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Why is colocation more expensive than dedicated servers?
I‘m asking myself since months why 1U/2U colocation is more expensive than most of the dedicated servers out there?
Yeah, in general hardware is already paid by other clients, but when providing my own hardware it‘s most of the time not even cheaper than most dedicated offers. Most provider don‘t even include redundant power/network uplinks without extra costs.
Can someone shed some light?
Thanked by 1ScienceOnline
Comments
Because it's a pain in the ass for the provider.
Where is the difference of racking your server vs racking a customers server?
Depending on how big the company is, but you've got power, cooling, man-hours, networking, and space.
There are some good offers to be had in the UK, but still, it's not going to be cheaper than just getting a cheap dedi. But on the other hand, you aren't going to get a powerful server for the same price as colo.
For example, 2 x E5 2630 v2 256GB RAM and some SSD's you are looking at probably £40-60 a month in colo in the EU. How much would that be to rent a month, maybe £100-150?
Rack density.
Expand, that answer unfortunately says nothing at all for a lot of people (but may say everything needed for other people).
You can put more than 1 server in 1U of rackspace.
It's not uncommon for providers to have 2 to 4 dedicated servers per 1U of rackspace.
This is why 1U costs more than 1 typical dedicated server.
Thank you very much.
There are a lot of things that come into play with this.
Colocation is often times a lot cheaper if you get a new or high end server in place.
Example colo for a Dual E5-2695v3/4 with 256GB Ram bunch of drives might run you a few hundred a month renting. Colocation this could be $75-150 range.
As another user said some providers will have multiple servers per U which can allow for more systems in a rack which can lower costs. It still costs power and depending on the location power is what costs the most.
Not sure what colocation providers don't provide both A+B personally I'd stay away from those ones. If it's an extra cost that is normally due to the providers having to pay extra for it just passing on the price.
1U servers while we love them, can be a pain at times example people not understanding why they can't just come in 24/7 to do work on their single server when it's in a rack full of other customers gear.
I personally like 1U servers as it's a great way to test out a company and see how service really is for you before putting in a full rack or multiple racks of equipment.
A colocation provider doesn't think in terms of servers, they think in terms of square meters and Megawatts and those two usually come in large chunks and need high front-up investment (as in Mio $ per chunk).
Wrt the square meters they have to keep an eye on the total area to sellable "net" area ratio, which typically boils down to large scale preference because the larger the whole operation the better the ratio - but larger also means more front-up costs. Think of it as a (usually financially risky) game consisting of two steps: first providing - and financing! - lots of area, uncovered and covered (a "building"), of which usually only a relatively small part actually earns you money, plus lots of beefy infrastructure (generators, UPS, batteries, cabling, ...) plus a not really small minimal staff, a significant part of which will have to work in shifts ... and then selling and running that space to generate income.
Having understood that you'll see why most colos do not even think in terms of racks but rather in terms of rack rows, cages, and rooms.
And now you the small customer come and ask for 2 HU ... which btw translates to increasing front-up cost because such a rack will require more than two network feeds N and P plus two power feeds A and B (which a larger customer gets) but TOR switches, PDUs, etc.
"But renting a server is all of that + server hardware" you say? (a) No, not from their perspective. Remember, they think in terms of (large units of) rack space. (b) No again because filling a rack with 20 to 40 customers like you means lots of diverse hardware to provide hands (and cabling and ...) for while selling that rack pre-filled usually means much less diverse hardware; almost a whole rack filled with one or two types of servers (often even one or two models of some server) is a lot cheaper to install and to maintain. (c) For you the cost of a new server may look big, say 5k$, for a provider however server cost is among the small fries.
EDIT re "density": I hate to contradict @Clouvider whom I normally value highly, but ...
IMO rack density is a strange nix of marketing bla (pushed by many server manufacturers) and wet dreams.
Explanation: Most racks available in the real world provide about 6 kW and if you get one with 10 kW let alone more you can call yourself lucky.
Now, look at the diverse blade servers which are the most common way to achieve a high core per rack count and look at the most used processors ... and you'll see that you have to calculate about 250 W per dual socket node (virtually all high density servers/blades are dual socket). Dividing 10 kW by 250 W gives you 40 nodes, dividing 6kW by 250 W gives you 24 nodes.
Now, look at a typical blade center which has 14 blades and uses about 3.5 kW - which means that putting 2 blade centers (20 HU) into a 6 kW rack or 3 (30 HU) into a 10 kW rack is already playing lottery (betting on quite some blade running at low performance).
But there is another factor too: blades and 1 HU servers have tiny fans which have to work much harder and are less reliable than the fans in a 2 HU server. Similar story with the power supplies - and keep in mind that those 2 elements are also the ones with the highest failure rate in a server.
Which boils down to high density is problematic and indeed in most colos you'll either see mostly 2 HU servers or a mix of one blade server plus many 2 HU servers and/or quite a few empty HUs in a rack.