Re:Where do you colo your servers?
by e1ven on Sunday April 08, 2007 @07:55PM
(#10565)
It depends on the level of reliability that you need, and the level of
control...
At the company I work for, we lease space in datacenteres in a few spots
around the country. [1]
The thing is, we do this because we have specific hardware requirements
which require that we use our own hardware, and ensure we can't use
anyone else's stuff very easily. The problem is, we pay through the NOSE
for it.
IMO, the optimal choice for most startups right now is to have very
few servers (if any) that their run in-house, and to host the rest with
other people.
There's a couple of reasons for this- The first is reliaiblity. Hosting
companies have trained staff watching over the servers, and monitoring
for a failure.
While you might do a lot to watch for failures [2], you'd save sleep and
sanity if you only needed to monitor for logic failures, and had someone
else (the hosting co) helping watch for hardware problems.
The second major reason is Bandwidth! Getting quality, symetric
bandwidth run to your door costs a LOT of money.. SpeakEasy DSL can get
you started [3], you'll struggle to get anything higher that a 6.0/1Mbit
line- For hosting, you need LOTS of upload- That 1Mbit will get taxed
out quickly.
Take a look at Bandwidth offerings by Colos- Often you get Royally
screwed, when compared to renting a dedicated server from them.
Companies like ServerMatrix will give you 1.5 TB of monthly bandwidth
for under $100.... That'd cost hunderds for the bandwidth alone in most
colos.
The dedicated server places tend to assume you won't fully use the line,
so they oversell- That's how you can get th e great deals on bandwidth..
The nice part is that if you go with a at least semi-reputable place
(servermatrix, rackspace, etc) they have MORE than enough to cover you,
even if they'll a littel annoyed that you use it all ;)
Read your TOS carefully.
Amazon's EC2 program is amoung the best for hosting, if you can get into
it. It allows you to dynamically scale up the number of servers, and has
very decent prices.
This is among the best options for a startup because you can load
balance to handle spikes in traffic, such as Digg, Techcrunch or Slashdot.
One other point I'll briefly touch on is depreciation of assets- If you
buy your own servers, and add them to a colo, when they get old, you
lose a lot of the initial value. You're often not going to want to keep
the old servers in the farm, once they're so low they'll do more harm
than good. With renting servers, along with the additional bandwidth and
uptime, you get the advantage of being able to just say "I'm done with
these servers.", and lose nothing.
-Colin
[1] I can't actually tell you the places for confidentiality reasons,
but it's not important for this discussion anyway.
[2] Nagios Alerts to the Cellphone are a good start..
[3] Chosen because of good TOS, and reputation, but with the Bestbuy
deal, be on your guard here. The situation could change quickly.
At the company I work for, we lease space in datacenteres in a few spots around the country. [1]
The thing is, we do this because we have specific hardware requirements which require that we use our own hardware, and ensure we can't use anyone else's stuff very easily. The problem is, we pay through the NOSE for it.
IMO, the optimal choice for most startups right now is to have very few servers (if any) that their run in-house, and to host the rest with other people.
There's a couple of reasons for this- The first is reliaiblity. Hosting companies have trained staff watching over the servers, and monitoring for a failure. While you might do a lot to watch for failures [2], you'd save sleep and sanity if you only needed to monitor for logic failures, and had someone else (the hosting co) helping watch for hardware problems.
The second major reason is Bandwidth! Getting quality, symetric bandwidth run to your door costs a LOT of money.. SpeakEasy DSL can get you started [3], you'll struggle to get anything higher that a 6.0/1Mbit line- For hosting, you need LOTS of upload- That 1Mbit will get taxed out quickly.
Take a look at Bandwidth offerings by Colos- Often you get Royally screwed, when compared to renting a dedicated server from them. Companies like ServerMatrix will give you 1.5 TB of monthly bandwidth for under $100.... That'd cost hunderds for the bandwidth alone in most colos.
The dedicated server places tend to assume you won't fully use the line, so they oversell- That's how you can get th e great deals on bandwidth.. The nice part is that if you go with a at least semi-reputable place (servermatrix, rackspace, etc) they have MORE than enough to cover you, even if they'll a littel annoyed that you use it all ;)
Read your TOS carefully.
Amazon's EC2 program is amoung the best for hosting, if you can get into it. It allows you to dynamically scale up the number of servers, and has very decent prices. This is among the best options for a startup because you can load balance to handle spikes in traffic, such as Digg, Techcrunch or Slashdot.
One other point I'll briefly touch on is depreciation of assets- If you buy your own servers, and add them to a colo, when they get old, you lose a lot of the initial value. You're often not going to want to keep the old servers in the farm, once they're so low they'll do more harm than good. With renting servers, along with the additional bandwidth and uptime, you get the advantage of being able to just say "I'm done with these servers.", and lose nothing.
-Colin
[1] I can't actually tell you the places for confidentiality reasons, but it's not important for this discussion anyway.
[2] Nagios Alerts to the Cellphone are a good start..
[3] Chosen because of good TOS, and reputation, but with the Bestbuy deal, be on your guard here. The situation could change quickly.