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  1. #1

    Looking for Manned Colo in LA or SF

    Hi Guys,

    I am looking for 1 rack 2 x 30amp circuits in a manned colo. When I say manned I mean in a facility with knowledgeable techs not the std Equinix dumb hands techs. This could be a private facility like mine or a reseller in Equinix/1wil as long as their staff is onsite 24/7

    My preferred locations are:
    equinix SV1, SV3, paix PAO, 200 paul in sfo
    and
    600 w 7th equinix, 1wilshire in LA

    Or once again a private facility. Providers you MAY contact me via email only to discuss off WHT.

    Thank you.
    Jay

  2. #2
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    The Nacio guys keep telling me that this is their forte, so you might talk to them about it. They're not in any of your preferred locations, however, they're somewhat north of SF.

    However, expect to pay a premium for 60 amps per cabinet anywhere in the bay area. I fled the bay area to Seattle specifically because every datacenter I talked to wanted me to pay for 1 or 2 empty cabinets for every populate cabinet @ 60 amps.

    As for colo companies who staff knowledgeable systems techs in those locations 24x7 you might be out of luck. Staffing even mid-level systems administrators in the bay area means you're dropping $80k/year per employee for a minimum of 7 employees, which translates into well over a half million a year in salaries.

    Your options will open up quite a bit if you get good remote PDUs, good remote KVM or serial consoles, and find companies that are good at proactive monitoring and urgent off-hours paging processes. If your servers cannot be managed remotely in a reliable fashion, I'd be glad to give some pointers on how to remedy that.

  3. #3
    Of course we will have all the IP/KVM, and APC PDU's and what not. But still need excellent hands on deck for the manual things which are necessary in no matter what the case. I do however have a strong dislike of Nacio for personal reasons.
    Jay

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by jayglate View Post
    Of course we will have all the IP/KVM, and APC PDU's and what not. But still need excellent hands on deck for the manual things which are necessary in no matter what the case. I do however have a strong dislike of Nacio for personal reasons.

    Grins.. To be honest, I think you're going to have to find a compromise. Good systems administrators have better and more profitable things to do than sit around in a datacenter on grave shift doing interrupt driven work. They're called NOC Monkeys for a reason.

    The only companies I know who do this are large consulting firms like EDS, Perot Systems, Orange Business Services, AT&T, IBM Global Services.. And you'll pay an arm and a leg for them, because there's no economy of scale to be had by staffing expensive bodies in seats 24x7, most of the time they're sitting around playing games and staring at blinkies.

  5. #5
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    Are you looking for better quality remote hands for basic "NOC monkey" tasks like cabling, swapping drives or power supplies, etc. (and I agree the quality of Equinix "Smart Hands" personnel can be pretty dicey even with those basic tasks), or actual onsite sysadmins, network engineers, etc. 24x7? If you're looking for the latter it will likely be a very short list; there certainly are managed hosting companies that have those resources on staff 24x7 but most of them aren't in the low margin colo business. I can't think of any offhand that I can say definitely do that, but Navisite might. We used to have a mix of managed servers and colo at their facility on Zanker Rd. in San Jose years ago; it was staffed 24x7 with qualified techs because of their managed hosting business, but I have no idea if they are still doing that at that facility. And unless it's been retrofitted, it's not a particularly new facility so I highly doubt they're doing 60amps/cab.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by mhalligan View Post
    The only companies I know who do this are large consulting firms like EDS, Perot Systems, Orange Business Services, AT&T, IBM Global Services.. And you'll pay an arm and a leg for them ..
    Based on experiences in prior years, I've found that AT&T has a reputable Global Services team in support of their IP services. However, in the AT&T colocation data center, the 24x7 techs are remote hands that execute communicated instructions (to put it nicely) and are based on availability. Their managed services techs need to be paged to come in outside regular business hours.

    You will probably have better luck/affordability in So. Cal.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by mhalligan View Post
    The only companies I know who do this are large consulting firms like EDS, Perot Systems, Orange Business Services, AT&T, IBM Global Services.. And you'll pay an arm and a leg for them, because there's no economy of scale to be had by staffing expensive bodies in seats 24x7, most of the time they're sitting around playing games and staring at blinkies.
    I wonder if there's a middle ground. Like reputable local consulting companies that have the tech skills and would charge out, perhaps on monthly retainer, for 24/7 on-call support up to a certain number of hours per month. I wouldn't expect it to be cheap necessarily but certainly cheaper than a full-time sysadmin on staff and on call or using one of the big tech consultancies who are stratospheric in pricing.

    I'm just amazed there's no clueful managed colo in the Bay. There's *********** and such who I believe offer managed colo. Not sure how good they are though. I thought most of the major colo players like 365 Main, MPT/CRG West, Digital Realty Trust, etc. had some kind of parternships with tech consultancies that provide on-site services. Not sure if they're any good and I'm sure it's probably overpriced. Most managed services provided by the colo itself tends to be very expensive.

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by serverminds View Post
    I wonder if there's a middle ground. Like reputable local consulting companies that have the tech skills and would charge out, perhaps on monthly retainer, for 24/7 on-call support up to a certain number of hours per month. I wouldn't expect it to be cheap necessarily but certainly cheaper than a full-time sysadmin on staff and on call or using one of the big tech consultancies who are stratospheric in pricing.
    There is a middle ground, without promoting my own services, there are efficient consulting companies like HJKSolutions, GridZones.com, and a few other small companies that maintain a daytime staff of very senior systems administrators who learn your environment, bring everything up to their internal best practices. Once the environments are maintainable to their standards, they have different models where some might have a flat monthly fee that covers all existing services/servers, and some might provide N hours, then have varying rates for further work depending on if that work is pre-allocated, emergency work, or off-hours emergency work.

    I can promise you that this level of support will not be given to you for $300/month including a server, though. This is why "Managed Hosting" is such a poorly defined term. Pricing is always fun. I've bid against AT&T and IBM on $14k/month customers where the big guys bid out more like $50k/month because they don't share staff, they dedicate overpriced, undertrained bodies.


    I'm just amazed there's no clueful managed colo in the Bay. There's *********** and such who I believe offer managed colo. Not sure how good they are though. I thought most of the major colo players like 365 Main, MPT/CRG West, Digital Realty Trust, etc. had some kind of parternships with tech consultancies that provide on-site services. Not sure if they're any good and I'm sure it's probably overpriced. Most managed services provided by the colo itself tends to be very expensive.
    There was LoudCloud. Loudcloud's hosting/operations got swallowed up by EDS, and the software turned into Opsware. They were really the closest to the ideal outsourced managed hosting company. They crashed and burned due to bad timing, bad management, and all of the ridiculous expenses inherent with doing business in the bay area. That's why I moved my company to Seattle.

    Most "Managed Services" provided by colo is somebody rebooting servers, replacing components, and maybe doing OS installs or acting as eyes and ears. If you have remote KVM and remote PDUs, why exactly do you need real systems administrators to be physically present?

    I used to do consulting for bay area startups, essentially stepping in after they've funded, and taking them to a point 4-6 months later where they have a well-functioning, scalable infrastructure, and a team in place to manage and grow it. What became clear after the second or third startup was:

    - If you're visiting the datacenter for anything but the addition or deletion of hardware, you've screwed up
    - If you're manually editing any configuration files you've screwed up
    - If provisioning a new server requires anything more than physical installation and initiating an automated build, you've screwed up
    - If you can't fix it while you're on a beach in thailand, you screwed up
    - If you can't roll-back any changes with minimal plans, you've screwed up

    I've got a checklist somewhere that I used to stick above the monitors of the teams I'd staff for these companies, and as part of training would make them verbally go over it for every new service or task they'd do.

  9. #9
    I think people got really confused what I am looking for. I just need a facility that has people who know how to change hard drives and burn cd's if need be etc and maybe trouble shoot some basic os issues. I am not looking for ATT or what not.
    Jay

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by jayglate View Post
    I think people got really confused what I am looking for. I just need a facility that has people who know how to change hard drives and burn cd's if need be etc and maybe trouble shoot some basic os issues. I am not looking for ATT or what not.

    So any datacenter that hires noc monkeys with a pulse should be able to change hard drives, and burn cds. This would definitely cover all of the datacenters where Netoptex.com runs the NOC like 365main, 200 paul, etc.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by jayglate View Post
    I think people got really confused what I am looking for. I just need a facility that has people who know how to change hard drives and burn cd's if need be etc and maybe trouble shoot some basic os issues. I am not looking for ATT or what not.

    give www.ix2.com a call. They have a pretty nice facility in 1200 on 7th street. Note: ix2 has 24/7 support btw.
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    Quote Originally Posted by mhalligan View Post
    So any datacenter that hires noc monkeys with a pulse should be able to change hard drives, and burn cds.
    You would think so, but its not always the case. I've had several instances where I had to explain over the phone where the power button was to a server, that didn't garner my confidence

    This would definitely cover all of the datacenters where Netoptex.com runs the NOC like 365main, 200 paul, etc.
    GNi is no longer running the NOC at 200 paul as of at least a month ago...
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    Quote Originally Posted by appliedops View Post
    You would think so, but its not always the case. I've had several instances where I had to explain over the phone where the power button was to a server, that didn't garner my confidence
    Grins.. I know what you mean, having recently had to call Equinix to ask that they send out a tech with cisco clue. I think I spent 20 minutes explaining how to hook up the console cable, run hyperterminal, login, type enable, then turn off a bgp session (console server failed). That was $250/hour well spent, let me tell you.

    GNi is no longer running the NOC at 200 paul as of at least a month ago...
    Really? I thought that they were running the no.. oh yeah, DRT took over and now one of their subsidiaries is running their NOCs now.. I know they're still doing 365main, and have space at some building in San Jose (within MPT maybe?). GNi is certainly growing like crazy, took in a $10m VC round earlier this year.. First time I'd heard of a managed services firm taking VC since .. well since LoudCloud.

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    Jay,

    What about << snip >> Steven @ Insider?
    Last edited by writespeak; 03-29-2008 at 12:33 PM.
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  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by mdrussell View Post
    Jay,

    What about << snip >> Steven @ Insider?
    He doesn't staff it 24/7.
    Last edited by writespeak; 03-29-2008 at 12:33 PM.
    Jay

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    Although perhaps out of your area of preference, there are several decent IDC's in San Diego with 24/7 onsite hands at very affordable rates. An extra 8 or 9ms latency for SF bound traffic and 3ms for LA bound traffic might be worth it.
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    Quote Originally Posted by inteltechs View Post
    give www.ix2.com a call. They have a pretty nice facility in 1200 on 7th street. Note: ix2 has 24/7 support btw.
    All of 1200 7th St. is low on power and the city won't give them anymore, not sure you could find 60A without paying an arm and a leg
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    Quote Originally Posted by mhalligan View Post
    Really? I thought that they were running the no.. oh yeah, DRT took over and now one of their subsidiaries is running their NOCs now..
    Actually, *********** seems to have been given the floor by DRT rather than having someone else manage things. It was pretty sudden so we'll see how it shakes out.
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