The data center compute infrastructure market exceeds $280 billion¹ in annual spend. While large cloud players like Amazon, Google, Alibaba, and Oracle dominate this spend, organizations across every industry continue to invest in on-premises (on-prem) data centers to fuel business operations and spur scientific insight.
While news headlines spotlight $100 billion-plus megadeals to fuel entirely new ways to compute requiring a next generation of AI data centers, many organizational IT budgets can’t stretch to cover the infrastructure upgrades required to meet everyday compute demands.
Enter RackRenew, a subsidiary of Sims Lifecycle Services. The company has found an opportunity in this gap. By pairing Sims’ large-scale data center decommissioning services with a recommissioning model, the company turns retired hardware into a fresh wave of data center capacity, unlocking infrastructure purchase opportunities for organizations seeking foundational compute at better price points while extending the lifespan of servers, storage, and networking gear.
This paper explores the concepts behind RackRenew’s business, the process it uses to ensure pre-owned systems are optimized for reliable market deployment, and the broad range of industries benefitting from tapping pre-owned hardware for their computing requirements.
Meet OCP: Industry Standard Hardware Configurations
To fully understand the RackRenew opportunity, it’s important to look at the data center market, especially within the hyperscale computing environments of large cloud players. Here, operators have invested in open-standard hardware configuration design through the Open Compute Project (OCP), an organization founded in 2011 by Facebook and leading compute-infrastructure players who collectively saw a need for collaborative design of infrastructure to accelerate market innovation and dial in the best technology for large-scale deployments.
As the data-center market has evolved, the organization has grown to hundreds of members and produced specifications for efficient platform designs, rack configurations, and even advancements in everything from microprocessor-chiplet standards to data-safe hard drives able to be certified for redeployment. Hyperscale data centers utilize specs developed within OCP as foundations for their bespoke hardware that they commission from original-design manufacturers, and OCP-inspired infrastructure is seen as some of the most performant-efficient on the planet.
With compute infrastructure foundational to these companies’ core businesses, fleet management is a competitive lever. This means that infrastructure is utilized to maximize service profitability and then decommissioned responsibly, protecting any private customer data residing on systems in a tightly controlled process. System-refresh cycles are closely held, but broad estimates project refresh cycles at four to six years for general compute, with tighter refresh windows for the accelerated platforms utilized for AI workloads. And with hyperscalers running millions of servers, the annual equipment outflow is massive. This has led OCP and others in the industry to ask whether retired systems can be re-certified and redeployed, extending their value beyond recycling.
The Tioga Pass Platform
Open hardware designs yield optimized platforms uniquely designed for performance and performance efficiency at scale. Tioga Pass is a high-volume standard spec available from RackRenew today, featuring a 2/3 OU design (three 2 OU-high units can be seated on one rack row) OCP servers. This allows up to 48 servers to be deployed in a single rack. This server was based on a spec submitted by Facebook with infrastructure now reaching end of planned life in hyperscale data centers.
Image Source: Open Compute Project
The Re-Manufactured Infrastructure Opportunity
The reality is that refurbished, second-hand systems have not traditionally been embraced holistically by the market. Re-sale markets tend to be fractured and difficult to navigate, and quality of gear is uneven. Assembling a rack configuration of like equipment can be difficult, and finding new components for years-old systems may make some IT organizations feel like compute archaeologists. While all of these concerns are valid, reliance on OCP-standard infrastructure and streamlined delivery through global distribution changes the game. This infrastructure was built for the most advanced data-center operators on the planet, and RackRenew has tapped advanced recommissioning to ensure that this level of quality is maintained for a pre-owned sale at scale.
Considering potential utilization for this pre-owned equipment quickly reveals a variety of benefits. Price-performance ratios are extremely attractive versus the cost of new hardware. Pre-owned OCP hardware with CPUs and other components tuned for large-scale deployment are uniquely attractive to buyers seeking efficiency and power capabilities not available among B2B or consumer offerings. Global availability at high scale can help some organizations deploy infrastructure and navigate through new-product supply constraints. RackRenew’s recommissioning process is proven, having been operating for years, and lead times are minimized due to the ongoing stream of decommissioned OCP hardware. Pre-owned hardware has proven to provide a full lifecycle of service for buyers when put to the test in data centers. Finally, the second life of pre-owned equipment represents a major win for organizational ESG objectives.
Compute Project
All of these reasons make pre-owned infrastructure highly attractive. But this gear does not fit every organizational objective. Careful evaluation of specific compute needs is critical for targeting pre-owned for deployment, and that starts with an evaluation of workload requirements. Here, classes of workloads including software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) offerings have emerged as leading contenders for the performance delivered by this infrastructure. Additionally, some enterprise workloads within on-prem data centers that are not compute-bound may reliably operate foundational business functions on pre-owned equipment. Finally, some vertical applications like content-delivery networks, heat-recapturing PaaS providers, and scientific compute clusters within universities benefit from the price-performance advantages of the infrastructure.
Pre-Owned Infrastructure Workload Classes
| Workload Class | Buying Triggers | Target Applications |
|---|---|---|
| PaaS and Bare Metal | PaaS and Bare Metal providers are attracted by transparent price-performance and fast-footprint growth prospects of pre-owned infrastructure with rapid delivery / short lead times. | These customers may target general compute, storage applications, and edge-node deployment as attractive for the price-performance advantages present with this infrastructure. |
| SaaS Platforms | SaaS players that manage their own infrastructure may be attracted to data security, privacy and sovereignty offered by bringing workloads on prem at affordable prices. | Workload targets in this space include stateless front ends, analytics tiers, and storage environments. |
| Enterprise Cloud | Enterprises with budget constraints seeking repatriation of workloads, cloud sovereignty, data security and privacy, and on-prem governance may see benefit from pre-owned configuration deployment. | Horizontal applications focus on digital-service delivery within the enterprise. Vertical applications include CDNs, gaming verticals and content publishing. |
| Heat Reuse Innovators | Data-center operators with sophisticated heat-reuse mechanisms may prefer this equipment for trusted compute plus the secondary benefit of heat recovery to feed building and swimming-pool heat. | Edge-workload implementations with general compute are targeted for these “in-community” deployments. |
| Academia and Research | Universities with research demands that stretch department-budget realities are attracted to pre-owned-infrastructure price-performance benefits. | Technical workloads leveraging unique rack designs targeted for compute clusters composed of pre-owned systems. |
Some customers may be skittish about specialized rack technologies utilized by hyperscalers, representing a challenge for standard rack environments. Open Rack specifications have been designed to fit more compute per square foot into a standard-sized chassis, meaning that while OCP cabinets have an interior space 2 inches wider than standard mass-market systems, the data-center floor footprints are consistent with standard racks—making them easy to forklift-deploy into brownfield environments. Other unique features include front-of-rack network cabling, allowing single-sided maintenance (standard racks route networking to the rear), along with design refinements like toolless access that improve serviceability. While these features may take a bit of time for IT operations teams to grow accustomed to, with RackRenew’s integration support, customers will be able to easily deploy fleets of renewed OCP servers just as they do with commercial hardware but would find difficult with other legacy gear.
Pre-Tuned for Reliable Deployment
Refurbished computers evoke potential issues with quality and endurance, and delivery of a rack of infrastructure from another data center may spark concerns about deployability, long-term reliability, and manageability. RackRenew takes re-commissioning seriously with a rigorous process for decommission and recommission readiness. Let’s walk through the steps for RackRenew delivery:
- Secure Decommission — Decommission begins before a server shuts down with rigorous project planning and asset inventory ensuring an efficient and secure path for removal of infrastructure out of hyperscale environments. This ensures that equipment is handled with white-glove care from data center to decommission circular centers where a secure chain of custody is utilized to track every component. This stage of the process also features data sanitization including employment of standard protocols like NIST 800-88 and sanitization certification.
- RackRenew Configuration Readiness — Once racks arrive at RackRenew, systems are put through rigorous grading and testing to isolate failure nodes and remove them from infrastructure slated for pre-owned sale. Engineers refurbish systems with vetted components as required and align firmware baselines with proven, standard configurations for broad-market utilization. A QA process with multi-day burn-in tests CPU, IO, thermals and power to ensure each system performs within spec guidelines. BMC and security baselines are refreshed and tested, and documentation including BOM and manifests are created for new owners.
- Rack Re-Integration — Once refurbishment and configuration steps are completed successfully, systems are re-integrated into Open Rack version 2 (ORV2) standard racks, including integration with a common busbar power shelf that delivers up to 15 % more power efficiency than traditional rack-power delivery. Racks at this phase may be customized for customer requirements, including deployment of SSDs into servers—today’s designs featuring up to 8 SSDs per system for standard servers and up to 32 SSDs for specialized storage boxes. At the end of this stage, racks are ready for re-commission in customer data centers.
Customizable Designs
RackRenew offers standard configurations tuned for technical research, cloud, and storage environments. Additionally, we work with customers to customize configurations for unique workload requirements based on available infrastructure.
Good for the Bottom Line, and the Planet
While many customers will be attracted to the 40–60 % CapEx savings from pre-owned infrastructure, the carbon savings and commitment to circularity fit perfectly into corporate ESG commitments. By utilizing re-commissioned gear, RackRenew customers reduce emissions by up to 80 % versus new-infrastructure deployments. When comparing a 48-node Tioga Pass system versus deployment of a new Dell R640 configuration, RackRenew estimates savings of up to >60,000 kg of CO₂ emissions when repurposing the entire system configuration. Each customer will have different priorities for reuse of CPUs, DIMMs, and SSDs, and with rigorous testing plus new standards for safe reuse of SSD technology coming from the OCP SAFE initiative, the reality of full-system reuse is becoming tangible for many customers.
Proven Success
While the concept of pre-owned-hardware deployment of OCP configurations may be new to many buyers, many companies have already started to benefit from this infrastructure.
Cato Digital, a leading provider of low-carbon bare-metal services, has tapped RackRenew infrastructure to reduce infrastructure CapEx by 50 % while reducing their carbon footprint by 80 %. Their utilization of custom-configured racks tuned for Cato Digital customer requirements has enabled the company to scale PaaS services faster while delivering on their commitment to sustainability.
Qarnot Computing, a heat-recapturing PaaS provider, has utilized RackRenew equipment to cut infrastructure costs in half while consuming 20 % of carbon from infrastructure. Their commitment to heat recapture extends sustainable compute through capturing heat for their local communities.
These are two of many examples of organizations leveraging the price-performance advantages, unique infrastructure capabilities, and deployment scale to drive operational success. If your organization seeks similar benefits to fuel your growth or deliver competitive advantage with customers, please reach out to kick off a conversation with the RackRenew team today. To find out more about the solutions we offer and our global distribution network, please visit rackrenew.com.
© RackRenew, 2025 ¹ IDC 2025: Worldwide Server Market Revenue / Enterprise Storage Systems Market Insight / Crehan Research Data Center Ethernet Switch Market Report.
