing a card or 2, ram, drives, cables, etc..

Different bracket levels will have different times obviously and the prizes could get better the more advanced you get. Keep the cases simple for the most part, but if you really wanna go crazy advanced, make it full server build and post.

[miggyb89]

What, they're not going to plug it in and test it?

[langelagrenouille]

sadly... i saw the same thing :D

[Evi1M4chine]

Looks like no training at all. Any random dude would be just as fast.