Megathread to track Hyperscaler liquidations

[bryan_v]

Hey Everyone,

Do we have a megathread to track liquidation events from hyperscalers?

I think anything like AWS dumping CPUs and SSDs, or Azure dumping switches might be useful to track somewhere. That way we know when to troll ebay for hardware drops.

Cheers,
Bryan

 

[Bert]

I think information is mostly regional for small shops. Amazon / MS will not deal with individuals. I see azure cpus on ebay so companies are somehow picking them up.


Esisoinc was a great retailer selling recycled hardware and on ebay there used to be awesome deals when a retailer got a big pile of recycled hardware a few years ago. I don't see such deals anymore and Esisoinc more than doubled their price.

 

[bryan_v]

@Bert I'm referring to AWS's replacement of Xeon 8124M CPUs back in mid 2020, and Facebook's upgrade of P4500 SSDs to Optane back in mid 2019.

Essentially what happens is the hyperscalers sell these by the palette/container to their prime liquidators, then those prime liquidators break the pallets down either into individual units to sell on ebay, or smaller bundles to sell to smaller liquidators. However, eventually they all end up on ebay and they crash the price for one particular part.

For example, those 4TB P4500 drives fell to $350 when Facebook dumped them, but 6 months later they were up to $450, and now go for about $650.

If we had a megathread, anyone who was interested could just watch the thread and know when to start trolling ebay. Otherwise we just have to get lucky to catch a post, if someone posts about it either here, or on the L1 forum, or LTT forum. By the time the news hits reddit r/homelab they'll probably be gone inside of a week. I assume between Patrick and all the other people here that talk to the hyperscalers, someone will hear about the event before the giant wave hits ebay.

 

[Evan]

Purely by chance I have been a couple of time at one of my colos and seen rack after rack of AWS stuff going out, but I have never seen it hit the used market. (have seen other smaller players stuff make it through to the channel though).
when we dispose a lot of stuff in bulk the lease companies tell me that they often take stuff like our to Japan. Yeah I was shocked too,
but they say there is a market there for somewhat recent equipment, I think mostly for DR usage.

 

[bryan_v]

Funny you should say that, when Wendell@L1Tech bought his two Xeon 8124M from AWS, I'm pretty sure he got them from some seller in Shenzhen, China.

I think what is happening is that Asian traders are buying the pallets here, shipping them to Asia where they either get broken down and "refurbished" by some factory and resold as part of a system, or sold as replacement parts. I suspect this is how alot of AliExpress and TaoBao sellers get their components.

 

[Evan]

Funny you should say that, when Wendell@L1Tech bought his two Xeon 8124M from AWS, I'm pretty sure he got them from some seller in Shenzhen, China.

I think what is happening is that Asian traders are buying the pallets here, shipping them to Asia where they either get broken down and "refurbished" by some factory and resold as part of a system, or sold as replacement parts. I suspect this is how alot of AliExpress and TaoBao sellers get their components.

that would make some sense, wondered how so much stuff ends up being from China when it’s things I didn’t to be coming from there.