Luxauratus is an early-stage R&D project rebuilding decommissioned hardware into dense, low-cost service hosting through custom cooling, power, rack and pcb solutions to keep it running efficiently long after its EOL.
The problem I'm trying to solve
Enterprise and industrial hardware gets retired long before it stops being useful. Typically decommissioned in bulk, replaced on a refresh cycle, and headed for landfill despite the silicon inside still having years of working life left in it.
This makes sense from the perspective of a profit driven business, when your systems reach their end of life (EOL) the risk of losing software support is raised, the maintainance and energy cost grows and the hardware can struggle to keep up with growing compute demand. At a certain point it becomes more cost effective to just upgrade and bin the old hardware.
My goal with Luxauratus is to (at least partially) interrupt that cycle by sourcing retired hardware cheaply and using custom cooling, power delivery, and rack & PCB design to run it efficiently and reliably outside the original conditions it was built for. Because the hardware itself is close to free, the primary consumer overhead is electricity, which I'm actively experimenting with ways to optimize.
The end goal is low-cost service hosting for people who don't need brand-new industry-grade infrastructure: small Minecraft servers, personal websites, docker instances, etc. It's built for anyone priced out of commercial alternatives as well as those looking for a more sustainable option.
TL:DR Old hardware cheap. Old hardware still work. Landfill bad
Fine tuning for comparable performance
New technology has gotten so powerful that stock, modern day, general-purpose software often wastes a meaningful share of what little headroom these old systems have left. So almost everything that actually runs on these nodes is being written from scratch in Rust with clever optimisations and a strict no waste, no bloat philosophy.
By purpose-building programs designed around the exact constraints of a specific machine, we can free up more compute power to put towards the actual workload, getting comparable single application performance. The aim is for the software to get more out of a given watt which matters a lot when the electricity bill is the main ongoing cost.
With this low overhead philosophy in mind, the current base OS across every node is Alpine Linux. Chosen for the same reason as the custom Rust services, Alpine Linux is a musl-based distribution with essentially none of the bloat a general-purpose OS carries by default. This decision is subject to future change if a more suitable method is found.
TL:DR Custom, lightweight & optimised software go brrrrrr
What the current R&D efforts are going towards
Sourcing decommissioned enterprise and industrial parts cheaply, and working out which retired hardware still has genuine service life left.
Testing custom cooling and power delivery methods so older, less efficient silicon can still run cost-effectively today.
Designing backplanes, sleds, and enclosures that fit recovered hardware into dense rack layouts.
Writing the software that actually runs on these nodes from scratch in Rust, and finding clever ways to optimise for hardware specific features
Who I am and why I care
I'm Lux.
Luxauratus is a solo passion project, run out of my own homelab in Far North Queensland. The name came from he latin words Lux (meaning light) & Auratus (meaning gilded) - Gilded Light.
I've always hated throwing hardware away. I believe every piece of tech that gets decommissioned or binned still has real working life in it, and letting that go to landfill has always upset me. I'm a big advocate for reusing and recycling, throwing away things that still have use and life is just a huge waste of both the materials themselves and of the carbon and energy that went into making them in the first place.
This project is my attempt to actually do something about that, rather than just being annoyed by it. I've always enjoyed collecting old, cheap, otherwise-discarded hardware, my first smart phone was a frankensteins monster of broken Iphones, 14yr old me managed to collect broken Iphones and without online help or prior knowledge, use the still serviceable parts to get something working.
Maybe I'm delusional, but I cant bring myself to let still working hardware end up either in the ground, or collecting dust. I'm confident that with custom, purpose built solutions, I can give this "e-waste" purpose again.
TL:DR I'm sentimental, love tech, and waste upsets me. (possibly delusional)
— Lux
Where things stand today
This is a proof-of-concept build, not a shipping product. A small test cluster of recovered hardware is currently being assembled to validate density, power, and thermal assumptions before anything scales further. Custom fabrication is already being designed for manufacturing and testing.
As of right now, there are a large list of factors that need to be organised and consolidated in a way thats easy to measure and digest. Updates and metrics WILL be shared Via the company socials when it is all set up and validated.
If this is your kind of project too
Luxauratus is a one-person project right now, but it doesn't have to stay that way. If any of this: reclaiming e-waste, building cheap and efficient infrastructure, doing hands-on experimental engineering — sounds like your kind of thing, I'd love to hear from you!
I'm not currently offering paid positions as this is early-stage, self-funded R&D — but I'm very open to hearing from people who want to contribute skills, time, or ideas because the cause itself is interesting to them.
Custom chassis, sleds, mounts, and enclosures for all types of hardware.
Custom backplanes, breakout boards, and power delivery circuit designs.
Lightweight, purpose-built services and cluster tooling, written in RUST.
Designing and wiring up reliable, efficient and SAFE networking across node clusters.
If you don't possess any of the listed skills but would still love to get involved and think you could be useful otherwise, don't be afraid to still reach out! - I'm open to suggestions and would love any help lightening the workload.
Supplier & general enquiries
