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Cold? Cuddle these HOT GERMAN RACKS, yours for only 12,000 euro – we swear there's an IT angle

Nun, das ist verteiltes Rechnen!

A startup in Germany reckons it's found a, how can we put this, courageous way to merge cloud computing with staying warm at home this winter.

Rather than throw another log on the fire, you can install one of its toasty server cabinets in your basement. Assuming you have a spare ten grand and a 50Mbps pipe to the internet.

Cloud&Heat emerged this week to suggest homeowners and businesses can use hot racks to heat their buildings. For 12,000 euros (£9,500), the company will install a large fireproof and tamper-resistant housing containing a load of compute systems.

The secured cabinet is then hooked up to heat reservoirs and tanks to warm water and air. Extra heating is vented outside the building when not needed.

The company said for smaller buildings the system could provide all the heating needed, while larger buildings could use the system just to heat water or air in combination with boilers and radiators. Once the installation fee is paid, Cloud&Heat covers all electric, data and maintenance costs (including replacing the server hardware every three to five years) for a period of fifteen years.

Buildings are also required to meet a minimum set of power requirements and the ability to run a 50Mbps connection into the server cabinet. Building owners do not have direct access to the servers in order to maintain security protections, assuming they don't smash open the cabinets for whatever reason.

By dotting its servers around Germany, Cloud&Heat believes it can save on data center facility and cooling costs. There's also a potential indirect benefit for the environment as the hot air is being put to practical use rather than carried off by a cooling system.

One wonder what happens during the summer months, though.

Additionally, because the service is only offered to buildings in Germany the company can claim all data is stored within the borders – ie: not the US and NSA – and servers can be maintained and audited.

For cloud customers, the company functions as a traditional public cloud service provider: you can rent Linux and Windows virtual machines with up to 8 vCPUs and 32GB of RAM as well as both block and object storage services.

While the cloud system makes the most, um, sense for Five Eyes-adverse German businesses that can somehow justify storing sensitive data in a stranger's attic, the model could catch on elsewhere should the project prove effective and economical. Perhaps drafty homes in Blighty or the US may soon be heated with the hot air blown out of an in-house server rack. ®

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