Is there Cheap/Affordable Colocation?

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Blinky 42

Active Member
Aug 6, 2015
615
232
43
48
PA, USA
Do some research on the provider and see who they are connected to w/r/t upstream bandwidth. They should tell you without hesitation if there is nothing to hide, but you can always find out as well by a little sleuthing:
- Find an IP in their block (try their web and mails servers, see if they self-host or push that off to something else).
- Do a whois on it to get the size of the block and make sure it isn't a small /28 or something dodgy
- Then BGP traceroute to the IP from a looking glass like Looking Glass - Hurricane Electric (AS6939) and find out how the connection is from major providers to them, and note the ASN that advertises the IP space
- If they are a decently connected colo provider they should have their own ASN and you can explore in the looking glass what upstream connections that ASN is seen on.
- If your provider is just using the space of the actual colo/facility they are in and getting IP space from them as well as power and rackspace the RDNS will show their name but the ASN is going to be that provider's own and your colo provider is using their network to provide your bandwidth. That isn't a bad thing exactly, just there are more middlemen if there is a problem and your host is going to have to be more involved to track down problems upstream if there is anything.

Since you main goal is connectivity from home to the site, see what the trace to there and pings are like. If it is bad then find someone else.

Most of the uber cheap colos are in "shared space" and I have seen everything all over the map in terms of shared space. Some are nice fully locked 48U+ cabinets with just a mix of end clients in there, but ... I wish I could legally post pictures of the horror show at some sites with rows of 2 post telco racks with a shelf every few feet and piles of servers just sitting on each other and cords cascading down to the floor. Anytime anything has to get touched in the area things go down because it is just so ghetto.

In a ghetto setup like that, not only does the staff / owners not care enough to do a passable job, but if they allow other clients to be in the area nothing stopping them from bumping into your stuff and knocking it off the pile of servers or disconnecting it.

Also be careful with how they say they meter your bandwidth. If they say you have a 1G port but only 10TB of "transfer" then you can burn through that in a day or two and then see how painful the overage is going to be. Also because they may offer you a 1 or 10G port doesn't have any relation to if they have that much upstream bandwidth - they could be on a oversubscribed 50M line from their provider and selling you that they have 1G ports.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Patrick

mattlach

Active Member
Aug 1, 2014
323
89
28
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.
I have been looking at this as well. My problem is that I have what seems to be a rather unusual combination of very low CPU requirements (I could honestly probably even use an Atom or a 10 year old quad core Athlon as long as it had ECC) middle of the road RAM requirements, but at the same time want at least 4x 2TB hard drives, and preferably 4x 4tb drives.

Since I am trying to sync snapshots from a ZFS system, I need to be able to set up ZFS on the remote box, which eliminated VPS completely, and puts some particular requirements on the dedicated box, like excluding most raid cards, unless they are LSI and they allow me to flash IT firmware to them.

That, and I am sitting on all these unused hard drives, unused registered DDR3 RAM and this old 2U HP server in my basement that are just collecting dust... It seemed crazy to not try to use the existing hardware...
 

mattlach

Active Member
Aug 1, 2014
323
89
28
If that ain't the truth...
Remember, there is no substitute for quality & service, those items come at a "cost"
It certainly is, but it all comes down to a risk based approach. I'm willing to pay for things I need, but would like to save in areas were my needs are not as great.

If I needed to colocate a mission critical business server, I'd be making damned sure I got all the bells and whistles, 99.99999% guaranteed uptime, security, DDOS protection, you name it.

For my ghetto home backup server, the equation becomes more complicated. I certainly want to know that my gear won't get stolen (well, at least my data, I'd be sending old leftover hardware that is of limited monetary value), but do I need world class uptime? Probably not.

If one of my daily snapshots doesn't get synced due to downtime, and I have to restore from the previous snapshot instead, for my purposes it's probably not the end of the world, as long as on average I have sufficient bandwidth to transfer my snapshots, and the downtime isn't extreme.

You know, the difference between Enterprise, Prosumer and Consumer needs.

I wish there were some sort of colocation and dedicated server search tool where you enter your requirements, and it provides a list of vendors, their rated uptimes, their costs, specs and what their security is like.

Essentially, I want a hotels.com for colocation :p
 

Blinky 42

Active Member
Aug 6, 2015
615
232
43
48
PA, USA
Essentially, I want a hotels.com for colocation :p
Heh yeah there are 3rd party brokers that do this but since it is all commission based work, what they would get on your < $2k/yr total setup isn't worth them looking at. And it would be full of the really really sketchy people that will wait for you to ship the servers then they put it up on ebay and sell it off. You can check through some of the forums like LowEndTalk and The Admin Zone to see if potential places are mentioned in a positive or negative light.
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
7,625
2,043
113
1 thing to note about WHT is that just because they (the host/provider on WHT) were around 15 years ago and are still around today does not make them the same company ;) Learned that lesson a couple times going back to quality but affordable hosting providers on WHT that were sold to new owners or changed facilities. Don't rely on old reviews :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: ELit3

nbritton

New Member
Nov 19, 2016
26
17
3
45
I'm also looking for low cost space, in Austin, Texas. I need 42U, I have my own rack. Power is variable, ranging from 1kW to 18kW, metered power would be nice. Have four Dell K559N PDU with L6-30P plugs. Even just a warehouse would be suitable. This is for a private OpenStack / Ceph lab that I use for testing, experimentation, and training.
 

El Chorizo

New Member
Jul 29, 2017
20
3
3
45
I'm also looking for low cost space, in Austin, Texas. I need 42U, I have my own rack. Power is variable, ranging from 1kW to 18kW, metered power would be nice. Have four Dell K559N PDU with L6-30P plugs. Even just a warehouse would be suitable. This is for a private OpenStack / Ceph lab that I use for testing, experimentation, and training.
If you find anything let me know. I'm in Austin and haven't found anything cheap here. Tired of paying data foundry huge sums of money.
 

ELit3

Banned
Aug 10, 2017
309
24
18
40
Texas
I'm also looking for low cost space, in Austin, Texas. I need 42U, I have my own rack. Power is variable, ranging from 1kW to 18kW, metered power would be nice. Have four Dell K559N PDU with L6-30P plugs. Even just a warehouse would be suitable. This is for a private OpenStack / Ceph lab that I use for testing, experimentation, and training.
18kw that’s a pretty high density Operations. What power pricing are you getting in Austin?
 

nbritton

New Member
Nov 19, 2016
26
17
3
45
18kw that’s a pretty high density Operations. What power pricing are you getting in Austin?
None at the moment, the rack is sitting in the 2nd bedroom of my apartment. I use the range/stove 240V 40A receptacle in the kitchen to power the rack. I need to get the rack out of my apartment because it's extremely loud.

My other option is to rent a house and setup a micro data center in the garage... I'm leaning towards this option, but I'm struggling to find a garage that's wired for 240V and has a window for an A/C unit.
 

ELit3

Banned
Aug 10, 2017
309
24
18
40
Texas
None at the moment, the rack is sitting in the 2nd bedroom of my apartment. I use the range/stove 240V 40A receptacle in the kitchen to power the rack. I need to get the rack out of my apartment because it's extremely loud.

My other option is to rent a house and setup a micro data center in the garage... I'm leaning towards this option, but I'm struggling to find a garage that's wired for 240V and has a window for an A/C unit.
18kw you might need more than a window unit or some good exhaust.
 

ELit3

Banned
Aug 10, 2017
309
24
18
40
Texas
My current setup is 90A/220V and I have two 14,000 btu portable units and 4 exhaust fans with about a 5 inch width my gpus stay at about 62 degrees in an 80 sq ft private suite I built out and adding a 22,000 btu unit this week as well to add more gpus.
 
Last edited: