In the streets of Havana, American cars from the 1950s still chug along, lovingly maintained for decades despite their age: Ford Fairlanes and Falcons, Pontiacs and Studebakers, Bel Airs and Stylelines, as well as FIATs and Alfa Romeos, Mercedes-Benz SLs and Volkswagen Karmann-Ghias, and Soviet-era Ladas and Volgas.

It’s not that Cubans have an island-wide classic car fetish.  These “Yank tanks” are the product of ingenuity in the face of scarcity.  Cuba, under decades of U.S. sanctions, couldn’t import new cars or parts, so it preserved what it had.

A similar phenomenon may be emerging in the world of web hosting, where rising tariffs and global supply chain disruptions are pushing providers toward holding onto aging server hardware far longer than usual. The “Cubanization” of servers may be a looming reality.

Over the past several years, geopolitical tensions have increasingly influenced the availability and pricing of IT hardware. Tariffs on Chinese-manufactured components—motherboards, processors, networking gear—have driven up prices significantly. In response, many hosting providers are delaying server upgrades, scavenging parts, and optimizing legacy systems instead of cycling out hardware on the usual 3-to-5-year schedule. This retrenchment mirrors the Cuban strategy: make do with what you have, because replacement is too expensive or too risky.

The impact is especially pronounced in the budget and mid-tier segments of the market, where tight margins make new hardware procurement a tough sell.  We often see servers with 10- or even 15-year-old CPUs – e.g., the L5520, a 4c/8t 2.5Ghz released in early 2009.  Just the other day, we posted a $39/month offer for an e3-1260v6, which was first released in 2017.

The Coming Tariffs

When a new rack server suddenly costs 20% more due to import duties or shipping costs, many providers will stick with existing gear.  Systems on DDR3/DDR4 should be in the twilight of their careers but instead are still being offered.

There’s also a growing ecosystem around this aging hardware. Hosting forums and sysadmin communities are full of tips on BIOS modding, undervolting CPUs, and squeezing more IOPS out of decade-old SATA SSDs. Like Cuban mechanics who keep ‘57 Chevys running with homemade gaskets and Soviet-era spark plugs, sysadmins are learning to coax performance out of machines that were considered obsolete years ago, and ever-improving hypervisors and kernels helps.

Yet, the Cubanization of servers carries risks. Older hardware is inherently less power-efficient, for one.  Long-expired warranties are another.  In Cuba, broken cars sometimes sit idle for months while a rare part is machined by hand. While clever sysadmins can work miracles, they’re not going to make their own RAM, so the impacts are more immediate: lost customers.

Then again, for $39/month, a lot of hobbyists will roll the dice.

The environmental consequences are not as straightforward as “old system uses more juice”.  Extending the life of hardware reduces e-waste and delays the carbon-intensive process of manufacturing new servers.

There’s also a broader economic implication. Hosting infrastructure underpins everything from small business websites to global SaaS platforms. If the foundational layer of that infrastructure becomes brittle and outdated due to geopolitical pricing pressures, the entire stack above it could suffer. Performance, scalability, and security all depend on reliable, modern hardware. A Cubanized server market might be inventive, but it won’t be competitive long-term.

The situation is already prompting some providers to explore alternative sourcing strategies: refurbishing gear locally, importing from tariff-exempt countries, or even considering RISC-V or ARM-based platforms to circumvent x86-centric supply issues. Others are doubling down on virtualization efficiency—running more with less—to stretch their existing hardware further. Still, these are stopgap solutions. Unless trade policies shift or new supply routes open, the industry may be stuck in a prolonged hardware holding pattern.

The comparison to Cuba isn’t perfect—no one’s welding Soviet alternators into HP servers just yet—but the spirit is similar. In a world of constrained access and rising costs, the hosting industry may need to embrace a kind of technological resilience and thrift that hasn’t been seen in decades. Whether this becomes a blip or a new normal depends on both policy and innovation. One thing is clear: the era of cheap, easily replaced servers may be ending, and a Cuban-style culture of maintenance and longevity might be taking its place.

• Author
• Recent Posts

raindog308

Dread Lord of LowEnd Content at LowEndBox

I'm raindog308, techno polymath and long-time LowEndTalk community Administrator. My technical interests include all things Unix, perl, python, golang, shell scripting, vintage operating systems such as MVS, and relational database systems such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

I also enjoy using LEBs! I have an empire of little guys for VPNs, larger guys for apps, and big guys for databases and storage. When I'm not in front a screen I'm into German Shepherd dogs, quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop roleplaying games, and forest hiking.

I enjoy writing technical articles here on LowEndBox to help people get more out of their systems. You can find me on LowEndTalk @raindog308

Latest posts by raindog308 (see all)

• The Vexing WordPress “Missed Schedule” Issue – How to Fix It, Permanently - April 10, 2025
• Let’s Give the Newly-Released FreeDOS 1.4 a Spin on macOS With qemu - April 9, 2025
• Cheap LIFETIME Reseller Offers from Silicom Network, Starting at $45 in Germany, Australia, India, UK, or USA! - April 8, 2025