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Low End Dedicated Servers Survey.
Hi, well, I have been looking into beginning a low end dedicated server company for 6+ months now. Pricing and problems that may arise.
Please be honest,
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGlGeVpRd2w2QkppVGlWZGxzMEtvUkE6MQ
Comments
Giving a honest opinion about SSD, SSD its a new technology that is costly i don't think that it fits into "low end dedicated servers"
On another note do you plan on only selling atoms?
SSD are prone to data corruption/loss and have lower lifespans. They are faster but cost more. Too risky. Go with something stable that has a lot of support for troubleshooting etc.
Another good note. ( Finally i can see a comment from you that isn't spam )
You're an awesum tr0ll.
I responded, I also agree with the SSD, they fail after a certain amount of writes.
With VPS clients, you really dont know what they will be running
nvm
You guys are flinging around some pretty inaccurate data on SSDs, I really suggest doing some research. Especially on enterprise quality SSDs. I look at Intel 320's, they're some of the cheaper enterprise drives.
Search around WHT about the 320's, there's a lot of companies using them in RAID 1/RAID 10 for heavy MySQL clients.
What VPS clients?
Do NOT host a MySQL server on a SSD. Expect to lose a couple thousand rows if the server ever crashes.
Yes, they are costly, but 32GB SSD for $65 are much better then all hard drives starting at $100
Gah, I ment Clients, not VPS clients.
Sorry, I need more sleep.
@derek
You can give the option of SSD but the default should be SATA hard drives you can get 320GB/500GB SATA hard drives at almost the same price i guess, maybe a bit more but not much.
Well, my original idea was E-350, 8GB Ram, and SSD (Mostly to save power) about $200 on hardware, I own one and have had thoughts about it. Uses on average 33watts.
Good SSD's don't fail any more then a regular drive anymore.
Sure the first gen had issues but the recent generations are great. Sure they will only do a certain amount of writes but in standard computers you are talking many many years.
@naruto The same can be said for any hard drive not in RAID. A good SSD, like a good hard drive, will be reliable. A trick that many use is under-provisioning. People will trick the OS into thinking that the SSD is a 120gb drive when it is in fact a 160gb drive, and this will also add to the durability. In theory, SSDs should be much more reliable than HDDs because of the lack of moving parts, but some crappy SSDs gave the whole product a bad rep.
Note: If you are running a server without at least RAID 1, you will be sorry.
Thats not lowend.... I can get the same deal for much cheaper from Mid providers.
That's hardware costs, silly. The low end costs has to be $30 or below per month and that's my aim.
What is rack density though? How many units can you hold per U of rack space? I'll have better opinions once I know that.
Depending on the chassis you get you may be able to 'double side it' if you use those LP cpu's
Francisco
To address both comments, my attempt was to either buy foxcom barebones, then ram and hard drives. Load OS via USB.
Would look much like:
The other thought I had was to buy cpu's integrated into the motherboard, then build a system that just powers them all up at once. (Realistic but not practical).
Using an FDC business model is never a good idea
If your budgeting supports it i'd recommend using 1U supermicro atoms/etc. They're maybe 8" deep and you could easily fit 80 of them on a rack with 40A to it. They use like 0.2A - 0.3A each?
Francisco
You talking about a $120 barebone versus a $350 1u. And my goal is not to follow fdcservers business model. To make modifications to fit the needs and build the racks myself to accommodate air flow and cooling. Heh, I'm just sounding ghetto'er by the minute.
Hrm, touche on the price difference. I guess it comes down to who will allow you to place your modified rack there. Any DC's that use bread racks will require their sized ones which are like 5' wide & 1 1/2' deep?
Francisco
Cage?
Nah, You can get a 'bread rack', which is literally a bakers rack that hosts use to allow people to bring in towers.
As far as I can tell they don't provide any security for a user since there's no bread racks that are enclosed, etc.
Francisco
A D525 Intel board with a singe drive is 0.35A, what you save in power via SSD you burn in capital to buy more gear. Many have some real spiffy ultra dense Atom cabinets though, but cost per unit is much higher than the $120 @Derek is thinking. Hell, my SuperMicro MicroCloud takes less power:space in 3U than @Derek's setup. Now the HP arm servers do look very cool for his idea.
Think cage instead of rack and tada! but I doubt a cage is going to come cheap and startup would be a bitch then.
Those seem to look like 6 units in 8U of space, and using the really short depth SuperMicro chassis you can fit 16 units in the same space. Power is a huge concern, #1, with your idea, but do not neglect to think about space consumption as it is your #2 asset to use. 16A usable of a 20A circuit is going to run ~$300 give or take depending on location and cost of power from the grid, rack/floor space is going to run equally insane price variables. $400 is probably a good estimate for a cabinet, sq ft if you opt for the bread rack on how it's billed.
My only other thought is remote access, and sure, you could totally cheap out if you can get some remote hands included in your space to do simple tasks like move a KVM around as needed, or any of the dense solutions I've mentioned are going to have remote OOB management built in. If you are local to the data center, you can do it yourself, but the time you spend at the colo is time you could have spend selling your wares.
The cost of getting a cage + the power fed into it would likely offset the cost of just using the rackmounts anyways.
Let me think about this some more before I start jumping to conclusions.
I sent in my reply, but honestly, do not think you can compete with these:
2x Intel L5420 (Near E3 Sandy Bridge Performance)
250Gb HDD (Upgraded to 2Tb RAID0 for $15/month)
8Gb DDR3 EEC RAM
$50
Intel G530 (Sandy Bridge)
250Gb HDD (Upgraded to 500Gb RAID0 for $15 one time)
4Gb DDR3 RAM
$40
250Gb HDD (Upgraded to 2Tb RAID0 for $15/month)
8Gb DDR3 EEC RAM
$50
250Gb HDD (Upgraded to 500Gb RAID0 for $15 one time)
4Gb DDR3 RAM
$40
Volumedrive?