The 'largest' machine I currently have are the Dual Xeon servers. I dont have anything bigger than that. Is that what you were referring to?
Is there Cheap/Affordable Colocation?
- Thread starter warlockedyou
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With 8A he would be able to use the 80%. If he's in Dallas depending on the provider he'd get a tax bill id assume. If he was to use someone like Incero he'd get a tax bill but someone like Psychz they would cover the tax bill just depends. With his budget though he might get off better just colocating at home or something other than a data center.
Colocation in a data center wouldn't work out your looking at about $15 per amp so power alone might tip your budget not to mention other cost.
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Dual Xeon is usually a sweet spot. One example though is I have a dual E5-2650L V3 CPUs in a 1U system with 128GB RAM, 4x SSDs installed and a 40GbE network card. It is 100% CPU running monero mining at the moment and appears to be at 219W-232W (on 208V which is slightly more efficient.)
Point there is that the node you can get 2A 1U colo space for $65/ mo with decent bandwidth.
And if you got really fancy/ had low utilization, it is earning about $1/ day in Monero so there is a path to offset some of the costs.
If he found a good colocrossing reseller up north he can get $45 per 1U if using a steady 2A of power maybe even find something profitable.
Measuring the power usage right now. Hopefully I have some numbers to post later today.
Ok, so I have some quick testing numbers for my servers on boot and idle without any hard drives installed in them.
All the numbers below are in Amps on a 120V 60Hz
What do you guys think of this?
EDIT: Formatting
All the numbers below are in Amps on a 120V 60Hz
- 4U Server w/no drives --> 2.11A
- 2.11 -> 1.76 -- During bootup
- 1.40 -> 1.50 -- Idle after boot with
- 1U SuperMicro w/ no drives--> 2.70A
- 2.70 peak during boot
- 2.55 -> 2.65 --> No boot screen (No boot drive was installed, so it stayed at this screen)
- 3U Storage Server w/ no drives -->3.04A
- With 1 power cable plugged in -> 3.04(startup) -> 1.98 - 2.03(Idle)
- With both power cable plugged in -> 3.62(startup) --> 3.50(mid way) -> 2.12 - 2.30(Idle)
- LB6M 10G Switch with nothing plugged in -->1.05A
- 1.05(startup) --> 0.88-0.98(Idle)
What do you guys think of this?
EDIT: Formatting
Whats annoying is you could rent a dedicated (granted, low end) box at a colocation facility for as low as $30 per month.
If I am providing the hardware, why should it be MORE expensive?
I too am looking for some dirt cheap colocation space to stash an offsite home backup server. I'd only need 2U to stick my old HP DL180 G6 server in, and everything I'm finding is coming back for more money than I could rent an older dedicated server for...
Offering colocation is expensive for the provider because they then need to have locking, enclosed racks with site access controls and staffing sufficient to support 24/7 access to the facility by customers. It's not just keeping your server powered and connected but the expense of having a guy sitting at a desk ready to sign you in and keep an eye on you at 2am when you show up to swap out that failed drive. It's the cost of making sure that you can't accidentally power off some other customer's machine while you're elbows deep in yours.
Just renting you their standard build server along with a "flexible" response SLA for remote hands is a lot easier and cheaper to provide even factoring in the cost of the hardware. By not offering colo services a provider can deploy to cheaper open racks and avoid the risk and hassle of having to monitor customers on site to ensure they aren't trying to access other customer's machines.
Just renting you their standard build server along with a "flexible" response SLA for remote hands is a lot easier and cheaper to provide even factoring in the cost of the hardware. By not offering colo services a provider can deploy to cheaper open racks and avoid the risk and hassle of having to monitor customers on site to ensure they aren't trying to access other customer's machines.
Cheapest colo I've found that has a decent reputation is here: Joe's Datacenter - Providing Affordable Data Center Services Since 2008
Can't find how much power is provided with this, but certainly wish we had offers like this here even if it's 'only' 2.5A @208V.
In Germany, most colocation for full rack doesn't include any power. This is then metered at a rate of around USD 0.40 in addition to the rack and bandwidth, sometimes also an add-on for climate is charged based on the power-draw. The offers that do include power end up the same, just assuming maximum draw in the pricing.
Interestingly, the 1U offers here are not so far from USD 50, seen some starting at EUR 39 including 100 - 150W
That's all a relative bargain when you think about it, I know when benchmarking DC's like ours with external ones like colo from mid tier providers of telco or whatever they all come in within a price range and I don't see any chance that one provider can be massive cheaper than another unless they play with different power or internet charging setups.
Colo is actually sometimes tempting at a given price after you consider hosting stuff at home... certainly I know @Patrick was toying with the idea of renting some space or systems a while back for data dumping etc, what happened to that ?
Colo is actually sometimes tempting at a given price after you consider hosting stuff at home... certainly I know @Patrick was toying with the idea of renting some space or systems a while back for data dumping etc, what happened to that ?
If anyone is interested, I can help on some special STH co-location pricing at my facility in West Virginia. We have direct fiber to Equinix DC2 in Ashburn, VA. I don't want to plug or post too much as I'm not sure of the exact rules for advertising etc.
PM me if you would like some details. I was thinking at some point about maybe talking to Patrick about doing some kind of special offer for STH members. Say something like if enough members had interest we could do a deal on a full rack for lower 1U/2U pricing than what our already pretty low 1U/2U offer looks like.
PM me if you would like some details. I was thinking at some point about maybe talking to Patrick about doing some kind of special offer for STH members. Say something like if enough members had interest we could do a deal on a full rack for lower 1U/2U pricing than what our already pretty low 1U/2U offer looks like.
I just came across this:
1u colocation with unmetered 100mbit for only $19.95 a month...
...as long as you can keep it under 1A...
Colocation Services From $19.95 « volumedrive™ | reliable, high performance hosting
I've been emailing them, and they seem pretty quick to get back to you and offer custom packages if you - say - need 2U instead of 1u or need a little more power.
Price seems to go up rather quickly with power though...
1u colocation with unmetered 100mbit for only $19.95 a month...
...as long as you can keep it under 1A...
Colocation Services From $19.95 « volumedrive™ | reliable, high performance hosting
I've been emailing them, and they seem pretty quick to get back to you and offer custom packages if you - say - need 2U instead of 1u or need a little more power.
Price seems to go up rather quickly with power though...
@JeffroMart probably not allowed but let it slide. You have been kind to STH previously.
@mattlach at this point I do most of our capacity planning by kW since that is our biggest monthly cost driver. Often data centers have a $/ kWh from the utilities plus a cooling factor that correlates to kW.
Also, one bit to remember the lowest end colocation is not always what you want.
@mattlach at this point I do most of our capacity planning by kW since that is our biggest monthly cost driver. Often data centers have a $/ kWh from the utilities plus a cooling factor that correlates to kW.
Also, one bit to remember the lowest end colocation is not always what you want.
Oh for sure, its going to depend on your application.
For me cost is highly important. I'm looking for somewhere to stash my spare hardware to use to replace my CrashPlan account as they exit the consumer market.
So essentially, colocation - for me - is competing price-wise with a Carbonite account
I just need somewhere to send my ZFS snapshots. Nothing serving the public or business critical
Will agree with Patrick that you don't want to cheap out. There are plenty of fly-by-night operations and do you really want random downtime? Been there, done that, and learned my lesson. I took a tour of a few places locally and wound up here: Phoenix Data Center - Chandler - CyrusOne
Power does generally wind up being the limiting factor. Ran through the 30A allocation I have well before I ran out of rack space. Not sure what rates are like on the west coast, but for $700 I get a 48U cabinet with 30A (120V), 100mbit unmetered, and a /27 IPv4 allocation.
Power does generally wind up being the limiting factor. Ran through the 30A allocation I have well before I ran out of rack space. Not sure what rates are like on the west coast, but for $700 I get a 48U cabinet with 30A (120V), 100mbit unmetered, and a /27 IPv4 allocation.
Appreciate your knowledge on the matter.
I'm curious, what is the source of your caution when it comes to some of the lower cost players? Is it only random downtime concerns? Or maybe real bandwidth? Security/theft?
Since I'm not doing anything mission critical, I can live with some random downtime. If one daily sync to my off-site backup is missed, it makes very little difference to me, as long as the percent downtime isn't ridiculous.
Theft and security are things I would take more seriously though. Some of the items in my backups can be of a sensitive nature, and while I will encrypt everything, I'd still rather be on the safe side.
I presume these rates require committing to a half rack or more?
Do you have any suggestions for reputable colocation prices competitively for single server customers like myself? 1 or 2U and maybe 300w?
Theft/Security is a huge concern with low-end "data centers". Sometimes they're not even (private/their) datacenters and unless you do research you would never know they're just showing pics of someone elses datacenter and they have a half rack or full rack in it... they don't pay their bill for some reason all their equipment is gone, and by their I mean yours too.
I've also had issues with low-end data center employees that are not exactly caring about what they do.
IE: Bumping power cords or pulling power cords to "find the right one", re-assigning your IPs to someone else, and other stuff that causes down time and very hard for you to troubleshoot on your end, and you're at the mercy of their employee or who they sub-contract to on-site.
Then you get into the cheap bandwidth, or bandwidth limitations they may have not tell you about but impose on you during their high demand times, or from their provider due to them overselling, etc...
15-18 years ago I used to hop around data centers as prices were SUPER CHEAP and they were ALL trying to get new customers as it was really new for smaller businesses to need the datacenter services. Over time they either got acquired or went out of business. But 1 thing happened across the board, and that's prices went up up up.
My 02 - you get what you pay for. Just know you're giving up something for a very low price Figure out what it is, and if your'e OK with that then go for it. I'd be much more inclined to go with a cheap provider that has a 4hr response time but everything else is 'great' vs one who has a 20m response time but goes down 1hr every couple days due to infrastructure issues.
I've also had issues with low-end data center employees that are not exactly caring about what they do.
IE: Bumping power cords or pulling power cords to "find the right one", re-assigning your IPs to someone else, and other stuff that causes down time and very hard for you to troubleshoot on your end, and you're at the mercy of their employee or who they sub-contract to on-site.
Then you get into the cheap bandwidth, or bandwidth limitations they may have not tell you about but impose on you during their high demand times, or from their provider due to them overselling, etc...
15-18 years ago I used to hop around data centers as prices were SUPER CHEAP and they were ALL trying to get new customers as it was really new for smaller businesses to need the datacenter services. Over time they either got acquired or went out of business. But 1 thing happened across the board, and that's prices went up up up.
My 02 - you get what you pay for. Just know you're giving up something for a very low price
Figure out what it is, and if your'e OK with that then go for it. I'd be much more inclined to go with a cheap provider that has a 4hr response time but everything else is 'great' vs one who has a 20m response time but goes down 1hr every couple days due to infrastructure issues.Downtime, over-commitment of resources, poor support, theft, etc are all concerns. For the place you linked for example, their photos lead me to believe that they're present in a much larger colocation facility and have rented a single rack to resell space. This generally means it's a one person operation. The fact that their phone number isn't on the front page anywhere and only appears in a single place reaffirms this for me (not to mention that they have MSN messenger contact info there too).
While the datacenter that they're in may have spectacular uptime, should any of their equipment fail or have issues, it will probably take a while to fix since they won't have full time staff at said datacenter, nor potentially the expertise to troubleshoot or replacement equipment on hand. The datacenter itself will be of no use since you're not their customer. This also means if they decide to pack up shop in the middle of the night and keep your stuff, you're mostly out of luck and will have quite a difficult time getting your equipment back. Bandwidth is also presumably heavily oversold.
To answer your final questions, some colocation facilities actually offer lockable quarter racks, so you don't have to commit to nearly as much space/power. Generally costs wouldn't be much higher than a single server and you'd actually have access to your hardware. It honestly may be easier/cheaper for you to go the VPS route or get a cheap dedicated server from say kimsufi or the likes however.
While the datacenter that they're in may have spectacular uptime, should any of their equipment fail or have issues, it will probably take a while to fix since they won't have full time staff at said datacenter, nor potentially the expertise to troubleshoot or replacement equipment on hand. The datacenter itself will be of no use since you're not their customer. This also means if they decide to pack up shop in the middle of the night and keep your stuff, you're mostly out of luck and will have quite a difficult time getting your equipment back. Bandwidth is also presumably heavily oversold.
To answer your final questions, some colocation facilities actually offer lockable quarter racks, so you don't have to commit to nearly as much space/power. Generally costs wouldn't be much higher than a single server and you'd actually have access to your hardware. It honestly may be easier/cheaper for you to go the VPS route or get a cheap dedicated server from say kimsufi or the likes however.