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  1. #1

    Question Colocation - who, where & how much?

    Hello all,

    I just bought 10 servers, and this is my first time owning my own equipment, so I'm not sure what's next really. I thought coming here with a couple of questions would be my best bet in getting started off on the right foot.

    1. I bought a few Dell PowerEdge 2650's. I'm not sure if those are 1U, 2U, or wht they are classified as. Can someone please let me know about that?

    2. I'm looking for a place to colocate these servers. Can you please give you recommendations on a good place to colo them that's inexpensive, and that will manage the servers if something goes wrong?

    3. What price range should I be looking at for a good colo provider? I assume the colo market is the same as any shared hosting market with dramatic pricing differences.

    For now, thats all I can think of. I'm sure I'll come up with more questions as time goes on though. So, thanks in advance for any help or advice you can give me!

  2. #2
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    colo4.com maybe?

    Specially 4 U
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  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by build-a-host View Post
    Hello all,

    I just bought 10 servers, and this is my first time owning my own equipment, so I'm not sure what's next really. I thought coming here with a couple of questions would be my best bet in getting started off on the right foot.

    1. I bought a few Dell PowerEdge 2650's. I'm not sure if those are 1U, 2U, or wht they are classified as. Can someone please let me know about that?

    2. I'm looking for a place to colocate these servers. Can you please give you recommendations on a good place to colo them that's inexpensive, and that will manage the servers if something goes wrong?

    3. What price range should I be looking at for a good colo provider? I assume the colo market is the same as any shared hosting market with dramatic pricing differences.

    For now, thats all I can think of. I'm sure I'll come up with more questions as time goes on though. So, thanks in advance for any help or advice you can give me!
    1. I believe your servers are 2U.

    2. What type of management are you looking for? Do you want the datacenter to be local or remote? If you choose a remote datacenter you will want to make sure they provide you all the tools you need to manage your server or provide seller management service.

    3. How many total u's are you going to need? How many power plugs. (do you have 2 power supply s per server?) Are you going to want remote reboot, do you need IPkvm? Do your servers require another network drop for DRAC? How much power do you estimate your going to be using?

    Take a look around for hosts, you have a wonderful resource here at WHT.

    I hope my questions point you in the right direction.

  4. #4
    I forgot to ask!

    1. Did the servers you ordered come with rails for a rack?
    2. What do you intend to use your new collection of hardware for?

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by build-a-host View Post
    3. What price range should I be looking at for a good colo provider?
    You need to figure whether you can run your 10 servers (and whatever other equipment you will need in the rack like a switch or firewall) on 20As of power. Remember that even though the datacenter sells you a 20A circuit, you can only load it to 80% or 16As for safety. You don't want to burn down your datacenter!

    You also need to know how much rack space you will need. If those 10 servers are 2U each, you might be able to squeeze into a half rack, but you will probably need a full rack.

    Next, you need to figure your bandwidth needs as that can vary in price greatly.

    Figure at least $750 for a full rack, 20A, and some bandwidth. Probably, $1000 for this rack is average these days.

    If you need an extra 20As to your rack, figure at least $300 to $400 more.

    I'd also consider whether you need 24/7 unescorted access, KVMs for the servers, remote hands (at a fee probably averaging $150/hour during business hours and $250/hour off hours), etc.

    You probably don't want a shared cabinet but a private lockable cabinet and you will pay a little more for that (if you can get by with a half rack). Half racks cost more per U than full racks though.
    Kevin, The Walrus

  6. #6
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    AWalrus pretty much nailed it on the head.

    Those Dell PE's eat up the juice though. I have one and I pulled it, now it sits lonely on its side.

    Full Cab if you plan to rack all of those, along with any other devices. They will pretty much take up the full depth of a cabinet also.

    Not sure if you have a meter, I'll throw mine on my kill-a-watt meter tomorrow just because I'm curious again.

  7. #7
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    Contact Ryan at WireSix.com. He can set you up.
    AYKsolutions.com - High Bandwidth Specialists - 10Gbps/20Gbps+ Unmetered & DDOS Protected
    Over 20+ Global Locations - Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo), Mexico, Brazil, India, Australia, US, CA, EU - Bare Metal and Virtual Cloud. All Managed.
    We are Professional. Painless. Polite.

  8. #8
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    I use GoRACK in Jacksonville, FL for colo. Their people are really nice and very easy to work with. Prices are good and they even include a little remote hands support free with most plans so you don't have to go on-site for hardware swaps.

    They aren't a managed provider though -- if you don't know how to manage your own operating systems, install patches, or maintain firewalls and whatnot then they may not be the right fit. You could always hire a secondary management company to help you with those sorts of needs though.

    --Chris
    The Object Zone - Your Windows Server Specialists for more than twenty years - http://www.object-zone.net/
    Services: Contract Server Management, Desktop Support Services, IT/VoIP Consulting, Cloud Migration, and Custom ASP.net and Mobile Application Development

  9. #9
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    Jan 2009
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    3,878
    On another note, if you fancy the Colo4 facility. Check out CPC Technologies, all of our gear is located with them. It has been smooth sailing since last August, no regrets at least.

  10. #10
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    I've got a few 2650s still in production. With all the drives loaded in those figure 2.5 amps each. You'll need at least 30 amps to cover that since most breakers will only hold up to 80%.

    With a switch and a firewall you may consider going 40 amps. You didn't indicate where you are located, so that we may provide better insight on a data center.

    If you're going to 10 servers I'm going to guess you will probably need at least 10 Mbps. If you are doing shared hosting, there are tons of smart people on here that would be able to help.

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by MikeTrike View Post
    On another note, if you fancy the Colo4 facility. Check out CPC Technologies, all of our gear is located with them. It has been smooth sailing since last August, no regrets at least.
    I agree completely, I've been with James for the last 2-3 months and have been very pleased with the service.

  12. #12
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    I've heard good things about CPC and GoRack.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by build-a-host View Post
    Hello all,

    I just bought 10 servers, and this is my first time owning my own equipment, so I'm not sure what's next really. I thought coming here with a couple of questions would be my best bet in getting started off on the right foot.

    1. I bought a few Dell PowerEdge 2650's. I'm not sure if those are 1U, 2U, or wht they are classified as. Can someone please let me know about that?

    2. I'm looking for a place to colocate these servers. Can you please give you recommendations on a good place to colo them that's inexpensive, and that will manage the servers if something goes wrong?

    3. What price range should I be looking at for a good colo provider? I assume the colo market is the same as any shared hosting market with dramatic pricing differences.

    For now, thats all I can think of. I'm sure I'll come up with more questions as time goes on though. So, thanks in advance for any help or advice you can give me!


    What part of the country are you looking to colo in? Are you looking for a full cabinet or half?
    NationalNet
    Hosting. Handled.

    Managed Hosting | Dedicated Hosting | Atlanta Colocation
    sales@nationalnet.com
    | 888-4-NATNET | www.nationalnet.com

  14. #14
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    Just threw a 2650 on a kill-a-watt meter.

    1.5-1.6A during power up and boot.
    Has 2 x 2.8GHz xeons, 4GB RAM and 3 x 10K SCSI's

    You "might" be able to sneak by on a 20A@110V circuit, but that would be riding the line at about 16A. That does not count anything else, KVM/Switch/etc...

    Definitely a 30A@110V circuit for sure if you want to run all 10 of them.

    Alternatively 20A@110V with just 9 of them and you have a couple U left over on a half cabinet without pushing more than 16A@110V on your 20A circuit, including your switch/kvm/etc.

    This is of course assuming that you're not using 5 x 10K SCSI's and something like 3.8GHz Xeons, etc... i.e. not maxxed out.

    Play around with the #'s and see what works for your situation. They are generally unique to each individual/business.

  15. #15
    Thanks for all the great info guys, helps a lot!

    On a side not, please note that I am NOT looking for quotes, so please do not PM me or open tickets in my help desk trying to sell me colo services like Dinix from dinixhost.com and Brett from constellate.com have done. Dinix sent me PM's, and constellate.com actually opened a ticket in my help desk!

    These 2 people have proven themselves to be very hard up for business. I do not want to go with ANY company that chases me down to try and sell to me. If you need my business that bad, you can't be reliable!

  16. #16
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    346
    Just report them, you cant do that here.

  17. #17
    Keep in mind too that your machines will pull MUCH more power when the CPUs are under load than when you're just booting them up. For us we draw 2-3x more power under load than at idle--and during bootup you're pretty much at idle.

    Try and figure out how you can approximate what kind of load your machines will actually be under, putting 10 servers that idle at 1.6A on a 20A circuit might not work out.

  18. #18
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    As I said before, I had (5) 146GB 15k SCSI drives. However, mine drew more on the bootup when all the SCSI drives started to spin up. Once the OS booted it wasn't using as much power. Under a load with dual 3.06 GHz CPUs, I would say those things can draw damn close to 5 amps. The original author of this post said he bought 10 servers, but didn't say if he was actually going to use all of them. I would keep at least 1 maybe 2 for spare parts if all the hardware is the same.

    We also haven't covered the switch/firewall/bandwidth requirements yet. Also, it may be worth mentioning the 2650s are almost 10 years old. I believe they were released around 2001-2002. In the long run, it may be worth getting less but more powerful boxes like 2950s or R710s. They hold much more RAM, and use SATA/SAS drives which will offer more storage space. I can't imagine he paid more than $3000 for all the 2650s.

  19. #19
    Yet another company opens a ticket in my help desk after I specifically asked them not to! Jeffrey from cognetco.com is the latest hard up company to try and chase me down to sell to me! So, it appears they should not be trusted either!

  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by build-a-host View Post
    Yet another company opens a ticket in my help desk after I specifically asked them not to! Jeffrey from cognetco.com is the latest hard up company to try and chase me down to sell to me! So, it appears they should not be trusted either!
    Welcome to the industry. You'll be hunted/stalked/bothered from every sales rep in the world, IP transit, colocation and hardware resellers new and greymarket.
    Yellow Fiber Networks
    http://www.yellowfiber.net : Managed Solutions - Colocation - Network Services IPv4/IPv6
    Ashburn/Denver/NYC/Dallas/Chicago Markets Served zak@yellowfiber.net

  21. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by build-a-host View Post
    Yet another company opens a ticket in my help desk after I specifically asked them not to! Jeffrey from cognetco.com is the latest hard up company to try and chase me down to sell to me! So, it appears they should not be trusted either!
    You can't fault a salesman for being aggressive in pursuing every possible lead. That is how they get new business. If they all waited for you to come to them, they might not have nearly as much business, no matter how good their product or service is.

    Cogentco.com is a big business and I'm sure they have many sales people. These people live off commission so you might want to cut them some slack.
    Kevin, The Walrus

  22. #22
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    Depends on where you want. East coast - Ryan at Colo@ (WireSix), West Coast - Fazewire is expanding so might be able to get some good rates with his new floor space.

    Central- Joe's Datacenter seems to have some cheap colo lately. Continumn I think is what people rave about in Chicago and Dallas has Colo4.
    Nothing here right now.

  23. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by Matt - HostMist View Post
    East coast - Ryan at Colo@ (WireSix)
    Just to point this out, but Colo@ also have space in Dallas and LA. They are also opening up Phoenix shortly.

    We have space in Atlanta and Dallas with them right now and they keep trying to pitch me LA
    ExpressHosting.net - Fast. Reliable. Affordable.
    Shared Hosting | Dedicated Servers | Colocation | Managed Cloud | AS53255

  24. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by AWalrus View Post
    You can't fault a salesman for being aggressive in pursuing every possible lead. That is how they get new business. If they all waited for you to come to them, they might not have nearly as much business, no matter how good their product or service is.

    Cogentco.com is a big business and I'm sure they have many sales people. These people live off commission so you might want to cut them some slack.
    I agree with the AWalrus and the others. I hear you posting names of companies who are fighting for your business, but I don't share your sentiment that they are "hard up" for business. These guys are just doing their job at making sure that you have the correct contact details for someone in their sales force so that if you're ready to open an account - you aren't at a loss for how to do it.

    If I were upset about someone contacting me for a sales pitch, then I would have to be angry at GoRACK. Curtis was my sales guy, and he pinged me a couple of times during my three month window that I was seeking a new home for my equipment. It wasn't his perseverance that got me, but the product offering that won me. Had the product not been worthwhile, I would have told him I wasn't interested and presumably he would have stopped contacting me. After all was said, and done, Curtis turned out to be a really great business connection -- we've helped each other by referring business to each other several times. I make nothing off my referrals to him, nor he from mine, but what makes a customer happy is that you can help them connect with someone who can make it happen and that's the key to business.

    I do hope that you will reconsider entertaining some of those reps who have contacted you directly. I'm sure some of them can offer you a fine colo experience worthy of your money.

    Good luck with your efforts, and please let us know where you decide to ultimately go and hopefully post a review at a later date to let everyone know how it went.

    --Chris
    The Object Zone - Your Windows Server Specialists for more than twenty years - http://www.object-zone.net/
    Services: Contract Server Management, Desktop Support Services, IT/VoIP Consulting, Cloud Migration, and Custom ASP.net and Mobile Application Development

  25. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by ObjectZone View Post
    I agree with the AWalrus and the others. I hear you posting names of companies who are fighting for your business, but I don't share your sentiment that they are "hard up" for business. These guys are just doing their job at making sure that you have the correct contact details for someone in their sales force so that if you're ready to open an account - you aren't at a loss for how to do it.

    If I were upset about someone contacting me for a sales pitch, then I would have to be angry at GoRACK. Curtis was my sales guy, and he pinged me a couple of times during my three month window that I was seeking a new home for my equipment. It wasn't his perseverance that got me, but the product offering that won me. Had the product not been worthwhile, I would have told him I wasn't interested and presumably he would have stopped contacting me. After all was said, and done, Curtis turned out to be a really great business connection -- we've helped each other by referring business to each other several times. I make nothing off my referrals to him, nor he from mine, but what makes a customer happy is that you can help them connect with someone who can make it happen and that's the key to business.

    I do hope that you will reconsider entertaining some of those reps who have contacted you directly. I'm sure some of them can offer you a fine colo experience worthy of your money.

    Good luck with your efforts, and please let us know where you decide to ultimately go and hopefully post a review at a later date to let everyone know how it went.

    --Chris
    OR, they could just abide by the rules of WHT and not contact him. We've been mentioned a few times in this thread (thanks keyword alerts!) and you don't see us spamming his inbox. If a customer wants to do business with you, they'll come to you. Harassing them when they've asked to not be contacted is just a way to ensure they don't do business with you.

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