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How do COLO providers charge? By rack? By watts used?
HowLowCanYouGo
Member
in Providers
Say I wanted to buy a server such as this one...
How would a colocation provider charge something like this?
Is it by racks taken up? By watts the server is expected to use?
Or some other factor?
Comments
By both - power and space, nothing is free. Some may bundle the cost to make it easier for you, but ultimately you’re charged for both.
Just thinking it'd be cheaper to run a server from a COLO rather than home or office space. If any office offers free electricity, I'm sure they are in for a surprise if a Bitcoin miner or heavy server checks in.
Most colocation-offers contain both size and power limits (properly ballanced). But a friend of mine working in one colo-company told me the most expensive comodity for them was power (iirc, ~80% of total costs for running colo-center)...
Depending on country, electricity is quiet expensive.
Don't forget network costs which might also get billed
separately.
Rack space, power and connectivity is what you'll be charged for.
Network is the most expensive part. Especially if you require some custom configs with selected network providers. In USA power is insanely cheap (ex.: Kansas).
depends by place ( eg LA)
As mentioned, network will also cost you - although some connectivity is generally bundled.
Some providers will charge extra for BGP sessions.
As a side note, I would not buy new expensive servers from eBay. You might get a better deal by going through a more official channel.
Actually the space usually is the cheapest part, traffic comes next and power is the biggest cost factor. Plus most colos only have rather low total power per rack available, typically in the range of 6 kW. Considering the typical power consumption of servers you will however need double or triple of that or even more to fill a rack. So you shouldn't look only at the power that comes with your colo units (or not) but also at the available max. power.
Pricing really depends on location.
In Hong Kong, bandwidth (unless you are going pure Cogent/HE.net) tends to be the biggest expense, and by a wide margin. Then space, which in HK is enormous! And finally, power, which is still more than double the rates in the USA.
On the other hand, in Lithuania, power makes up the biggest single recurring charge, then bandwidth, and then space. Space is not even a factor in our pricing model for LT.
Of course labour tends to be the biggest actual cost for any company. But as you increase the number of servers, staff costs may not grow at all, and almost always grows slower than revenue.