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Co-location for personal servers?
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Co-location for personal servers?

immanisimmanis Member
edited July 2015 in Help

Is there such thing as a colocation for personal machines?

For example, I might have an old PC which I would like to host on a dedicated line, but I can't use my own internet connection. Is there a cheap-ish service that can host my box (in the region of £2-3pm?

Thanks

Edit: Doing a bit more googling, this seems pretty difficult - I think it's generally cheaper to rent a VPS still.

Comments

  • MuZoMuZo Member

    Probably not in a datacenter. You have also to include power, redundant power-supply, occupied space in the datacenter, etc.

    Thanked by 1immanis
  • rds100rds100 Member
    edited July 2015

    2 - 3 GBP per month is not enough to pay for the power used by a typical old PC. By far. Also a typical PC in tower case takes 4U rack space.
    If your budget is that low, get a VPS.

    Thanked by 1alexvolk
  • If it's a smallish machine it would fit in a locker at colocker MK but it will cost you a LOT more than £2-3

  • BensDaManBensDaMan Member
    edited July 2015

    jamtholee said: co-location

    jamtholee said: £2-3pm

    At first I thought you made a typo (£20-30/mo?), however, no, this won't happen at all.
    Sorry about the gif, I couldn't help myself :-)

  • As @rds100 said, just the power will cost way more than £3/month.

  • nexmarknexmark Member
    edited July 2015

    Add some cool fans

    Maybe some 'hardware' RAID

    State of the art operating system, 64 boots

    On the serious note £2-3p will take you nowhere, you're better off with some cheap VPS.
    Maybe one of those online.net €1.99 euro servers would be good for you (if you can snag one)

    Click to see more of this state of the art facility

  • rm_rm_ IPv6 Advocate, Veteran
    edited July 2015

    rds100 said: Also a typical PC in tower case takes 4U rack space.

    There are DCs offering non-standard form factor colocation, I believe even Hetzner does some.
    But yeah, the cost would be nowhere near 2-3 GBP.
    Even in some rookie facility (someone's basement) with no redundant power or Internet.

  • WilliamWilliam Member
    edited July 2015

    rm_ said: There are DCs offering non-standard form factor colocation, I believe even Hetzner does some.

    Hetzner did, but now only offers 19" colocation. Their own dedicated servers are however mainly towers (anything except the large storage SX and the Dell line basically).

    Even if we assume:

    1.: Space is essentially free (which it isnt, but realistically a cheaply built (converted) DC in a vast large country/city can be less than 10EUR/m^2 and thus only a few cents per U) - Lets say 5U @ 25c (10EUR/m^2) = 1.25EUR/Month

    2.: Cheapest possible power (Iceland by non-subsidized power (5c/kwh), Kuwait by subsidy (1c/kwh)), with 400W usage (realistic for anything older than 2010) and NO power calculated in for AC/UPS or costs for genset - 3EUR to 15EUR/Month

    3.: Cheapest possible BW (without considering overselling) at 0.5/Mbit (0.5EUR/330GB or 0.15EUR/100GB) - 0.5EUR

    Comes out to a total of at LEAST 4.75EUR (which is pretty near 3GBP) - But you'll never find anything like that.

    Realistically you can get extremely cheap colocation in some parts of the US (Denver for some reason) and even in EU (Czech Republic, Poland) but nothing below ~35-40$.

    Best available deal is most likely CEUServers (FDCServers) 26EUR package with 10Mbit unmetered and no note of power usage (Probably ~100W)-

  • jamtholee said: Edit: Doing a bit more googling, this seems pretty difficult - I think it's generally cheaper to rent a VPS still.

    Not worth the effort. Better off renting a server or a VPS.

  • Do a search on Raspberry Pi colocation to get an idea for the the lower limit you could expect for such a scenario. It is in the range given, but only barely, and the RPi isn't exactly a resource intensive machine.

    Next step up would be something like a Mac mini colo, which is going to run you upwards of 10x the price, and that is a pretty modest machine by "personal machines" standards, too. A generic "old PC" is going consume something like 5x the space and power of a mini, so multiply your budget accordingly.

    Thanked by 1immanis
  • There's coolhousing.net as well

    Thanked by 1Frecyboy
  • @impossiblystupid said:
    Do a search on Raspberry Pi colocation to get an idea for the the lower limit you could expect for such a scenario. It is in the range given, but only barely, and the RPi isn't exactly a resource intensive machine.

    Next step up would be something like a Mac mini colo, which is going to run you upwards of 10x the price, and that is a pretty modest machine by "personal machines" standards, too. A generic "old PC" is going consume something like 5x the space and power of a mini, so multiply your budget accordingly.

    YES! That is exactly what I'm looking for. I think what I'll do is load a My RPi V1 Model B with a 128GB SD Card and 8GB USB stick for ZRAM, then send it in for colocation. That seems like the best deal for me :)

  • cassacassa Member

    In the Netherlands we have a club called Coloclue for this, maybe there are some in your country as well. It comes down to no profit, which means it's cheap and there are other members as well.

  • @jamtholee said:
    YES! That is exactly what I'm looking for. I think what I'll do is load a My RPi V1 Model B with a 128GB SD Card and 8GB USB stick for ZRAM, then send it in for colocation. That seems like the best deal for me :)

    You could, but surely the PI2 would be much nicer for that.

  • £2 to £3 per month? I presume you also pay that for your Gas, Electric, Council Tax etc?
    I wouldn't even colo you an ethernet cable for that!..

  • @dragon2611 said:
    You could, but surely the PI2 would be much nicer for that.

    Yeah, but I have a spare Pi1 lying about, and I don't think I need the extra power or RAM (I've got zram for that), so it's probably ok to use the one I've got

  • Only .5amp for power, doesn't seem like enough, I guess you could go to 2amps but that ups the cost then.

  • @CFarence said:
    Only .5amp for power, doesn't seem like enough, I guess you could go to 2amps but that ups the cost then.

    @240v don't forget, It depends what you want to put in there,

    I had 2x j1900 celeron based ITX machines, a router, KVM and external quad bay HDD caddy in there and they didn't charge for extra power (I was somewhat surprised at that)

    At the moment I have 1x C2750 based machine in a Silverstone DS380 case (Wanted lots of drive bays) and a router.

    I might put one of the J1900's back in or a Nuc/Pi2 at somepoint, probably then I might need to upgrade to 1A power as I'd imagine the c2750 draws a fair bit given although it's a low power CPU it's also it's got 5x 3.5" HDD and 2x 2.5" SSD in already.

  • wychwych Member

    With that budget just find a VPS, colo costs are way higher.

  • jbilohjbiloh Administrator, Veteran

    Sending old equipment to a datacenter will prove costly as it's more likely to break and require remote hands.

    Thanked by 1netomx
  • HostMyBytesHostMyBytes Member
    edited July 2015

    As you mentioned, it will be more cost effective to just get a VPS. You'll have a higher quality experience, not have to worry about shipping the server, and you won't have to worry about hardware failures.

    Edit - I should also add that with a VPS you're basically subsidizing the cost of a dedicated server, but with multiple tenants you can save money when others share resources and help pay for support staff.

  • SadySady Member

    @jbiloh said:
    Sending old equipment to a datacenter will prove costly as it's more likely to break and require remote hands.

    I second this.

    Thanked by 1netomx
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