Collocation

[j009h33rM3]

Hoping this would be the right place for this thread.

As there is no way in the world I can afford an OC line, or to pay monthly for a high-end dedicated server. I have decided to use my older Dual Athlon system that I mainly use for rendering as a server, and pay for the bandwidth.



I was wondering if anyone has had experience with collocating servers, and if they could make any suggestions about where I could go for good service.

This is actually not for me, I am doing this for a friend who runs a popular website, in exchange for supplying the server I get to use the server for my website and for a game server. Bsically I get a free webhost out of it.

It will be a Windows Server 2003 box, since that's what I've been messing with for a while. I don't really know enough about Linux to run a Linux box. I am guessing that the Ent. version of Windows Server 2003 will allow you to have multiple domains like 2000 Advanced Server did.

This is the place I was looking at:

http://www.sanethosting.com/

It's about $90 for 1 Mbit monthly.

If anyone could help me find a good place for colocation or give me some advice it would be appreciated.

[mbossman2]

colo's are popping up (and down) all over the place.

when reviewing a colo you want to:

1) look at the stength of the company
2) talk to their existing clients (and if you can get them to let you know who they are, some former clients)
3) take a look at their facility (take an unannounced drop in tour) and ask to see all the things that they tout they have: UPS's, biometric hand scanners (having those is all the rage now), individual cages, who provides their network infrastructure (make sure its someone you have heard of, like a mainstream network company like Cisco, Nortel, Foundry, Extreme etc, not Joe's bargain basement hunk-a-junks) etc.
4) have a lawyer review the agreement
5) mark the hell out of all your equipment to indicate that you OWN it (ie Property of, and where to reach you etc) in case they go out of business and a creditor tries to claim your system as one of their pieces of collateral.

Remember, in this service type industry, you get what you pay for: see what they charge (or if they offer) for: maintenance services, rebooting services, non-business hour visits if you want/need to do physical work on the machine, what kind of hardware monitoring will they provide? will they contact you if a drive goes south? can they repair it if you give them a stock of parts? etc.

A colo can give you an awful lot of advantages (like you pointed out, you can't afford a big transport pipe, but spread the cost around and you can). Just be careful and check them out.

[j009h33rM3]

how do i find sites that are hosted by them, or clients?

and i read on that page that a 1Mbit pipe was comparable to a 400GB a month transfer.

yet i see a lot of places where a 1Mbit pipe is about twice as much as just a 400GB a month transfer rate. Is that accurate, my friend says he'll need at least 30GB/month for his site. And people who run game servers say they use about 40GB a month. I think I would need probably less than 30GB for my small site.

But how do I know how much badwidth I will actually receive?

[bonzai]

In addition to the above, you most likely want to co-locate somewhere near enough so that you can physically get to it in case something goes down.

[BearEater]

lol,thats one nice hosting "company" i like the way they advertise their service..and how tehy got ripped off previously.

check <a href=http://www.sitepoint.com/article/976>this</a> good article about colo.

[j009h33rM3]

hmmm lots of help :)

Thanks a lot.

BearEater, what did you mean about getting ripped off?

[j009h33rM3]

I've taken a look at a place called complx.net. The actual facilities are located just 2 hours away from me, which means I could make visits when neccesary. They also seem to have good rates. One thing that bothered me, I sent an email to inquire about their support for Windows Servers, and they quickly responded, but I've sent them another e-mail asking more specifics about their company and services and it took over 24 hours for a response. :(

Unfortunately I don't live close to many of these colos. There was one, happyhosting.com, which was only about 10 minutes away, but... something about their name, their design, and the lack of information on their webpage keeps me from researching them further.

This is the e-mail i received back from complx.net.

I apologize for the late response.
Below are responses to your questions.

Ok, a few more questions.
>
> About your redundancy, i saw that you have internet connections provided
by
> both Sprint and AT&T, does this mean you have two connections? Also, I may
> have overlooked this, but how long do you suppose that a server would
> survive a power outage?
>
> How fast are your connection(s) to the internet? Something like OC48?
>

At our current location we have a DS3 with Sprint and a T1 with AT&T. The
Sprint connection is our primary and the AT&T is backup.
We are currently in the process of expanding to another datacenter in Ohio
which will offer many more options.


> Once the server is at your facilities, how fast can I expect it up and
> running?
>

It usually depends on what day it arrives and how heavy our workload is, but
generally if it arrives on a weekday we can have it up within 24-48 hours.

> Do you offer any type of money back gurantee?
>

Not at this time

> Is customer support 24/7?
>

Support is during regular business hours, though you would be given a pager
number for emergency use.

> Do I have access to my server during certain times of the day, or do I
have
> to make an appointment?
>

At our current location an appointment is necessary during normal business
hours and at times on Saturdays.

> Do you offer any maintenance services, rebooting services, or such? If I
> gave you a stock of components, would you be able to replace something if
> needed? What would be charged for any of these services?
>

Reboots are free and each package includes an alloted time of maintenance
minutes. Something such as a quick ram install, addition of a cdrom, etc
would be included in this time. Something such as an OS install, drive
formatting, etc, would incurr an additional cost.

> Do you run a Cisco network infrastructure?
>

At our current location we do not. As I mentioned above, we are in the
process of expanding, and these locations would.

> What security do you offer in your datacenter?
>
> Do you only provide rackspace? If you provide cabinets, is the cost more?
>

Where we are located now we could provide rackspace, though the location is
mainly a seperate room located within offices. If you are interested in a
cabinet or even a cage, we can offer this at the locations in Ohio though
the location would be a bit more costly as it is a multi-million dollar
datacenter. At this location security would include cameras, keycard and
passcode entry, and locking cabinets and cages.