Colohosting

LEBUserJoe

One thing in i’ve never done is colocate my own hardware, i’m interested in this for personal projects but while researching found issues.

For example, lot of UK hosting provides 0.3-0.5 amp for 1-2U spaces, but i feel even the most bare minimum low-powered spec’d machine at a 2U size would destroy this usage?

Or am I totally wrong? i’m concerned to pull the plug and buy hardware as I don’t see anywhere feasible. How in the world are places like OvH offering £10/m servers in the UK even the old-hardware alone would exceed any colohost power I can find, that’s without all the other costs.

luckypenguin

@LEBUserJoe said: provides 0.3-0.5 amp

That's usually the minimum. For small boxes (Mini-ITX, Mac mini, Atom, Avoton)

@LEBUserJoe said: places like OvH offering £10/m servers

There is something called scale and extra services. How can RyanAir/Easyjet sell flights for
£30? That's cheaper than a taxi inside the city.

behuk

@LEBUserJoe said:
For example, lot of UK hosting provides 0.3-0.5 amp for 1-2U spaces, but i feel even the most bare minimum low-powered spec’d machine at a 2U size would destroy this usage?

That sounds about right. Power in the UK is expensive, especially in some datacentres in London where the total amount of power available to the building is limited.

@LEBUserJoe said:
How in the world are places like OvH offering £10/m servers in the UK even the old-hardware alone would exceed any colohost power I can find, that’s without all the other costs.

Razor thin margins, plus they typically operate large datacentres in locations where power and cooling is cheap.

LEBUserJoe

@luckypenguin said:

@LEBUserJoe said: provides 0.3-0.5 amp

That's usually the minimum. For small boxes (Mini-ITX, Mac mini, Atom, Avoton)

@LEBUserJoe said: places like OvH offering £10/m servers

There is something called scale and extra services. How can RyanAir/Easyjet sell flights for
£30? That's cheaper than a taxi inside the city.

@behuk said:

@LEBUserJoe said:
For example, lot of UK hosting provides 0.3-0.5 amp for 1-2U spaces, but i feel even the most bare minimum low-powered spec’d machine at a 2U size would destroy this usage?

That sounds about right. Power in the UK is expensive, especially in some datacentres in London where the total amount of power available to the building is limited.

@LEBUserJoe said:
How in the world are places like OvH offering £10/m servers in the UK even the old-hardware alone would exceed any colohost power I can find, that’s without all the other costs.

Razor thin margins, plus they typically operate large datacentres in locations where power and cooling is cheap.

I completely understand that, but seems totally crazy? I can rent a top-end Ryzen, 128GB DDR5, for around £80-90/months (In the UK)

Yet, if I was to build and deploy myself, it would be thousands + around the same if not more monthly at these rates? it makes no sense to me.

I understand scale, I understand OvH is in a spot other’s aren’t and maybe they are even a loss-leader. But how can rental on the general market, include top-end hardware for the price I can colocate anything

behuk

@LEBUserJoe said:

@luckypenguin said:

@LEBUserJoe said: provides 0.3-0.5 amp

That's usually the minimum. For small boxes (Mini-ITX, Mac mini, Atom, Avoton)

@LEBUserJoe said: places like OvH offering £10/m servers

There is something called scale and extra services. How can RyanAir/Easyjet sell flights for
£30? That's cheaper than a taxi inside the city.

@behuk said:

@LEBUserJoe said:
For example, lot of UK hosting provides 0.3-0.5 amp for 1-2U spaces, but i feel even the most bare minimum low-powered spec’d machine at a 2U size would destroy this usage?

That sounds about right. Power in the UK is expensive, especially in some datacentres in London where the total amount of power available to the building is limited.

@LEBUserJoe said:
How in the world are places like OvH offering £10/m servers in the UK even the old-hardware alone would exceed any colohost power I can find, that’s without all the other costs.

Razor thin margins, plus they typically operate large datacentres in locations where power and cooling is cheap.

I completely understand that, but seems totally crazy? I can rent a top-end Ryzen, 128GB DDR5, for around £80-90/months (In the UK)

Yet, if I was to build and deploy myself, it would be thousands + around the same if not more monthly at these rates? it makes no sense to me.

I understand scale, I understand OvH is in a spot other’s aren’t and maybe they are even a loss-leader. But how can rental on the general market, include top-end hardware for the price I can colocate anything

There are plenty of ways they could've made that work -- perhaps drop a link and someone might be able to explain? But the very short version...

• Hardware has multiple lifetimes: OVH and Hetzner are particularly good at this.
• In the UK London is the place to go for cheap connectivity but expensive power, whereas cities outside London give you the opposite.
• There are ways that the real cost can be obscured with small print.
• Finally, long commits (1, 2, 3, or even 5 years) can result in particularly good deals, without any "gotcha" other than the commitment period.

LordSpock

A large part of why dedicated servers are cheaper is they are often in a chain of automation that means that staff involvement is almost 0. Colocation customers take more labour as a result which is already an added expense, but full rack customers don't typically take >much< more labour.

The infrastructure required to connect a customer with a single 2U box vs a full rack customer doesn't differ massively either.

The amount of cost reduction you achieve by scaling even slightly is huge, and that can be passed on to you. Not to mention, by using things such as blade servers, you can increase your compute and power density quite significantly.

Hayzee

@LEBUserJoe said:
One thing in i’ve never done is colocate my own hardware, i’m interested in this for personal projects but while researching found issues.

For example, lot of UK hosting provides 0.3-0.5 amp for 1-2U spaces, but i feel even the most bare minimum low-powered spec’d machine at a 2U size would destroy this usage?

Or am I totally wrong? i’m concerned to pull the plug and buy hardware as I don’t see anywhere feasible. How in the world are places like OvH offering £10/m servers in the UK even the old-hardware alone would exceed any colohost power I can find, that’s without all the other costs.

Have you checked out UK Servers? They offer up to 1Amp for single server colocation
But you could also look at getting something like a 1/8th rack.
As the others have said, scaling does usually help the costs.
Personally, I wouldn't consider colocating unless I had everything figured out/ready. I would probably do a "test" run on rented machine(s) first to see where you stand/what potential you have.

advinservers

Colocation usually makes most sense if you either have non-standard/expensive hardware (e.g., AMD EPYC servers, storage servers) or if you are going for a half/full rack or more.

From a provider perspective, colocation is often more of a hassle to manage due to the need for remote hands and ability to manage non-standard hardware configurations.

Hayzee

@advinservers said:
From a provider perspective, colocation is often more of a hassle to manage due to the need for remote hands and ability to manage non-standard hardware configurations.

Just go to where you're colocated