World of warcraft server blade

A few months ago, I was flying to SC23 in Denver and had an exciting gentleman sitting on the plane next to me between Phoenix and Denver. He told me tales of how Blizzard decided to auction off its servers to its devoted fans, benefitting the St. Jude charity. This story is over a decade old, so it is time that we record the oral history for more to hear.

The Oral History of Selling World of Warcraft Server Blades

World of Warcraft was a massively popular game, especially back in 2007-2011. Even about a decade and a half later, estimates still put the number of daily logins at over 1 million people. Logging into a server is important. Each player’s character is tied to a named realm that is online almost constantly, save for scheduled and unscheduled maintenance. In an open-world game, having a server that tracks the state of all of the players and NPCs on the server is important.



The game launch in November 2004, had already seen some hardware challenges. A big server cluster that was running the game’s beta was in the path of Hurricane Ivan in September 2004. The data center, just weeks before launch, was damaged by the storm, and water leaked into the fa

Charity Auction — Buy a Server Blade from Your Realm



#1 - Jan. 17, 2012, 4:46 p.m.



If you thought you had missed your chance to own a piece of Blizzard Entertainment history, we have good news for you: it’s not too late!Starting on
January 23
, we'll be releasing the last batch of retired EU server blades, which will be available for bidding on eBay. Don’t miss your final opportunity to take part in this charity auction — net proceeds will be donated to the
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
.

St. Jude is a pediatric hospital and research facility, where patients from Europe and around the world are cared for. European medical professionals benefit from the discoveries made at St. Jude in their treatment of children with cancer and other serious illnesses. Partner clinics across the globe are aided by the hospital's valuable research.






World of Warcraft 15th Anniversary Retired Server Blade








$
649.99

Buy It Now

or Best Offer

free,30-Day Returns



Seller Store
mr_white_01
(210)100.0%,


Location:
Celina, Texas 750**, US

Ships to:
US,

Item:
297294269787


Type:
Collectibles

Video Game Series:
World of Warcraft (WoW)

condition:
Open box


Status:
Opens box. New. Never hung or displayed. Kept in bubble wrap. Comes with original display feet.

They’re selling for $600 – 800+ regularly; $2,000+ at charity events. The price is fair though I am accepting offers.

Description:
Celebrate a decade of epic fantasy with the World of Warcraft 15th Anniversary Retired Server Blade. A treasure for collectors and gamers alike, this commemorative server blade is a tangible piece of WoW’s rich history. It’s a must-have for fans 

That WoW server blade



EDIT: This was posted to Hacker News. More details about the hardware can be found there!


I won this e-bay auction.

The item that was aucioned was an authentic decomissioned server blade for the World of Warcraft realm that I play on, Sunstrider (EU). On launch, each WoW realm was powered by 4 of these blades, and I got my hands on one of them when they auctioned them off after doing upgrades across the board for all realms.

I got lots of internet points as a result. Here's a direct link to the gallery, which at the time of writing has 1.9 million views.

Someone PM-ed me recently on Reddit, asking which exact model and type of server blade I have. So I thought I'd document that here, in an epic instance of
OP delivers
, for the sake of Google, the internet, and the future.

The server

The server is a HP blade server. I've never tried booting it, doing so would require access to an expensive proprietary HP blade server enclosure. These aren't exactly standard ethernet and AC ports.





The SCSI bays are empty anyway, so I don't have an interest in booting it. (Bonus curious daughter in the background.)



The exact make and model is HP BL25p



Som