So you want to build your own data center
blog.railway.com
So you want to build your own data center
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Re: So you want to build your own data center
#2This is our first post about building out data centers. If you have any questions, we're happy to answer them here :)
Re: So you want to build your own data center
#3This is our first post about building out data centers. If you have any questions, we're happy to answer them here :)
How do you deal with drive failures? How often does a Railway team member need to visit a DC? What's it like inside?
Re: So you want to build your own data center
#4I'm surprised you guys are building new!
Tons of Colocation available nearly everywhere in the US, and in the KCMO area, there are even a few dark datacenters available for sale!
cool project none-the-less. Bit jealous actually :P
Re: So you want to build your own data center
#5This is our first post about building out data centers. If you have any questions, we're happy to answer them here :)
How do you deal with drive failures? How often does a Railway team member need to visit a DC? What's it like inside?
Everything is dual redundancy. We run RAID so if a drive fails it's fine; alerting will page oncall which will trigger remote hands onsite, where we have spares for everything in each datacenter
Re: So you want to build your own data center
#6I'm surprised you guys are building new! Tons of Colocation available nearly everywhere in the US, and in the KCMO area, there are even a few dark datacenters available for sale! cool project none-the-less. Bit jealous actually :P
More info on the cost comparison between all the options would be interesting
Re: So you want to build your own data center
#7I'm surprised you guys are building new! Tons of Colocation available nearly everywhere in the US, and in the KCMO area, there are even a few dark datacenters available for sale! cool project none-the-less. Bit jealous actually :P
The requirements end up being pretty specific, based on workloads/power draw/supply chain
So, while we could have bought something off the shelf, that would have been suboptimal from a specs perspective. Plus then we'd have to source supply chain etc.
By owning not just the servers but the whole supply chain, we have redundancy at every layer, from the machine, to the parts on site (for failures), to the supply chain (refilling those spare parts/expanding capacity/etc)
Re: So you want to build your own data center
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you deal with drive failures? How often does a Railway team member need to visit a DC? What's it like inside?
Everything is dual redundancy. We run RAID so if a drive fails it's fine; alerting will page oncall which will trigger remote hands onsite, where we have spares for everything in each datacenter
How much additional overhead is there for managing the bare-metal vs cloud? Is it mostly fine after the big effort for initial setup?
Re: So you want to build your own data center
#9I'm surprised you guys are building new! Tons of Colocation available nearly everywhere in the US, and in the KCMO area, there are even a few dark datacenters available for sale! cool project none-the-less. Bit jealous actually :P
Can you share a list of dark datacenters that are for sale. They sound interesting as a business.
Re: So you want to build your own data center
#10I'm surprised you guys are building new! Tons of Colocation available nearly everywhere in the US, and in the KCMO area, there are even a few dark datacenters available for sale! cool project none-the-less. Bit jealous actually :P
More info on the cost comparison between all the options would be interesting
We pulled some cost stuff out of the post in final review because we weren't sure it was interesting ... we'll bring it back for a future post