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How to colocate your first server at a datacenter

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Re: How to colocate your first server at a datacenter

#21

Post by jlawer »

MoOmer wrote: post #16
jlawer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost is the big one, If you can manage your own metal you can save a LOT. 50K AUD of gear would cost us ~ 10x PER YEAR for the same VM sizes (many are 32gb of Ram, 8+ vCPU, reasonable IOPS). IP addresses is another. AWS gives you 5 before you have to start applying for them. We do email marketing, so we need a lot of IPs (we give dedicated IPs to each customer). With APNIC (Asia Pac) we have a /22 and a /23 range (15…

Let me also say that comments about vm size on EC2 almost never consider that bare metal performance can be magnitudes better. If you can build a redundant system, and don't need the extra 99.999999s of hardware resilience, but can have 99.995 network uptime, dedicated is great.

I would argue that dedicated servers are MORE resilient then any cloud provider. And it really isn't that hard, 2 enterprise class servers + VMWare or similar and you have a HA cluster. The hardware support is largely done by the hardware vendor under their support contract (4 hour mission critical) and having redundancy means a single hardware failure isn't critical.

I have had 4x 1 minute dropouts in the past 18 months from our hosting vendor upgrading their routers always at midnight localtime. They provide diverse data paths and we have not lost connectivity despite major outages. If I thought I needed to I could get a separate connection from one of about 20 providers in the local DC I am located in.

I really believe many people put too much weight on the complexity of managing physical hardware, when your already doing 90% of the administration anyway on a cloud server. Yes it is capital intensive, but you will likely make the money back in your first 12-18 months.

Re: How to colocate your first server at a datacenter

#23

Post by techsupporter »

jlawer wrote: post #17

Couple of bits of advice to anyone doing this: Firstly get your own IPs from your local RIR. Have your co-lo provider publish your routes, but they will be YOUR IPs. if you co-lo provider sucks, you can move and keep your IP space. (This is vital for email, but I recommend it for everyone). Secondly buy a Out of Band Management card with your server (iDrac for Dell, iLO for HP, etc) these cost fairly little and will…

I thought you could only get an IP delegation if you were multi-homing and could justify a /24. Is that still the case?

Re: How to colocate your first server at a datacenter

#24

Post by abc123xyz »

csbrooks wrote: post #6

What are the advantages of doing this over just paying for computing power on AWS or some other cloud service? Feels like it would be a very small niche at this point.

cost! Cost!! COST!!!

I collocate 5x 4u servers with 24 and 36 drive bays, 128GB ram, SSD drives squished in for OS, for a total (multiple raid 5 volumes for each 6 disks) usable space for my project of 375 TB

Power and 2-3gbit of bandwidth is included, as well as remote hands to check up on server (for example IPMI sometimes does not work) or replace drives (pay extra for enterprise grade drives would save you alot of hassle in long term!)

for .... €1500 / month

now go and calculate the cost of that on AWS

Re: How to colocate your first server at a datacenter

#25

Post by jlawer »

techsupporter wrote: post #23
jlawer wrote: post #17

Couple of bits of advice to anyone doing this: Firstly get your own IPs from your local RIR. Have your co-lo provider publish your routes, but they will be YOUR IPs. if you co-lo provider sucks, you can move and keep your IP space. (This is vital for email, but I recommend it for everyone). Secondly buy a Out of Band Management card with your server (iDrac for Dell, iLO for HP, etc) these cost fairly little and will…

I thought you could only get an IP delegation if you were multi-homing and could justify a /24. Is that still the case?

We did this with APNIC (being based in Australia), and we were able to justify a /24 on a single server without multi-homing. I don't think they allocate less then a /24 so if you have cause for 1 you get the whole /24.

That said ARIN and others might be different. For example APNIC will only allow up to a final /22 allocation at the moment, where as ARIN just allocated a much larger block despite being on final allocation rationing.

Re: How to colocate your first server at a datacenter

#26

Post by techsupporter »

EdSharkey wrote: post #20

I colocate my little cluster of servers with Opus:Interactive in Portland, OR. It's neat to look at the homebrew artists with their motley crew of machines all colocated together in racks in the corner followed by many homogenous racks filled with boxes from big name companies. I don't prefer building powerful hardware. I prefer reliable and cheap to build and maxing out the 4U of my rack. I like to think of my serve…

I'd like to know more about how you do that. I just looked at Opus' site and the 4U they advertise in Hillsboro is pretty good when compared to what I pay for 1U of hobbyist colo in Seattle. Do you put multiple machines inside the 4U with a switch in the same space? Can I be so bold as to ask for pictures? What kind of physical access do you get? I have a 1U server-grade machine but moving to a more flexible space would be nice, even if it does mean a train trip to go see my boxen.

Re: How to colocate your first server at a datacenter

#29

Post by jlawer »

timthorn wrote: post #28

The article talks about 1U being a good form factor, but one thing to bear in mind is that cooling fans tend to work harder in a 1U chassis than a 2U, hence drawing more power.

I would also add that in most DCs your never going to have the power capacity to have racks filled with 1RU servers, so 2RU servers are typically not much more expensive to Rack then their slimmer brethren.

Re: How to colocate your first server at a datacenter

#30

Post by threeseed »

xeroxmalf wrote: post #22

Also don't forget to check out the rented dedicated server market too. It provides a good middle ground in cost/power/performance to the extremes of cloud providers and colocation.

I am surprised how few people know about this.

It isn't just a "good middle ground". It is an amazing middle ground that allows you to benefit from AWS services (simply choose providers close to AWS data centres) whilst getting substantial performance/cost benefits.

I would imagine at minimum you are getting 10x the performance compared to a typical VPS.

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