21–30 of 184 posts
Where would you go to find a "condo"? There are no links in the article. What is the pricing/reliability/support like having your own server in someone else's data center?
The may be off topic, but... At the moment we're mostly using option two (Linode VPS), and it's working pretty well. I've been repeatedly tempted by option option four (colo), but I'm kind of daunted by the task of getting started. I've been burnt by option three (renting a dedicated server) before - it seems like the worst of both worlds. Can anyone recommend a good guide to getting started with colo? Obvious questi…
As far as guide to not bricking the thing: Our particular colo required DC power, which is what we configured our Dell with. Open up the box when we got it and -- aw, we can't turn it on. Luckily we had another AC power supply so we swapped that in (hurray modular!).
When you go to the colo, bring fuses, particularly if this is the first time you're wiring DC. Grab however many you think you'll need. Then grab some more because you'll futz it up.
Test your console (iLO, IPMI, etc) to make sure it's functioning before you leave. Most things at this point you can fix remotely.
As far as swapping hard drives and things go we decided to maintain that ourselves. RAID1 + Hot Spare on the OS to keep it running before you get over there to swap the drive.
This is an excellent write-up; I like the metaphors, and it doesn't feel too much like it's trying to force a preordained conclusion. One option I have trouble fitting in, though, is the "run your own server locally". This might be #5, except it's often seen as actually a lower-class option than #4, rather than a step up: before you go all out with a colocated server, how about just a machine with Apache sitting in t…
it's probably not included because keeping your production server outside of a datacenter is kind of a silly idea. you save some money, but you don't have the cooling, the power conditioning, the network redundancy, or the security of a proper facility.
Now if you can't afford any downtime, a local server is probably not a good idea, but then neither are many of the cloud alternatives. Also depends on size, of course; one or two local servers is a more reasonable proposition than 35 servers randomly thrown under desks. (Though the "so uh, does anyone remember which room 'thor' is in?" moment used to be a classic startup rite of passage.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's probably not included because keeping your production server outside of a datacenter is kind of a silly idea. you save some money, but you don't have the cooling, the power conditioning, the network redundancy, or the security of a proper facility.
I've been running my own servers out of my closet right here, on my ADSL (though formerly business SDSL) line, for over 10 years. A PC on the floor is fine to start with. It can run MySQL, your framework of choice and give you something you can show people. Evidence: I ran and wrote the backend to a site, starting with two PCs on a DSL line, before ultimately being acquired by EA (stopover at Rackspace). For a couple…
An app that starts getting into the thousands of users will quickly saturate a normal ADSL line (1-2mbps up), and an SDSL/T1 connection is many times more expensive than a remote dedicated server.
This is an excellent write-up; I like the metaphors, and it doesn't feel too much like it's trying to force a preordained conclusion. One option I have trouble fitting in, though, is the "run your own server locally". This might be #5, except it's often seen as actually a lower-class option than #4, rather than a step up: before you go all out with a colocated server, how about just a machine with Apache sitting in t…
I don't consider that an option for real hosting. There are a lot of reasons why it is bad.
Internet: DSL, or whatever your office has in probably not that reliable, and single-homed (your ISP goes down, so do you).
Cooling: Offices are not designed to cool servers. The AC gets turned off at night and on weekends. Airflow is bad.
Power: Once you start running more than a few servers you will need to add special wall/roof mounted AC. The combined power of the servers and AC will cost you thousands per month.
Need: If you don't need more than a few servers, you don't need your own servers. It will cost less to rent a little space on someone else's server (VPS).
Hard: As the article says, "Hardware is hard." You have all the downsides of Condo and Manor, with none of the upsides. Power, cooling, out-of-band console, internet, networking, backups, provisioning, monitoring, the list goes on. And none of it will be to the quality of a datacenter. It's a lot of time and money for nothing.
"But ask not for whom the pager beeps — for sysadmin, it beeps for thee." I'm the sysadmin, and I don't want my pager going off because it's a three day weekend and the temperature in the server closet reached 120F (I've seen the temp reach 120F in about 30 minutes when the AC failed).
as someone that has done colocation, dedicated hosting, and VPS, i'm a huge fan of dedicated hosting. colocation was expensive and the hardware problems were all mine. i was pretty much tied to my local datacenter because i didn't want to ship a server around (which would be at least a day of downtime). pricing can be hard to compare because of power/space/bandwidth. if the equipment i colocated didn't have IPMI supp…
With who?
as someone that has done colocation, dedicated hosting, and VPS, i'm a huge fan of dedicated hosting. colocation was expensive and the hardware problems were all mine. i was pretty much tied to my local datacenter because i didn't want to ship a server around (which would be at least a day of downtime). pricing can be hard to compare because of power/space/bandwidth. if the equipment i colocated didn't have IPMI supp…
> i have a handful of these on various providers costing between $140-$190 a month for something like a core i5 ~2ghz with 8gb of ram, 2 big sata drives, and 100mbit ethernet with more than enough transfer every month. With who?
The may be off topic, but... At the moment we're mostly using option two (Linode VPS), and it's working pretty well. I've been repeatedly tempted by option option four (colo), but I'm kind of daunted by the task of getting started. I've been burnt by option three (renting a dedicated server) before - it seems like the worst of both worlds. Can anyone recommend a good guide to getting started with colo? Obvious questi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's probably not included because keeping your production server outside of a datacenter is kind of a silly idea. you save some money, but you don't have the cooling, the power conditioning, the network redundancy, or the security of a proper facility.
I suppose it depends on your use case, but I don't see those as necessarily worse failure modes than other options. For example, Reddit has in the past been down for >20 hours at a time with its cloud solution. With a local solution, you would want offsite backup for the catastrophic "building burned down" failure mode, but most local failures can be solved in that kind of timeframe with the "drive to Frys, buy new s…
i've done the "drive to fry's, buy a new server, restore from backup" type recovery. it sucks, you don't want to do it, but that's not what i'm talking about. if you're self-hosting at your office your run into all sorts of problems that datacenters solve. the cleaning staff at the DC will never unplug your server. you won't spill beer on it. if the internet goes down, they can fail-over to another connection, your office probably can't. the DC is closer to the backbone, giving your customers less latency. adequate cooling and smoother power means longer life for your hardware. and as you grow it's much easier to grow in a DC than having the server portion of your office gradually take up more and more space.