Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Dedicated Server : When to switch from dedicated to colo?

[sbalmos]

Hi all,

I am not sure my business will ever get big enough to justify doing this, but around what point do you all believe it's worth it to switch from dedicated servers to colocating your own equipment? Whether it's number of servers, the hardware in the servers, bandwidth, etc?

Personally, I've had a bad experience with colo'ing. It's never been the datacenter, but the hardware. Three blown servers (blown power supply, blown CPU fan, and now blown mobo I think - it's still in my basement. ). And those repair costs *add up*, especially when you're paying for rush shipping, and remote hands to replace everything. Or paying for rush shipping both ways to have the server sent back you and back to the datacenter.

So, needless to say, I'm going with dedicated servers for now solely because I'd rather pay a little more monthly to have the hosting company be responsible for anything that blows up.

But... Colo has to be more economical at some point. And if it's a gray-line gut instinct decision, tell me that too.

Thanks!

--Scott

[JHServers]

The thing with colo is that because it costs a bit more upfront, people "cheap out" on the hardware. That's where hardware becomes an issue. You need to invest in quality things and you'll actually end up saving money as time goes on. Think about it. Say you spend $50 on a 512 MB RAM stick. I spend $100 on it. Your RAM stick will most likely fail soon causing downtime. You'll have to replace it with another, so now we've both spent $100 but i've had no downtime and a quality RAM stick still. When we go to sell old equipment, i'll get more for mine and end up making more than you did even though i spent 2x more in the beginning.

[r34per]

wow, i dont really know much of anything about wen hosting

[mgphoto]

We host both type of clients and I always suggest going colo if you know how to manage your own server.

Follow Raine Tech's advice and get a quality server. You may want to look at http://www.apaqdigital.com/ We and dozens of our clients use their servers and they work great.

The biggest advantage to colo is as you grow you have many more options on where you want to be hosted and what services you want to offer. On someone else's dedicated server you are locked in to only what the ISP offers. As an example: if your ISP doesn't offer backup service for their dedicated servers what are you going to do. With your own boxes you can setup your own backup system.

Go colo as soon as you know how to manage a server.

[ispclub.com]

Many companies are switching from colo to dedicated because it saves money. I guess the only time it makes sense to have a colo is when you have custom or very expensive servers.

Or you can look into rent to own servers, that may help cut costs over time.

[Steve M.]

Well, Colo saves you money in the long run, and when you decide to switch, pick a physical location where you can access your servers.

[z280 Hosting]

I'll never colo... Colo is more cost effective truly... after you concider everything, but its a hassle. Why pay to always fix your own servers when you could just "yell at someone else to fix it" for almost the same money.

[JHServers]

Originally posted by z280 Hosting
I'll never colo... Colo is more cost effective truly... after you concider everything, but its a hassle. Why pay to always fix your own servers when you could just "yell at someone else to fix it" for almost the same money.

Very true and Ev1's most recent offering, the private racks. It seems to make more sense to just buy those if you can afford it. (Minimum $1000 setup fee and $500/mo. which includes NO servers). But the thing with ev1 is that they bill people per GB rather than 95th like you'd get with a colo company. This can save a lot of money if you have a bit of bursty traffic past 95th. Also, Ev1's private rack allows you to Aggregate bandwidth between all servers. So say you order 20 servers with 1400 GB each, you get 28 TB as a whole and you can push all 20 TB on a single server or put 2400 on one and 400 on another. Not a bad deal if you ask me. The other thing with colo is buying licenses to everything, such as cPanel/Plesk or Ensim or whatever else of your choosing. You would also need to buy Windows license if you use windows servers. It can work both ways, it just depends on what your needs are.

[amc-james]

That may not be a bad deal, but the advantage of colo is that the equipment is YOURS and you can move it to wherever you see fit.

[mgphoto]

Not to speak badly of EV1, but why anyone would take their private rack deals is beyond my comprehension.

You're paying for the rack plus the servers. If you are already paying for the servers why would you care what rack they are in.

You're paying $500.00 to $700.00 a month for the rack plus $1,000 to $2,000 is setup fees to be in the exact same data center with the exact same bandwidth and support. Then you have to pay for the servers on top of that.

That's math I just don't understand.

[sbalmos]

Yeah, I'll mostly agree with everything so far here. I consider myself an intermediate-advanced admin. May not know the neater tricks of firewalls and other junk, but I know how to diagnose most oddities in log files, recognize attacks, etc. And most importantly... I don't need a control panel.

I'll have to agree also with Ezzi & Neill. Unless the server setup is "nonstandard", I personally feel more comfortable with dedicated servers, solely because I can scream at someone to fix it, and it's not going to cost me anything more *at that moment*. It's like an insurance policy... You pay a little more recurring, to avoid a huge-arse bill when something happens.

Maybe by the time you get a handful of servers, you hope the business has stashed enough capital that it can eat the up-front cost of ditching the dedicated servers, buying equivalents in its own equipment, and colo'ing a rack. But if we're talking about fairly standard stuff (especially with the solidifying of MySQL and OpenLDAP clustering/replication), I still think dedicated servers are better. It's just a matter of coaxing the DC into loading your somewhat-nonstandard OS setup (FreeBSD 5.2, no control panel, and keep yer hands off of the console unless I want you to, thank ye very much! )

--Scott

[Imago]

Originally posted by crnc
That may not be a bad deal, but the advantage of colo is that the equipment is YOURS and you can move it to wherever you see fit.

While the advantage of the dedicated server is that you can move from it wherever and whenever you want. :-)

[sbalmos]

'cept for the minor problem of transferring all your data, the system config, etc etc etc. I'll concede that point.

--Scott

[JHServers]

Originally posted by mgphoto
Not to speak badly of EV1, but why anyone would take their private rack deals is beyond my comprehension.

You're paying for the rack plus the servers. If you are already paying for the servers why would you care what rack they are in.

You're paying $500.00 to $700.00 a month for the rack plus $1,000 to $2,000 is setup fees to be in the exact same data center with the exact same bandwidth and support. Then you have to pay for the servers on top of that.

That's math I just don't understand.

If you read all of what I wrote and examined the deal on their web page, you'd understand why. First of all, any traffic between those servers is internal and not counted towards your total as opposed to being on 2 separate switches where it would count reguardless if in the same dc. Dc's bill based on traffic that hits their switches, the private rack wouldn't. The other thing is that the private rack offers you managed switches, remote reboot for every server and also KVM over IP for every server which is really great. Another great thing is that not only do you get a full Class C of IP's but ev1 will also swip the IP's to the customer so when you Whois the IP, it doesn't show ev1, but rather your company's name. The last thing is that bandwidth is aggregated between servers on a per GB method. Meaning if you buy enough servers totaling to 28 TB of bandwidth. You can use say 110 mbps for a few days and not pay for 110 mbps, but rather the same amount.

[mgphoto]

If you were using 28 TB of bandwidth ev1 would be suffering a network crash and you would be shoved out the door.

If you paid the same amount at a decent datacenter with multihoned bandwidth you would own all of the gear within a year. If you had your own switch, which I assume you would with 20 servers, the internal bandwidth isn't charged.

For $2,500 a month I'll give you 4 racks. Bandwidth would be $75.00 per Mbs for 1-9 Mbs. 10 Mbs or more is $60.00. All on a dedicated 100 Mbs port. Free reboots and real 24/7 support.