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So you want to build your own data center

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Re: So you want to build your own data center

#141

Post by jpc0 »

jdoss wrote: post #30

This is a pretty decent write up. One thing that comes to mind is why would you write your own internal tooling for managing a rack when Netbox exists? Netbox is fantastic and I wish I had this back in the mid 2000s when I was managing 50+ racks. https://github.com/netbox-community/netbox

I like netbox, had it deployed for quite a while. It's performance was abysmal and I had to shape my world around how they wanted things.

This is the usual case of "We need X and Y does X", but ignoring that Y also does Z,M,Q and washes dishes and you really don't need those things.

Sometimes building what you need is the easiest solution, specially when what you need is CRUD infront of a DB...

Re: So you want to build your own data center

#142

Post by throwaway2037 »

boulos wrote: post #96
chatmasta wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems a bit disingenuous but it’s common practice. Even the hyperscalers, who do have their own datacenters, include their colocation servers in the term “datacenter.” Good luck finding the actual, physical location of a server in GCP europe-west2-a (“London”). Maybe it’s in a real Google datacenter in London! Or it could be in an Equinix datacenter in Slough, one room away from AWS eu-west-1. Cloudflare has also…

You're correct, there are multiple flavors of Google Cloud Locations. The "Google concrete" ones are listed at google.com/datacenters and London isn't on that list, today. cloud.google.com/about/locations lists all the locations that GCE offers service, which is a super set of the large facilities that someone would call a "Google Datacenter". I liked to mostly refer to the distinction as Google concrete (we built th…

I found this list: https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/

I cannot believe that they never had a UK DC until recently. I guess they (originally) chose Ireland instead.

Re: So you want to build your own data center

#143

Post by random_savv »

I guess there's another in-between step buying your own hardware, even when merely "leasing individual racks", and EC2 instances: dedicated bare metal providers like Hetzner.

This lets one get closer to the metal (e.g. all your data is on your specific disk, rather than an abstracted block storage, such as EBS, not shared with other users, cheaper, etc) without having to worry about the staff that installs the hardware or where/how it fits in a rack.

For us, this was a way to get 6x performance for 1/6 of the cost. (Excluding, of course our time, but we enjoyed it!)

Re: So you want to build your own data center

#144

Post by quicksilver03 »

boulos wrote: post #96
chatmasta wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems a bit disingenuous but it’s common practice. Even the hyperscalers, who do have their own datacenters, include their colocation servers in the term “datacenter.” Good luck finding the actual, physical location of a server in GCP europe-west2-a (“London”). Maybe it’s in a real Google datacenter in London! Or it could be in an Equinix datacenter in Slough, one room away from AWS eu-west-1. Cloudflare has also…

You're correct, there are multiple flavors of Google Cloud Locations. The "Google concrete" ones are listed at google.com/datacenters and London isn't on that list, today. cloud.google.com/about/locations lists all the locations that GCE offers service, which is a super set of the large facilities that someone would call a "Google Datacenter". I liked to mostly refer to the distinction as Google concrete (we built th…

> P.S., I swear the certification PDFs used to include this information (e.g., https://cloud.google.com/security/compliance/iso-27018?hl=en) but now these are all behind "Contact Sales" and some new Certification Manager page in the console.

This is not good, I can't think of any actual reason to hide those certificates.

For comparison, AWS makes their ISO-27001 certificate available at https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/iso-27001-faqs/ and also cites the certifying agent, most of which have a search page from where you can find all the certificates they've issued.

Re: So you want to build your own data center

#146

Post by pinoy420 »

llm_trw wrote: post #89
xiconfjs wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to second this. While it takes mich effort and in-depth knowledge do build up from an “empty” cage it’s still far from dealing with everything from building permits, to plan and realize a data center to code including redundant power lines, AC and fibre. Still kudos going this path in the cloud-centric time we live in.

Do I have stories. One of the better was the dead possum in the drain during a thunderstorm. >So do we throw the main switch before we get electroduced? Or do we try to poke enough holes in it that it gets flushed out? And what about the half million in servers that are going to get ruined? Sign up to my patreon to find out how the story ended.

Give me a link to your patreon

Re: So you want to build your own data center

#147

Post by fishstock25 »

inopinatus wrote: post #133
jonatron wrote: post #16

Why would you call colocation "building your own data center"? You could call it "colocation" or "renting space in a data center". What are you building? You're racking. Can you say what you mean?

Come to my office and tell me how it’s not actually my office because it’s leased by my company from the investment vehicle for institutional investors that owns the building that stands on land owned by someone else again that was stolen by the British anyway and therefore calling it “my office” makes me a fool and a liar and I should just “say what I mean”.

When you invite a girl/guy over, do you say "let's meet at my place" or "let's meet at the place I'm renting"? The possessive pronoun does not necessarily express ownership, it can just as well express occupancy.

Re: So you want to build your own data center

#148

Post by buildbot »

fragmede wrote: post #75
matt-p wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hyperscalers are absolutely not colo-ing their general purpose compute at Equinix! A cage for routers and direct connect, maybe some limited Edge CDN/compute at most. Even where they do lease wholesale space, you'd be hard pushed to find examples of more than one in a single building. If you count them as Microsoft, Google, AWS then I'm not sure I can think of a single example off the top of my head. Only really…

The best part about adamantly making such a claim is that anybody who knows better also knows better than to break NDA and pull a Warthunder to prove that the CSPs do use colo facilities, so you're not going to get anyone who knows better to disagree with you and say AWS S3 or GCP compute is colo-ed at a specific colo provider.

Yup, I assume AWS, Azure and GCP would NDA this info.

That being said, this page amusingly mentions colocation in reference to media destruction: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/compliance/assurance/assur...

Re: So you want to build your own data center

#149

Post by ncruces »

ThatGuyRaion wrote: post #81
jonatron wrote: post #16

Why would you call colocation "building your own data center"? You could call it "colocation" or "renting space in a data center". What are you building? You're racking. Can you say what you mean?

Not saying I don't agree with you but most tech businesses that have their own "Data center" usually have a private cage in a Colo.

When you rent an apartment, you can still invite people to your apartment for drinks. But you don't claim to have built an apartment.

Re: So you want to build your own data center

#150

Post by [deleted] »

fishstock25 wrote: post #147
inopinatus wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come to my office and tell me how it’s not actually my office because it’s leased by my company from the investment vehicle for institutional investors that owns the building that stands on land owned by someone else again that was stolen by the British anyway and therefore calling it “my office” makes me a fool and a liar and I should just “say what I mean”.

When you invite a girl/guy over, do you say "let's meet at my place" or "let's meet at the place I'm renting"? The possessive pronoun does not necessarily express ownership, it can just as well express occupancy.

[deleted]
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