Comment by Lazare | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Lazare | Hacker News Reader

The may be off topic, but... At the moment we're mostly using option two (Linode VPS), and it's working pretty well. I've been repeatedly tempted by option option four (colo), but I'm kind of daunted by the task of getting started. I've been burnt by option three (renting a dedicated server) before - it seems like the worst of both worlds.

Can anyone recommend a good guide to getting started with colo? Obvious questions include:

Where do you go to buy a cheap server? Can you just have it shipped direct to the data centre, or do you need to configure it yourself? How does that even work for startups in a different country to the data centre? Is there anything I should look for in a data centre to make it easier? Do any offer out of band consoles? What sort of costs are we talking about? Is there a break-even point beyond which you really should colo instead of using VPS? Is there a detailed tutorial anywhere on "getting your first coloed server up and running without bricking the stupid thing and needing to spend thousands of dollars getting a data centre technician to fix it"?

And so on. :) It seems like there are a LOT of resources to hold your hand as you get up to speed with Linode-type services, but colo is dark magic.

I worked full time in a DC for a couple years, and pretty much all of the above is possible, but you will pay for what you don't do yourself. Most servers in the wild, at least where I work, are Dell or HP (both with 4 hour hardware replacement plans for about 1k/yr) If you buy your own, you should set it up, and configure it before you ship it out, and typically there will just be a racking fee (0-100$), if you just send out bare metal, the OS install etc, will be extra. Typically, colo's will have a KVM available for you to rent/use for setup or troubleshooting hardware issues (ie boot problems), if you want to go that route. EVERYTHING is negotiable. Not being a dick client goes a long way in getting things done. Ie, if the colo has a policy that any work being done is X$/hr, if you are cool, don't open tickets for inane things, and exhausted all your options, you can typically squeeze a lot of free work out of us.

How were you burnt w/ the dedicated server? IME, those are guaranteed NO downtime, and hardware failure is replaced at no charge and immediately , and a dedicated server failure takes top priority for the guys on the shift. Working in a fairly high pressure/low reward/24x7 environment is taxing, I sometimes miss it, but I like dev a lot more.

I don't see it as simple as pick one from the list. I use a hybrid approach. Colo the servers you need for the cost savings and performance. Then backup your data to the cloud (Amazon S3) with server images ready to launch (Amazon EC2) if you have a major hardware problem with the colo.

When the last company I was with bought some colo rack space (we hosted our own data center but had a need for some colo), we purchased the server, installed it, tested it, and set up our own console on our IP range. I don't know what the costs were because that was part of my job.

As far as guide to not bricking the thing: Our particular colo required DC power, which is what we configured our Dell with. Open up the box when we got it and -- aw, we can't turn it on. Luckily we had another AC power supply so we swapped that in (hurray modular!).

When you go to the colo, bring fuses, particularly if this is the first time you're wiring DC. Grab however many you think you'll need. Then grab some more because you'll futz it up.

Test your console (iLO, IPMI, etc) to make sure it's functioning before you leave. Most things at this point you can fix remotely.

As far as swapping hard drives and things go we decided to maintain that ourselves. RAID1 + Hot Spare on the OS to keep it running before you get over there to swap the drive.

Maybe you should test the waters with http://macminicolo.net/. I haven't used them (yet) but it's relatively cheap, and they will handle lots of things for you (including buying the mini). A dual-core mini can do a lot of work.

Neat idea, but their bandwidth overage charges are brutal. .80c/GB?

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