Proposed server purchase for GitLab.com

You basically have the big brands like Equinix (7 facilities in Frankfurt), Interxion (They are currently building their 11th facility in Frankfurt), Telecity (now part of Equinix) but also some local ones like e-Shelter, First Colo or Accelerated. There is also a DC only meters away from the Interxion campus that is called Interwerk and is basically the cheapest DC in Frankfurt, but it has an awesome price/performance ratio and you have access to all peering/transit options of Interxion (via CWDM) and can get a 1/1 rack for under 200 EUR/mo. I have been in that DC for several years and never had a single issue, so if you don't rely on any certificates this is a cheap option.

I was also colocating in the First Colo DC for some time, they are also in the locality around the Interxion campus. It's a pretty small DC but it is more premium than the Interwerk and also is kinda cheap. I personally wouldn't go with Accelerated, since they had multiple issues in the past.

For the big brands I would definitely go with Interxion, they are great, have all the certificates and are premium while not going crazy with their pricing like Equinix does. DigitalOcean, Twitch, etc. they are all in one of the many Interxion facilities in Frankfurt. If Price isn't a concern I would probably go with Equinix FRA5.

DE-CIX is present in around 7 facilities, 3 of them are Interxion and I think 2 Equinix.

The 2u fat twins are very dense, You'll need make sure that thy hosting company can actually cool it effectively.

I'd look again at your storage strategy. You'll save a lot of money, and it'll be much easier to debug if you dump ceph.

You have a clustered FS, when you appear to not really need it. By the looks of it, its all going to be hosted in the same place. So what you have is lots of CPU to manage not very much disk space. The overhead of ceph for such a tiny amount of data all in the same place seems pointless. You can easily fit your data set on one 90 disk shelf 4 times over with 100% redundancy.

First things first, File servers serve files and nothing else. This means that most of your ram is going to be a file server cache. Putting applications on there is just going to mean that you're hitting the disk more often, and stealing resources from other apps in a non transparent way.

get four 90 drive superchassis, connect them to four servers(via SAS, direct connect) with as many CPUs and as much ram as possible. JBOD them, either use ZFS, or hit up IBM for GPFS. (well IBM Spectrum Scale). You can invest in a decent SAS controller and raid 6 8 10 disk stripes. But rebuild time will be very high. Whats your strategy for disk replacement? 400 disks means about 1 every four weeks will be failing.

What is your workload like on the disks? is it write heavy? read heavy? lots of streaming IO? or random? can it be cached?

Your network should be simple. don't use cat6 10gig. It's expensive, not very good in dense racks, just use copper cables with inbuilt SPFs, they are cheap, reliable.

Don't use Super micro switches. They are almost certainly re-badged.

Your network should be fairly simple. A storage VLAN, a application VLAN, and a DMZ. (out of band will need a strongly protected vlan as well)

on the buying side, you need a reseller, who is there to get the best deal. You'll need to audition them. They will also help with design as well. But you need to be harsh with them, they are not your friends, they are out to make money.