So you want to give us hardware? Great! Here's what we need...
Physical hardware requirements
If you want to donate hardware, there are specific requirements for machine we manage that you should follow. For other donations, please see the donation site.
This list is not final, and if you have questions, please contact us. Also note that we also accept virtual machine "donations" now, for which requirements are different, see below.
Must have
- Out of band management with dedicated network port, preferably a something standard (like serial-over-ssh, with BIOS redirection), or failing that, serial console and networked power bars
- No human intervention to power on or reboot
- Warranty or post-warranty hardware support, preferably provided by the sponsor
- Under the 'ownership' of Tor, although long-term loans can also work
- Rescue system (PXE bootable OS or remotely loadable ISO image)
Nice to have
- Production quality rather than pre-production hardware
- Support for multiple drives (so we can do RAID) although this can be waived for disposable servers like build boxes
- Hosting for the machine: we do not run our own data centers or rack, so it would be preferable if you can also find a hosting location for the machine, see the hosting requirements below for details
To avoid
- proprietary Java/ActiveX remote consoles
- hardware RAID, unless supported with open drivers in the mainline Linux kernel and userland utilities
Hosting requirements
Those are requirements that apply to actual physical / virtual hosting of machines.
Must have
- 100-400W per unit density, depending on workload
- 1-10gbit, unmetered
- dual stack (IPv4 and IPv6)
- IPv4 address space (at least one per unit, typically 4-8 per unit)
- out of band access (IPMI or serial)
- rescue systems (e.g. PXE booting)
- remote hands SLA ("how long to replace a broken hard drive?")
Nice to have
- "clean" IP addresses (for mail delivery, etc)
- complete /24 IPv4, donated to the Tor project
- private VLANs with local network
- BGP announcement capabilities
- not in europe or northern america
- free, or ~ 150$/unit
Virtual machines requirements
Must have
Without those, we will have to be basically convinced to accept those machines:
- Debian OS
- Shell access (over SSH)
- Unattended reboots or upgrades
The latter might require more explanations. It means the machine can be rebooted without intervention of an operator. It seems trivial, but some setups make that difficult. This is essential so that we can apply Linux kernel upgrades. Alternatively, manual reboots are acceptable if such security upgrades are automatically applied.
Nice to have
Those we would have in an ideal world, but are not deal breakers:
- Full disk encryption
- Rescue OS boot to install our own OS
- Remote console
- Provisioning API (cloud-init, OpenStack, etc)
- Reverse DNS
- Real IP address (no NAT)
To avoid
Those are basically deal breakers, but we have been known to accept those situations as well, in extreme cases:
- No control over the running kernel
- Proprietary drivers