Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Colocation and Data Centers : How do you colocate in far far away land ?

[Energizer Bunny]

Hiyall,
I am totally lost as to how to proceed with collocation say somewhere in usa ? Since i am based in Canada, and dell.com wont accept orders from me..... i did end up buying a server and get it shipped here and than later ship it across border and pay hefty fees for that to just get server collocated.

How do you guys do it ? Where you get your parts() from ?

Above all i am still lost as to what 95th percentile rule is and how the $xy per xy mbps works ?

[inconspicuous]

Hi,

If you post in the requests forum I bet a gaggle of colocation providers will hit you up. If you have a credit card I bet its not too difficult to get a server shipped directly to the colo facility either. Why on earth can't you order from dell.com? Did you try calling?

[RyanD]

In terms of 95% there is some good information on Wikipedia that is rather straight forward http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burstable_billing

In regards to purchasing equipment, we have foreign customers (Finland for example) that purchase equipment from a vendor local to us (ApaqDigital or similar) and they simply deliver the hardware direct to us for colocation.

I would check into where your potential facility is located and then check with local vendors to see about purchasing in the US and having it delivered from there direct to your facility.

[swiftnoc]

Our foreign customers either purchase hardware directly from vendors local to the datacenter or they purchase the hardware from/through us as a intermediar.

We usually buy more hardware with our vendors, and have some good discounts and additional benefits that we can pass on to our clients.

[Energizer Bunny]

@inconspicuous its not a request i want to know how if any out there that do colocation in far far away location and how do they do it ?

@wire so basically i order say from newegg.com and get it shipped to usa address? dell.com if i want to purchase i am sure do not allow Canadian orders?

Ok what about hardware failures, how do those far far away troubleshoot those ? Pay hourly rates for remote hands which is quite expensive i have seen so far. Also keep spare parts at hand at dc ?

[iTom]

Greatly helps if you know someone in the place that your going to send the server for both remote help and to build the server in the first place. you also then have a shipping address to send things to.

Having said that I have shipped many servers that on their way would have passed over multiple boarders with no real problems, once had a damaged hard drive but that got swapped out in a few seconds.

95th you pay a CDR (committed data rate) at the start of the billing period you identify how much bandwidth your going to use over the next period. e.g. 10Mbps.

If you pay $5 per Mbps that means even if you use nothing over the next month you still have to pay that CDR of $50.

Now if you go over the CDR you will then pay overage thats normally at a higher rate lest say $6 per Mbps. So in a month you have a CDR of 10Mbps but use 11Mbps you now have to pay $56

Now there is the 95th rule, when calculating your bandwidth they take a reading every 5 min over the month, basically these then get put in a database sorted by highest to lowest. Now the top 5% gets deleted and the highest remaining value is what you get billed by.
It basically allows you to go over the CDR for 5% of the time without having to pay any more...

Hope that makes scene and doesn't just confuse you more

[Energizer Bunny]

@ZanyHost so there is not like monthly bw limit in such situations ? Say i get 10mbps cdr thingy, i guess i can use up upto 3.3 gb of bw over the month if keeping below the 95th thing of a ziggy ?

What works best though ? Certain fixed allocation or 95th rule ?

Also what about the port and uploads speeds on the 95th rule ? How do they work and are there any bottlenecks involved in throughput when using 95th rule ?

[RyanD]

Originally Posted by Energizer Bunny

@ZanyHost so there is not like monthly bw limit in such situations ? Say i get 10mbps cdr thingy, i guess i can use up upto 3.3 gb of bw over the month if keeping below the 95th thing of a ziggy ?

What works best though ? Certain fixed allocation or 95th rule ?

Also what about the port and uploads speeds on the 95th rule ? How do they work and are there any bottlenecks involved in throughput when using 95th rule ?

Yes, you could theoretically use the maximum ~3TB of throughput if you used 10mbps flat on a 95% billing plan without incurring any overages but that is not realistic.

Sure almost all colocation providers can give you a per gbps billing plan but you'll generally pay more.

[iTom]

Yes as wiresix said you could theoretically get 3TB on a 10Mbps CDR, but traffic is never predictable or constant in the way you would need.

The main advantage of 95% billing is for larger organisations like data centres that are combining large amounts of client traffic into a single CDR transit link, in this case you see more predictable traffic flow and less peeks such as on a single server.

[antony_m]

@Energizer Bunny
Since you're not based in the US, Dell.com will not sell you anything. So unless you have a contact in the US who can do the purchasing on your behalf then you're good to go, like mentioned above try contacting your datacenter and working with them on purchasing your equipment. However once your purchase the equipment, make sure you transfer the warranty and ownership to your name by contacting Dell.

[Energizer Bunny]

Originally Posted by antony_m

@Energizer Bunny
Since you're not based in the US, Dell.com will not sell you anything. So unless you have a contact in the US who can do the purchasing on your behalf then you're good to go, like mentioned above try contacting your datacenter and working with them on purchasing your equipment. However once your purchase the equipment, make sure you transfer the warranty and ownership to your name by contacting Dell.

I know antony i have messed around with dell about that . And hence am trying to find out which providers will by for you ? Not many i seen, i contacted webnx last week for rent to own machines (RTO's they are called took me a while to figure the term when i got the email from them ). And from what i got was that it takes longer to change hardware well over 4 hrs or more on a server that belongs to you and a hefty fee of $80 per hr ... "The server is yours and you are responsible for any hardware failures and part replacement. As an unmanaged provider, it would be up to you to diagnose any hardware issues. While we do offer remote hands to replace failed hardware, the labor rate is $80 per hour " - quote from the email...

I know that VD volumedrive would purchase hardware for me if i wanted to colocate, but i am not sure about their policies anymore. I think once i contact steadfast too, do not recall anything about them making purchase on my behalf, so i wonder what exists out there that takes the pain of getting you a server and marking it as yours after few months of payment of lease or w/e (buying upfront and paying for all will be crazyily expensive and dont want to go that route)

I enrolled into the website spark program offered by microsoft and wanted to put their os on the colocated box and play around.

The remote hands part is what scares me, and i am assuming most managed dedicated providers will not offer "management" on the colocated box ?

[Toby H]

Have you contacted Dell in Canada and asked if they could ship to, or put you in contact with Dell US so that you can ship direct to a datacenter? I'm sure they would know there is a need for this and so long as it is not your first order they would be able to help you, or at least advise you.

[antony_m]

@Toby H
Dell Canada will not ship to an US address and vice versa.

@Energizer Bunny
Have you considered just renting servers and starting off that way? Contact GNAX, last time I checked they offered a very lucrative RTO options.

[Energizer Bunny]

Originally Posted by Toby H

Have you contacted Dell in Canada and asked if they could ship to, or put you in contact with Dell US so that you can ship direct to a datacenter? I'm sure they would know there is a need for this and so long as it is not your first order they would be able to help you, or at least advise you.

Yup sure have just like antony said

@antony, gnax never heard of them , will look around and see what they got for RTO's any personal experience with them though you have ?

[FastServ]

Buy a server from Chong (apaqdigital) and have him ship it to your colo of choice.