The Infamous EDIS Free RPi Colo
This article is to celebrate and commemorate the' 10th anniversary of the legendary EDIS Raspberry Pi colocation which was launched back in October 2012.
This was one of the craziest things we've ever done :-) We'd like to share some interesting fact and figures of what we started 10 Years ago:
EDIS hosts more than 500 RPi in its Graz (Austria) based facility since 2012. You really had to be quick when ordering, because a /24 IPv4 space which accounts for approximately 250 slots, was gone in less than 1 hour! According to Facebook statistics, the webpage hosting the free RPi colo offer was shared 440 times. 98% of the machines which have been sent to us between 2012 and 2015 are still up and running (as of Jan 2022).
Extremely Robust Devices
Some SD-cards had to be replaced/re-flashed during the last decade, but these tiny raspberries are really (very!) stable. About 1% of the boxes died and were replaced by their owners. One single RPi was sent back to his owner in California (was some kind of a limited edition, valuable first batch device).
EDIS received boxes with Raspberries from 4 continents. Our Postman loved us! He came every day with Santa-sized sacks full of parcels filled with little boxes from all-over the world. The main-load we received around Christmas 2012. Clients sent parcels expedited, some using overnight couriers, spending 150$ or more to bring their RPi online the very next day :-)
Raspberries and Chocolate
Each box contained the RPi and loads of interesting chocolates, cookies (even some amazing fossils!) from the senders' countries!
Initially, the entire community thought we were mega-fraudsters, but we delivered what we promised :-) And we keep our promise: the service remains free!
https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=88277
https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/raspberry-strudel-my-raspberry-pi-austria
https://www.dnorth.net/2012/10/22/rpi-colo/
Please note that EDIS has no RPi hosting-slots available.
We might be back with some Raspberry Pi VPS, who knows ;-)
