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03-21-2011, 11:43 PM #26Retired Moderator
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Some really bright people in this thread with a lot of FUD over nothing. I must be missing something
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03-22-2011, 12:05 AM #27Backup Guru
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When IBM started doing that, I'm sure they had customers that weren't happy about it. How would you like if it you spent money on an IBM mainframe so that you could sell processing services, and then IBM turned around and started competing with you?
Does IBM have happy services customers? Sure. Did their expansion into the services market put former customers out of business? Maybe not, but the ones that were affected certainly had a reason to be mad about it, just as Dell's server customers have a right to be mad about them expanding into hosting.Scott Burns, President
BQ Internet Corporation
Remote Rsync and FTP backup solutions
*** http://www.bqbackup.com/ ***
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03-22-2011, 12:22 AM #28Web Hosting Master
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To be more precise, it is Colocation section of Web Hosting Talk and colocation customers as well as colocation providers don't have anything to lose from Dell's extended offerings.
As for business of companies who provide dedicated servers, unless those companies already provide value add services or are ready to evolve and adapt to the ever changing marketplace those companies should really not be in business in a perfect market economy. If Dell can do the same as well or better as what a dedicated company provides than that that company should not be in business because they won't have the same economy of scale as Dell and existence of such a company is detrimental to the economy as it results in inefficient resource allocation.
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03-22-2011, 11:46 AM #29Retired Moderator
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Scott, I am not for a second suggesting that adding another competitor to the mix isn't always something we should be concerned about but acting like someone closed the local Tim Hortons (the Canadian equivalent of the end of the world) over this is just a bit over the top to me. It was bound to happen.
Being worried about Dell but ignoring IBM and HP, Fujitsu... who lots of us buy equipment from is crazy. You are worried about beign stung by a bee while there is a tiger on the loose.CloudNexus Technology Services
Managed Services
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03-22-2011, 11:49 AM #30
IBM has always been about services. The entire PC era was really a detour from the company's historical focus, which they've now gotten back to. Dell has always been about commodity hardware, so I would argue this is more of a focus shift for them, and less likely to succeed.
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03-22-2011, 03:15 PM #31Web Hosting Master
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Fujitsu to build two data centers in New Zealand
Construction funds approved; clients yet to be secured
One of the most recent major new builds announced by a multinational in New Zealands was HP’s data center in Waikato announced in March. HP is building the facility to provide infrastructure services in the region. The data center will work in an active-active configuration with an existing HP facility in Auckland.You will only find out how good a provider is when the going gets tough
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03-22-2011, 05:06 PM #32Web Hosting Master
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The point is not about just building datacenters. Datacenters are used for many different reasons. Below is what is being discussed in this thread..
--- Dell said. “What we’re finding is customers want to take advantage of the economics of the public cloud, but they really don’t want a public cloud … what they want is a private, secure cloud that has a level of assurance and security with it.” ---
-- customers want to take advantage of the economics of the public cloud -- i.e being cheap and affordable. Not having to setup their own servers and software etc.. something like what onapp is advertising around here. And hence considered competitive to commodity cloud hosting providers seen here on WHT. Atleast that's what I grasp from all of this..Last edited by linuxissues; 03-22-2011 at 05:10 PM.
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03-22-2011, 05:58 PM #33Backup Guru
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And I'm not suggesting that it's the end of the world I'm not a cloud host or a Dell customer, so as a neutral party, I'm just saying that I can see why some people aren't happy about it. The service arms of IBM and HP focus on fairly large businesses and seem to generally stay out of the way of WHT hosts. Dell might do the same, but we don't know that yet.
Scott Burns, President
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Remote Rsync and FTP backup solutions
*** http://www.bqbackup.com/ ***
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03-22-2011, 07:57 PM #34THE Web Hosting Master
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I don't buy from IBM, HP, or Fujitsu either... If there is another competitor who is just as good and the difference is one competes in similar market segments as me and the other dosen't, I pick the one that doesn't compete against me. Not saying they're evil, but if it doesn't even factor into the decision making seems fairly narrow-sited to me. On the other hand, we buy from nLayer, Level3, NTT, and Google even though they compete with us in some aspects as well. But what major carrier doesn't compete in the colo or managed services space? Then no one else can offer what Google does, whether they compete with us or not.
Then yes, this move might be better for most of Dell's customers and might make sense for Dell economically, that isn't the point at all. This is WHT, people here buy Dell servers to then sell resources on them as cloud/shared hosting, sell the whole thing as a dedicated server, or work with other aspects of them to sell as shared storage and other services. People are buying Dell gear specifically to resell it with their value adds on top and now Dell is looking to get in on those markets directly. How is putting Dell hardware in a data center, adding networking, connectivity, support, and cloud abstraction not providing a value-add? Those are significant value-adds to the base Dell hardware that existing customers are doing, now Dell sees the margin there and will cannibalize the business of those customers. What if your servers/processing heavy business/industry is next?
What?? Supermicro ONLY sells servers and high end workstations, almost their entire market is the enterprise segment. I know several Fortune 500 companies in the Chicago area here using large numbers of Supermicro servers, Microsoft has purchased a large number of Supermicro servers (though they've purchased from everyone at some point), they've been contracted for massive cluster/supercomputer builds, etc. Dell customers are NOT very different from Supermicro customers. Sure, there isn't direct overlap as Supermicro doesn't offer consulting services, they don't offer complete storage solutions, and they don't offer desktop systems, but in specifically the server world, there is significant overlap. If you think Supermicro is not focused on the enterprise market you're just mis-informed, simple as that...
Then they aren't competing against their own customers? There are a good number of cloud offerings based on Dell hardware, at least partially. Dell has customers providing the same services some of their customers are offering, how is that not competing against their customers?
And just as Scott is saying, I agree, it isn't the end of the world, but it IS another thing to consider when picking a vendor, especially when there are other equally capable vendors around that aren't competing for your business. It also seems there are a lot of assumptions about what people operating Data Centers on WHT are doing with them...Karl Zimmerman - Founder & CEO of Steadfast
VMware Virtual Data Center Platform
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03-22-2011, 08:02 PM #35THE Web Hosting Master
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Who is worried? Who is saying additional competition is bad?
People are simply stating what is happening, that a major vendor for a large part of WHT is going to possibly be competing against those same customers. No one has stated Dell is evil or that this will be the end of their business, etc. I'm saying, "Why knowingly support a competitor if you don't have to?" If you have to go with Dell (though I don't know why that would be the case), then this should make no difference to you.Karl Zimmerman - Founder & CEO of Steadfast
VMware Virtual Data Center Platform
karl @ steadfast.net - Sales/Support: 312-602-2689
Cloud Hosting, Managed Dedicated Servers, Chicago Colocation, and New Jersey Colocation
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03-23-2011, 07:45 AM #36Retired Moderator
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Fair enough but then most of the providers here should cancel their reseller programs and stop selling vps. On a daily basis resellers like us compete with our providers. Most people selling colo out of their cage compete with their colo provider.
Maybe it is in that context that it is busienss as usual for many of us. Honestly, it sounds more like a personal issue with Dell as this is just how the market works. Just my two cents. I get most of what you are saying but we face this every day.CloudNexus Technology Services
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03-23-2011, 07:55 AM #37Web Hosting Master
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If "cloud" (i.e. IaaS, virtual server deployments paid hourly) just becomes commoditised, which is the way it appears to be heading then the smaller providers need to find a way to add value to what they're offering to maintain their margins and retain customers.
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03-23-2011, 09:57 AM #38Web Hosting Master
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Agreed.
Amazon is the real competitor of the smaller providers, not IBM, HP, DELL.
How Big is Amazon’s EC2?
Big. 40,000 servers. I have independently confirmed this with at least two sources close to EC2. Obviously, I can’t reveal them, but they are personally known to me and reliable. The first source gave me the 40,000 number and the second confirmed that the number is close.
EC2′s Characteristics
Known For Reasonably Certain
Amazon does not oversubscribe cores
Amazon uses Rackable servers, mostly 2U dual-socket systems, with 8 cores, probably the S2108 models
Some of their older systems are 2U dual-socket systems with 4 cores total
The AWS target cost for servers is roughly $2-2.5K
Initial overall target utilization rate for EC2 was 70-75%
Recently AWS has been having regular capacity issues (due to growth?)
Amazon is beginning to move some retail site capacity onto EC2
RAID is used for the disk subsystem, probably in a RAID-0 (striped) configuration[1]
Mostly Sure
Most of the servers are likely in the US availability zones vs. the EU zones, maybe 75-80% of total capacity
Amazon probably runs 8 500GB SATA drives per system
At 2U, Amazon runs 16-18 servers per rack, probably 16
Amazon uses the same, or a very similar, physical hardware platform for all instances sizes; it has changed over time and there are a few generations, but they don’t buy or ‘silo’ the hardware if they can help it
Inferred or Assumed
At 40,000 servers evenly distributed across 6 availability zones we know:
___ 6,700 servers per zone
___ 417 racks per zone, 2,500 racks total
___ 2 * 30A circuits per rack (assuming no redundant PSUs) at a draw of probably 6.5kw
___ That’s roughly 16.25MW of total power, not including that of the critical systems (HVAC, etc.) or the other AWS services
___ 95,000 used sq ft, which probably means 200K total sq footage including support systems
Taking a good guess, I’d say as many as 20% of instances are ‘reserved‘, meaning purchased at a 70% discount one year in advance
Another good guess is that up to 20% of EC2 capacity is being reserved for the retail site (Amazon.com)You will only find out how good a provider is when the going gets tough
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03-23-2011, 10:32 AM #39THE Web Hosting Master
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I agree, reseller programs where the resellers have no value add don't make much sense, but that is the host encouraging competition to them, not really the same thing. How does selling VPSes fall into this?
Most people selling colo in a cage aren't competing with their colo provider, as most companies selling cages aren't doing single server colo, they're not doing short term deals. In our case, DRT could be seen as our competitor, but they aren't. They don't sell anything under ~250kw and we don't sell anything over 250kw. You look at Equinix or TelX and their main business is cross connects/interconnection, not colo and as long as you're in their space they're getting that business.
In this business there are plenty of niche markets, plenty of ways to differentiate yourself. Sure, Dell might find their own niche, but "public cloud" is more of an entire market segment than a niche. And yes, Amazon is more of a threat there, but I don't see how that makes Dell not a threat.Karl Zimmerman - Founder & CEO of Steadfast
VMware Virtual Data Center Platform
karl @ steadfast.net - Sales/Support: 312-602-2689
Cloud Hosting, Managed Dedicated Servers, Chicago Colocation, and New Jersey Colocation
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03-23-2011, 11:49 AM #40Web Hosting Master
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Most of "public cloud" offerings are pre-paid "VPS on iSCSI" with fixed resources marketed as "cloud computing".
Amazon is a reputable customer-centric company, with recognized extensive experience in software development, selling S3 and EC2 for years. Moreover recently Amazon added "default page" and "404 page" to S3 -- making S3 alone a direct competitor to all static content toy CDN providers. Also Amazon is heavily expanding its global presence -- less than 3 weeks ago Amazon announced its local presence in Tokyo and plans to provide options for billing in Japanese Yen.
Starting today, Japan-based businesses and global companies with customers in Japan can run their applications and workloads in the Tokyo Region to reduce latency to end-users, keep their data entirely in Japan, and avoid the undifferentiated heavy lifting associated with maintaining and operating their own infrastructure. In most cases, end users in Japan can now experience single digit millisecond latencies from AWS’s new Tokyo Region. Tokyo joins Singapore as AWS’s second Asia Pacific location and as AWS’s fifth infrastructure location worldwide.Last edited by dotHostel; 03-23-2011 at 11:52 AM.
You will only find out how good a provider is when the going gets tough
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03-23-2011, 11:51 AM #41Web Hosting Master
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03-23-2011, 11:57 AM #42Web Hosting Master
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03-23-2011, 12:09 PM #43Web Hosting Master
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Yeah
I can't stand the performance of sata, we use nearline sas 7.2k 500gb drives for customer needing space more than performance, and then 300gb 15k drives for everything else.
Gotta love having an adaptive san
And a LOT of r610s lolLast edited by Visbits; 03-23-2011 at 12:13 PM.
'Ripcord'ing is the only way!
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03-23-2011, 12:25 PM #44Web Hosting Master
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03-23-2011, 12:47 PM #45Web Hosting Master
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OFF-TOPIC Just for providers running toy CDNs and worried with Dell´s private cloud -- I guess they may want to read this:
New AWS feature: Run your website from Amazon S3
Since a few days ago this weblog serves 100% of its content directly out of the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) without the need for a web server to be involved. Because my blog is almost completely static content I wanted to run in this very simple configuration since the launch of Amazon S3. It would allow the blog to be powered by the incredible scale and reliability of Amazon S3 with a minimum of effort from my side. I know of several other customers who had asked for this greatly simplifying feature as well. I had held out implementing an alternative to my simple blog server that had been running at a traditional hosting site for many years until this preferred simple solution became available
Jet-Stream CDN on Amazon cloud
Recently Jet-Stream and a customer deployed a full CDN on the Amazon cloud. Both the Jet-Stream CDN software and all the delivery nodes were installed on Amazon cloud servers: a premium, geo optimized, intelligent CDN cloud on top of a commodity volume cloud: the best of both worlds: 100% control, 100% management, 100% premium, 100% compliancy and 100% flexibility.Last edited by dotHostel; 03-23-2011 at 12:56 PM.
You will only find out how good a provider is when the going gets tough
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03-23-2011, 02:03 PM #46THE Web Hosting Master
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Yes, I agree, what is your point? Are you running your own hosting business on Amazon hardware/software?
Most by number of cheap/low-end providers or most by actual revenue volume? Can't imagine Rackspace, etc. are running on those sorts of setups, and companies like that still account for most cloud sales. To me, it seems you're basing your assumptions on a very narrow segment of the hosting market, though that is what is most prevalent here on WHT I guess.Last edited by KarlZimmer; 03-23-2011 at 02:08 PM.
Karl Zimmerman - Founder & CEO of Steadfast
VMware Virtual Data Center Platform
karl @ steadfast.net - Sales/Support: 312-602-2689
Cloud Hosting, Managed Dedicated Servers, Chicago Colocation, and New Jersey Colocation
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03-23-2011, 02:07 PM #47WHT Addict
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The Dell brand does impress a lot of potential customers for all kinds of hosting. If later they also started to sell cloud services there will be a lot of people that would be attracted to it just because of the Dell name. Maybe people on WHT don't feel that way but I do see the vast general public would feel more comfortable because of their name.
For those that say its not competition right now its because not many people YOU know don't heavily use cloud service for a production environment but I bet if Dell started renting whole computers as dedicated servers you would feel threatened.
It depends on where "the cloud" is going in the future.
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03-23-2011, 03:17 PM #48Web Hosting Master
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03-23-2011, 04:12 PM #49Web Hosting Master
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03-23-2011, 06:00 PM #50THE Web Hosting Master
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The hosters using desktop hardware, non-ECC RAM, etc. is a specific segment of the industry and covers far from everyone, yet you say it covers most providers. My statements were specifically regarding WHT users, not the entire hosting industry, and were entirely accurate, not assumptions... Unless you're saying Dell gear is not used by a measurable percentage of users here or that a large number of users on WHT aren't in the business of providing "web hosting" and related services. You're saying a majority of people do something some way, while I'm saying some people or a measurable number of people do something, I'm not creating generalizations to back my points, you are...
Karl Zimmerman - Founder & CEO of Steadfast
VMware Virtual Data Center Platform
karl @ steadfast.net - Sales/Support: 312-602-2689
Cloud Hosting, Managed Dedicated Servers, Chicago Colocation, and New Jersey Colocation
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