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  1. #26
    I have seen a huge rise in the colocation market, especially as others were saying above, in the enterprise space. People are recognizing the "economies of scale" as they add more hardware (prices getting cheaper) and as they want to build an infrastructure.

    You really can't separate colo from virtualization in some instances, because corporations are leasing colocation space, and putting blade enclosures in, running vmware, etc.

  2. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by mdrussell View Post
    Support contract?

    Pretty much every major host other than Gator colocates either by the cabinet, in a cage/suite or owning their own facility. I think this speaks volumes... they've run the figures and realised the cost savings to be had in the long run by doing this.

    I think on a human level, it adds to the "seriousness" factor, particularly given that hosts appear and disappear on almost an hourly basis. If you have 4,5, 6 or even 7 figures invested in hardware, you are less likely to decide you want out one day and cancel the subscription of your dedicated.
    I believe he was referring to co-locating a single server vs dedicated hosting for the end customer. Obviously, any major host has more than one server.

    By the way, 10TB also uses 'dedicated hosting' as would any reseller of dedicated hosting, so co-location isn't the only option.
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  3. #28
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    The economy has actually brought a nice increase in colo business our way. It seems a lot of companies who used to run small in-house data centers, with say 2-10 cabinets are now seeing that it is more cost effective to have those things virtualized to take up less space and then to put them in a data center instead of having to manage all that infrastructure locally.
    Karl Zimmerman - Founder & CEO of Steadfast
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  4. #29
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    Quote Originally Posted by sailor View Post
    all their servers have redundant b feeds fed from a seperate UPS / Generator / Transformer?

    I am not aware that is correct. Maybe this is an option that you can buy for more money?
    Yep, an option for more money: http://www.softlayer.com/servers_ded...1_details.html
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  5. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by KarlZimmer View Post
    The economy has actually brought a nice increase in colo business our way. It seems a lot of companies who used to run small in-house data centers, with say 2-10 cabinets are now seeing that it is more cost effective to have those things virtualized to take up less space and then to put them in a data center instead of having to manage all that infrastructure locally.
    Makes perfect sense if you think about it. Less stuff to manage, and virtualize makes them easier to manage.

  6. #31
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    There are many data centers which run a colo only operation.

    You look after the equipment and they'll look after the network.

    Given most give you 24/7 access to hardware and you can handle all software remotely, it's great.
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  7. #32
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    I switched to colo back in March and never looking back. I had colo for years before August of last year when I attempted to move to dedicated with SoftLayer and had tons of trouble out of their black-box Supermicro machines and terrible Windows support. (Many swear by them, but I vow to never return.) Prior to that I always used Compaq/HP Proliant gear. I hooked up with GoRACK, bought myself some current generation HP equipment that's reliable, mailed it to Florida and have been able to sleep very comfortably ever since.

    Colo does not scare me at all. I know HP Proliant gear is solid, reliable and dependable and never gives me trouble. If it does, I have a support contract and access to overnight replaceable parts.

    I'm all good. You will too if you give it a try.

    --Chris
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  8. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by ObjectZone View Post
    I switched to colo back in March and never looking back. I had colo for years before August of last year when I attempted to move to dedicated with SoftLayer and had tons of trouble out of their black-box Supermicro machines and terrible Windows support. (Many swear by them, but I vow to never return.)
    What kind of issues did you have? We have yet to have any Windows related issues with our Supermicro systems. Once in a great while an odd Linux driver issue or a FreeBSD issue, but not any Windows issues that I can recall.
    Karl Zimmerman - Founder & CEO of Steadfast
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  9. #34
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    I touched on this in another thread, but I believe it should always be on the rise. Leasing servers for us is not a cost effective long term solution. So the eventual colo and drop of leasing is inevitable for us. It's not that the providers we work with are bad, its that addon pricing is a joke. Forcing colo as a long term strategy for us.

  10. #35
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    Servers are becoming more reliable and more businesses are choosing to host their applications in data centers. We have noticed a strong rise in colo enquiries even though there is meant to be a recession?

  11. #36
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    Quote Originally Posted by KarlZimmer View Post
    What kind of issues did you have? We have yet to have any Windows related issues with our Supermicro systems. Once in a great while an odd Linux driver issue or a FreeBSD issue, but not any Windows issues that I can recall.
    I've posted about this in the past, so see if you can find something about it in my previous posts, however the problems are two pronged:

    1) Hardware has issues. My configuration was not low-end at all using a SAS RAID controller and 3 x 15k SAS hard drives. The drives continuously experience bus faults and at least once a week, one of the hard drives would fall out of the RAID set and force a complete rebuild once the controller saw that the drive was "back again". All drives in the set were replaced twice over. The controller, and I'm told, every other piece of hardware in the machine was completely replaced - still and nothing solved the problem. The only way we ultimately fixed it was by replacing the SAS drives with SATA models -- after that, all hardware seemed to run without fault, but at a serious degradation to performance. Their support reps were completely clueless as to why it was happening. I even got denials and had a finger pointed TO ME in their customer forums. This kind of treatment continued all the way up until my final call that I received from their retention agent, whom I gave the most professional verbal lashing I could. That person even agreed that I should not have been given such treatment and my concerns where fully founded. He claimed they would "work on making the process better."

    2) Secondly, their technical support is undertrained on Windows and to realize when they're dealing with another *trained professional* server administrator. I always provided in depth details on every case I submitted, but they consistently acted like it was "my fault" and they connected to the server and "fixed something" that was a complete non-issue. The resolution had nothing to do with my server or my configuration - the issue was usually network related! Their network engineers fixed the problem, but the tech took credit for "fixing your server". Completely ridiculous. I do not enjoy being pandered to with ridiculous resolutions -- I've been working with computers for 25 years and I did not receive answers to the actual problem, resolution, and what SoftLayer was doing internally to prevent those issues from occuring forever, and never again.

    Anyway, inexperienced users who don't demand accountability will probably be in very good hands at SoftLayer versus many of their competitors, however my customers demand extremely high levels of reliability nad we simply did not get the levels of support, respect, responsiveness and straight talk that we deserve from our datacenter. GoRACK hasn't once claimed problems were on my equipment when I tell them what's happening. They are ALWAYS willing to discuss the problem, and by the time I hang up the phone, the problem is solved - or solved very shortly. Perhaps it's more like this with colo customers, I don't know. Maybe they feel like you know your equipment better than they do when you're dealing with colo. If SoftLayer is the best there is in dedicated, then I never want to go back to dedicated ever again.

    --Chris
    The Object Zone - Your Windows Server Specialists for more than twenty years - http://www.object-zone.net/
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  12. #37
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    Quote Originally Posted by ObjectZone View Post
    I've posted about this in the past, so see if you can find something about it in my previous posts, however the problems are two pronged:

    1) Hardware has issues. My configuration was not low-end at all using a SAS RAID controller and 3 x 15k SAS hard drives. The drives continuously experience bus faults and at least once a week, one of the hard drives would fall out of the RAID set and force a complete rebuild once the controller saw that the drive was "back again". All drives in the set were replaced twice over. The controller, and I'm told, every other piece of hardware in the machine was completely replaced - still and nothing solved the problem. The only way we ultimately fixed it was by replacing the SAS drives with SATA models -- after that, all hardware seemed to run without fault, but at a serious degradation to performance. Their support reps were completely clueless as to why it was happening. I even got denials and had a finger pointed TO ME in their customer forums. This kind of treatment continued all the way up until my final call that I received from their retention agent, whom I gave the most professional verbal lashing I could. That person even agreed that I should not have been given such treatment and my concerns where fully founded. He claimed they would "work on making the process better."

    2) Secondly, their technical support is undertrained on Windows and to realize when they're dealing with another *trained professional* server administrator. I always provided in depth details on every case I submitted, but they consistently acted like it was "my fault" and they connected to the server and "fixed something" that was a complete non-issue. The resolution had nothing to do with my server or my configuration - the issue was usually network related! Their network engineers fixed the problem, but the tech took credit for "fixing your server". Completely ridiculous. I do not enjoy being pandered to with ridiculous resolutions -- I've been working with computers for 25 years and I did not receive answers to the actual problem, resolution, and what SoftLayer was doing internally to prevent those issues from occuring forever, and never again.

    Anyway, inexperienced users who don't demand accountability will probably be in very good hands at SoftLayer versus many of their competitors, however my customers demand extremely high levels of reliability nad we simply did not get the levels of support, respect, responsiveness and straight talk that we deserve from our datacenter. GoRACK hasn't once claimed problems were on my equipment when I tell them what's happening. They are ALWAYS willing to discuss the problem, and by the time I hang up the phone, the problem is solved - or solved very shortly. Perhaps it's more like this with colo customers, I don't know. Maybe they feel like you know your equipment better than they do when you're dealing with colo. If SoftLayer is the best there is in dedicated, then I never want to go back to dedicated ever again.

    --Chris
    I myself had issues with Softlayer and their windows support on both my old server with them and a personal friend's server. I believe they were provisioning windows servers with an older nic driver causing some issues on their xeon 3220 systems. I'm glad you like GoRACK, I was considering colocating there but ultimately decided against it due to their geographic location.

  13. #38
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    Based on limited research I would be willing to say yes. It's cheaper to build a kick ass machine and colo it then to pay for a dedicated server equivalent to said kick ass machine.

    I put together a server for kicks on tigerdirect. Was a dual quad core I7 machine with 8GB of ram (can support 24GB) 8 1TB drives (2 hardware raid 1 for OS, would use MD software raid for rest). Came up to about 3k to build it. I don't even want to imagine the price per month to lease that. Probably over 1k per month, so after 3 months, you paid for the server!

    My next server will most likely be collocated for this reason. I can custom build as powerful as I want without influencing the monthly price. Liquidweb seems to have the best prices out of what I search but it was only a very quick search so it could be debatable. They will take tower or rack servers which is nice as it's cheaper to build a tower.

  14. #39
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    3 x 12GB (3 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM Server Memory
    2 x Intel Xeon E5520 2.26GHz LGA 1366 80W Quad-Core Server Processor
    4 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s
    1 x ASUS RS520-E6/RS8 2U Barebone Server

    In short this is about $3,400 and has the following.
    2TB RAID-10 Storage
    32GB DDR3 RAM
    Dual Quad Core Xeon's @ 2.26GHz

    A similarly equipped server from a dedicated provider is a joke. Well over $1,000 dollars for a box like this. I can build it myself, have it managed with ANY company I choose. And it comes out cheaper in the long run even with the cost of colo/power/bandwidth/etc.

  15. #40
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    We switched to colo once we had about enough servers to fill a rack that we were leasing. We wanted to beef up our shared servers at the same time as well. Leasing those servers would run over $700 at most of the bigger name providers, while we can buy for $2000-$2500. The bandwidth/space/power costs are negligible compared to what we'd be spending on the lease.
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  16. #41
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    Quote Originally Posted by MikeTrike View Post
    3 x 12GB (3 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM Server Memory
    2 x Intel Xeon E5520 2.26GHz LGA 1366 80W Quad-Core Server Processor
    4 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s
    1 x ASUS RS520-E6/RS8 2U Barebone Server

    In short this is about $3,400 and has the following.
    2TB RAID-10 Storage
    32GB DDR3 RAM
    Dual Quad Core Xeon's @ 2.26GHz

    A similarly equipped server from a dedicated provider is a joke. Well over $1,000 dollars for a box like this. I can build it myself, have it managed with ANY company I choose. And it comes out cheaper in the long run even with the cost of colo/power/bandwidth/etc.
    $3400 is a pretty good price for that box, unless the RAM isn't ECC. Some providers charge around $700~$900 for that box though. You have to consider the on-going cost for such a monster server.

  17. #42
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    It is indeed ECC Registered Server Memory

    If you take the middle ground of that $700-$900/mo and say $800/mo for a lease/rental server. It is paid for in about four months, if you include colo costs, then say six months before you turn a profit on just the box itself. I say colo in the long run gives you more business stability.

    My point is, that the current model dedicated providers run. Don't seem to help them in the long term for retaining clients who plan on ending up with dozens, or even hundreds of servers. Because if you have 100 servers at $500 a pop, thats $50,000/mo. For that money you can pay your own staff, rent a data center cage or suite and basically end up having what they have.

    I think the big guys are creating competition rather than long term relationships. Just my thoughts on the subject, so it may or may not hold any credibility. :-P

  18. #43
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    http://www.google.com/trends?q=colocation

    Colo naturally oscillates. I've never really been able to explain why this graph is shaped the way it is, but it's clearly more popular at certain times of the year. My best guess is that business projects tend to line up.
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  19. #44
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    Quote Originally Posted by MikeTrike View Post
    It is indeed ECC Registered Server Memory

    If you take the middle ground of that $700-$900/mo and say $800/mo for a lease/rental server. It is paid for in about four months, if you include colo costs, then say six months before you turn a profit on just the box itself. I say colo in the long run gives you more business stability.

    My point is, that the current model dedicated providers run. Don't seem to help them in the long term for retaining clients who plan on ending up with dozens, or even hundreds of servers. Because if you have 100 servers at $500 a pop, thats $50,000/mo. For that money you can pay your own staff, rent a data center cage or suite and basically end up having what they have.

    I think the big guys are creating competition rather than long term relationships. Just my thoughts on the subject, so it may or may not hold any credibility. :-P
    Yep so true. I mean, if I need a really cheap box for like say, backup DNS then renting a cheap VPS may be more cost effective, but anything that will grow is better off colo. Going colo right off the bat may not be the best idea, so way I see it is for a first timer, go lease, then after when things stabilize spend a bit more upfront for a good server then colo it for the same price you pay for a low end dedicated.

    Really I don't get why dedicated hosts charge so much for higher end stuff. Celerons and P4's should be a thing of the past not a standard, 1GB of ram should be a thing of the past too. A standard 100/mo server should be at least a core2duo with 2GB of ram and 500GB sata hard drive. I'm not expecting 15k scsi for that price, but at least 500GB of space on a 7.2k drive. I say sata just because that's cheaper nowdays. IDE is old and harder to support.

  20. #45
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    rent server come with some advantages, you can upgrade any time, when the server die, or hardware failure. will be replaced for you for free.

    after 2 years your server will have no value, P4 servers on ebay for $100.

    Colocation for big business half rack or more, or very customized solutions like voip
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  21. #46
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    Quote Originally Posted by mtalaat View Post
    rent server come with some advantages, you can upgrade any time, when the server die, or hardware failure. will be replaced for you for free.

    after 2 years your server will have no value, P4 servers on ebay for $100.

    Colocation for big business half rack or more, or very customized solutions like voip
    From a business standpoint you can also depreciate the equipment you own.

  22. #47
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    Quote Originally Posted by Shikhir A View Post
    Well - it makes sense colo would rise. It's a much better fit. Think about it in a clients perspective: I need a new server for my forum, a quad core that will cost $125 a month with 8GB RAM, 1TB HD, Q9300. After 6 months, I would have spent $750. With $750, you can build that server. After 2 years, you'd have spent $3000, and the server is still owned by the datacenter. If you colo and pay $50/month (average 1U price) and build the $750 Q9300, after the first/second year you'll see profit coming out of your job. You are losing so much money by renting a dedicated server in the long run. Plus, the server is yours so if your forum closes down, you can either sell it (for about $500) or rent it out. Either way, you have a peice of equipment that is an asset.
    I think the same but rather than a q9300 if I had to be uni-socketed and 775 I would choose the q9550 ( 12 mb of cache does a difference)...otherwise I would choose an i7

  23. #48
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    I've seen people learning the hard way that 95th percentile bandwidth can be very expensive with several servers attached to a Gigabit port.

    When you see rented servers offering 100mbps ports and about 3 TB bandwidth, someone who sees something along the lines of $20 per MB connectivity can get put off quite easily.
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  24. #49
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    Quote Originally Posted by ServeByte_JJameson View Post
    When you see rented servers offering 100mbps ports and about 3 TB bandwidth, someone who sees something along the lines of $20 per MB connectivity can get put off quite easily.
    It depends on the customer. An oversold vs. a non-oversold bandwidth.

  25. #50
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    $20/Mbps isn't too bad for a small commit, especially if it's a quality blend. It's the colo's charging $50-$300/Mbps IMO that put people off on small orders.
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