Ask HN: Why can I buy a server computer, but not in a rack? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why can I buy a server computer, but not in a rack?

18 pointsandrewstuart11 comments

I can buy a server. I can rent a rack.

Why aren't the two integrated?

Why can't I buy a computer which is supplied to me in a rack?

I'm not talking about bare metal hosting.

I'm saying why can't the outright purchase and colocation be integrated?

If I want to buy a dell server, why do I have to take physical delivery of it?

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If I were a colocation facility, I sure would hate to take care of the servers my customers bought themselves.

'Hey Dirk! Why don't you drive all the way across town to pick up this dingy fifth-hand server and install it in your colocation facility. And make it run. And do the maintenance.'

Thanks, but no thanks. The reason why colocation facilities don't offer this is because they don't want to deal with hardware they didn't buy themselves.

Now, you're talking about buying a new server, obviously. But then still, I'd have to deal with a plethora of different servers. It'd would be easier for me to stick with a couple of servers that I'm familiar with. That, or if you buy your own, you'd have to take care of it yourself.

You can take delivery yourself, or you can contract it out to another company like Redapt or one of the other systems integrators. Authorize them to act on your behalf with the data center and tell them what you want to be done.

I've used companies like that for small scale (<=500 node) deployments and their cabling is top-notch from what I saw. It made me sad when I had to bust up their awesome cable bundling to move some servers around in the stacks.

It's way overkill if you're doing a single server, or anything under a cabinet, really.

If you only want one server, why not just rent a dedicated server from a colocation company? Alternatively, have you tried speaking with sales at some colo providers? Generally they can be very receptive and accommodating. I would focus on smaller players who provide quality customer service as a selling point. Check out webhostingtalk.com for some good leads, or even repost this question there.

Are there no colocation providers that will accept delivery of a server directly from a seller (and not from the customer)? If true, that really surprises me.

In general colo providers will accept delivery but they will not unpackage, rack, and cable a server for you.

Also the cost of the server hardware/rack is a fraction of the cost of the electrical and cooling system that is around it.

If I setup my co-location facility to run all Mac Mini equivalents (cool and they sip electricity) and some random person ships say 10 bitcoin miners, with 100 un-cooled video cards, that is going to seriously mess with my electrical and cooling setup.

I'm confused about what you're asking. You're not talking about bare metal hosting, but you are talking about purchasing a computer? You want to buy it, but also own the rack that's located in someone else's datacenter?

I think the author wants to buy the physical hardware and collocation services at once, without ever having to actually touch the hardware, but still retain total ownership over it? (the rack part being bad wording?)

yes it sounds like he wants to buy a server that comes installed in a rack and send that whole thing to co-location so they just unbox and plug in wires for him...

I'm not sure if it falls into your definition of bare metal but Rackspace has a managed colocation offering (its not a Bare Metal as a Services...service...although Rackspace has that as well).

(disclaimer - I work at Rackspace)

Our colo will unbox and rack new servers that we have shipped to them. They will also configure remote access (usually DRAC) for us. It just costs a one time fee to do it.

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