Hey All --

Looking for a reliable colo facility in the San Diego area (i'm in La Jolla). About a 1.0mbit connection is fine, 1/3 to 1/2 rack (maybe more?), with a budget of $700-$1000/month.

Any good experiences with some locals? I'm about to go with Verio ($750 for 1/30 rack, 1.0mbit burstable to 10mbit), but the do not have someone 24/7, and their paperwork to get into a facility is ridiculous, you have to have tons of insurance like workmans comp before they will even let you step foot into
their building.

TIA !

mrjaytee

Check out Inflow, they may be a little more expensive but are worth it.

Try cts.net (bought by hosting.com) on Complex Drive off Clairmont Mesa Blvd. Also, aplus.net off East Gate Mall (Mira Mesa Blvd).

I have not tried either, but we are moving from our current location and placed them at the top. Inflow has the best NOC by far, but they are going to be way more in price.

Verio is not 24/7 and has no plans of this.

CTS is using Verio so you would still have the Verio network + the service. Aplus is a good choice to.

I hate to mention to obvious, sdcolo.com . Their prices are pretty low but it appears to be a cogent only solution. I have no experience with them and actually consider them a competitor on the dedicated hosting side. Their hosting side of the business is host2own.

I am sort of curious to see how any of their cogent only customers feel about the whole cogent deal. Our experience with cogent has not been that good (Understatement), but are hoping that Cogent continues to improve their service.

Robert Marsh
Head Surfer Rackshack.net

I hate to mention to obvious, sdcolo.com . Their prices are pretty low but it appears to be a cogent only solution. I have no experience with them and actually consider them a competitor on the dedicated hosting side. Their hosting side of the business is host2own.

Stay away. Just some facts.....

1) There racks are all 28 inches deep. This means you must pay an extra $200 just to get a standard size cabinet others offer. (28 inches is no big deal unless you want to house Dells or other beefy servers)
2) There rails are shaved because they were not EIA-310 compliant. We coudn't fit Dell or Compaq boxes as well as Cisco switches in the rails until they were shaved.
3) No raised flooring and the colo is upstairs in a rundown building. SoCal has earthquakes, and this building sure won't fair well.
4) It is only a 15 AMP circut. It is $200/mo for an extra 15 AMPs.

Looking for a Yugo - SDColo
Looking for a BMW - Inflow
Looking for a nice family car - aplus.net or CTS.net

Thanks for the feedback.

after looking at aplus.net they look like they have their act together. I can get the same bandwidth and more rack space at aplus.net than I can at verio. And in addition I would get 24x7 support.

I have used Verio, as well as CTS before for some customers but am not away of how much CTS charges.. Their NOC is very responsive though.. always available at late hours, etc.

Any personal expereince with aplus.net from locals would be greatfully appreciated.

SDColo looked great, but their webpage it doesn't appear that they offer a full package like I could get with aplus, ( as far as onsite NOC goes, plus they only have a cogent backbone? )..

Thanks

Originally posted by UmBillyCord


Stay away. Just some facts.....

1) There racks are all 28 inches deep. This means you must pay an extra $200 just to get a standard size cabinet others offer. (28 inches is no big deal unless you want to house Dells or other beefy servers)
2) There rails are shaved because they were not EIA-310 compliant. We coudn't fit Dell or Compaq boxes as well as Cisco switches in the rails until they were shaved.
3) No raised flooring and the colo is upstairs in a rundown building. SoCal has earthquakes, and this building sure won't fair well.
4) It is only a 15 AMP circut. It is $200/mo for an extra 15 AMPs.

Looking for a Yugo - SDColo
Looking for a BMW - Inflow
Looking for a nice family car - aplus.net or CTS.net

UmBilly ,

thanks for the feedback... I think aplus is the way to go for me (closer to my apt)...

thanks again

We just recently moved out of CTSnet (moved out of state and wanted to keep equipment local) and had mostly very good experiences with them. We were a customer for approx. 2 years and would rate service as very reliable and responsive. CTS currently connects to Level(3), Verio, Allegiance (their parent company), Exodus and AT&T. There have also been rumors of additional peering coming in.

CTS is definately fully staffed 24/7 and access is not a problem. They may be a bit above your budget.

When I looked at A Plus (nearly 2 years ago), their bandwidth costs were quite excessive, so I have no first-hand experience with them. I personally like the CTS facility better than A Plus.

I also looked at the sdcolo (cari.net) facility which is actually two buildings down from CTS and was not impressed with the building itself. Last I knew, they connected to Level(3), Genuity and were just bringing in Cogent.

I'd also highly recommend Inflow for a high end datacenter. They are one of the few providers I've seen with true end-to-end redundancy in each datacenter. Their San Diego datacenter connects to UUNET, AT&T and Genuity.

I hope that helps.

Mike Griffin

UnBillyCord-

Thanks for the info on SDColo. I was always curious ... now I know.

Robert Marsh
Head Surfer Rackshack.net

You get what you pay for...

I'd also highly recommend Inflow for a high end datacenter. They are one of the few providers I've seen with true end-to-end redundancy in each datacenter. Their San Diego datacenter connects to UUNET, AT&T and Genuity. Inflow no longer carries Genuity in any of their datacenters.

Take a look at www.castleaccess.com. They are new and seem to have good pricing.

Since they are new in San Diego I am pretty sure they will give you early mover discounts or something like that. We are going to go with them pretty soon in the next few months.

Thanks for everyone's suggestions.. it looks like we are going to go with Verio.. APlus has a competitive pricing structure.. but we are getting a free setup @ Verio.. so that will save about 1K worth of expenses... we don't get 24/7 support, but that shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Thanks again

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
Try cts.net (bought by hosting.com) on Complex Drive off Clairmont Mesa Blvd. Also, aplus.net off East Gate Mall (Mira Mesa Blvd).

I have not tried either, but we are moving from our current location and placed them at the top. Inflow has the best NOC by far, but they are going to be way more in price.

Verio is not 24/7 and has no plans of this.

Umm, yes they are. I go into the La Jolla facility at all kinds of wack hours. Just have them scan your hand and give you a key card.

-davidu

Umm, yes they are. I go into the La Jolla facility at all kinds of wack hours. Just have them scan your hand and give you a key card.

ummm, look at what we were talking about. They have no plans of having 24/7 support. Another words - no late night reboots. You have to go there. If you live 80 miles away, this is hardly acceptable as most places of their caliber offer 24/7 support.

Verio outsources late night support to a local comapny. This is contracted between you and them - not Verio.

If anyone wants to contract me for some late nite reboots,
let me know, i'm about .75 miles away from Verio, and its
pretty quick... heck, I'll even give you a discount of $125/hour.

I already have a badge also.

Kudos Verio

Originally posted by UmBillyCord


ummm, look at what we were talking about. They have no plans of having 24/7 support. Another words - no late night reboots. You have to go there. If you live 80 miles away, this is hardly acceptable as most places of their caliber offer 24/7 support.

Verio outsources late night support to a local comapny. This is contracted between you and them - not Verio.

Ahh, I thought you meant that you couldn't just walk in whenever you wanted. I don't expect Verio to offer remote-reboots or whatever...hell, if verio ever touched my hardware I would get _REALLY_ pissed. It's in a locked cabinet for a reason.

When they sell colocation, that's all they sell, not "managed hosting" or whatever... ;-)

Also, FYI -- heh, they fired the local company that used to be there 24/7 -- it's now unmaned late at night. :-(

-davidu

Ahh, I thought you meant that you couldn't just walk in whenever you wanted. I don't expect Verio to offer remote-reboots or whatever...hell, if verio ever touched my hardware I would get _REALLY_ pissed. It's in a locked cabinet for a reason.

For me it is key. I don't care if soemone else flips the reboot switch. It saves me a drive at 2 AM. :)

Verio was going to offer 24/7 manning in August. But with everything going on, they canned it.

Now with the larger cages (i'm not sure with the 1/3 and 1/2 cabinets) they give you one or two reboot power strips where
you can telnet in and reset the AC power to your server from
anywhere on the net. comes in handy.