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Budget European Colo Anyone?
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Budget European Colo Anyone?

randvegetarandvegeta Member, Host Rep
edited January 2018 in General

Anyone interested in low cost EU colocation?

Looking at expanding our operations in Lithuania, we may have a significant excess in capacity.

I'm considering a different approach to colo services and I'm putting this out there to bounce some ideas.

Traditionally, with colocation, prices are based on a per U or per Rack basis. So I'm thinking of trying something different and essentially offering the physical space for free, and instead charging for only the resources used, such as electricity, bandwidth and remote hands.

I'm considering a pricing structure similar to the following:


Physical Space: Free (within reason)
Power: EUR 0.15 /KwH (approx 24 EUR/m per 1amp)
Bandwidth: From EUR 0.50 /Mbit
Remote Hands: EUR 40 /hr

IPv4 and IPv6 BGP sessions available.
DDoS Protection available.

Setup Fee Applicable. Rates depend on your specific setup.


This is not an offer, just a general idea of what may be available in the not too distant future.

Regarding the 'Free' space (within reason), this does not mean you can use our DC for unlimited free storage. The space we would provide would be expected for actual and active use. So there would be a limit to how much inactive equipment we would store for free. Some inactive equipment would of course be acceptable as 'stock' for future deployment.

There would otherwise be no real limitation on the size or quantity of equipment sent. Tower cases, Book PCs, 4U, 2U, 8U, whatever. The only thing size may affect is the initial setup cost. Otherwise, on a monthly basis, there would be no difference.

What do you all think of such a pricing model?

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Comments

  • hostdarehostdare Member, Patron Provider

    You should not offer free space at all . charge less but charge something

    Thanked by 2Aidan Clouvider
  • You should not offer free space at all . charge less but charge something

    This.

    Thanked by 1Clouvider
  • randvegetarandvegeta Member, Host Rep

    @hostdare said:
    You should not offer free space at all . charge less but charge something

    Interesting. Why? Of course space is not free, but nothing is free, and yet more and more services are basically becoming 'free' (actually just being included) when purchased with another service.

  • WSSWSS Member

    @hostdare said:
    You should not offer free space at all . charge less but charge something

    Yep.

  • Interesting. Why? Of course space is not free, but nothing is free, and yet more and more services are basically becoming 'free' (actually just being included) when purchased with another service.

    As it'll be abused, it's not worth the headache & man hours.

  • MasonRMasonR Community Contributor

    Perfect place to put a 10U chasis I just got for my Raspberry Pi! :D

    Thanked by 3Aidan hostdare steny
  • randvegetarandvegeta Member, Host Rep
    edited January 2018

    @hostdare said:
    You should not offer free space at all . charge less but charge something

    For example, most colo offers include power. No one expect to pay extra for the power they use with their rack.

  • randvegetarandvegeta Member, Host Rep

    MasonR said: Perfect place to put a 10U chasis I just got for my Raspberry Pi! :D

    Dude, I would host that completely free for you! Honestly! I'd put a picture of that on the website to show what kind of nut-job clients we get!

    Aidan said: As it'll be abused, it's not worth the headache & man hours.

    Perhaps I haven't thought this through. But how would you imagine this being abused? People sending in 10U chassis with a single raspberry pi in it? XD

    Thanked by 1MasonR
  • @hostdare said:
    You should not offer free space at all . charge less but charge something

    $7

  • hostdarehostdare Member, Patron Provider

    randvegeta said: Interesting. Why?

    people will buy one service and fill up the more free space with their garbage later . so charge little per u too which will deter such abusers eventually or you will fighting daily with logic of what is inactive equipment

  • hostdarehostdare Member, Patron Provider

    1-7 USD will work even haha

  • hostdarehostdare Member, Patron Provider

    randvegeta said: No one expect to pay extra for the power they use with their rack.

    many Europe DC charge per kwh .
    not common in USA DC though

  • randvegetarandvegeta Member, Host Rep

    hostdare said: people will buy one service and fill up the more free space with their garbage later . so charge little per u too which will deter such abusers eventually or you will fighting daily with logic of what is inactive equipment

    Innactive = not powered. If it's powered, then it must be paid for. The only thing then would be the concern that people would be senidng in power hungry devices without actually buying any other services like bandwidth, or IPs. But as mentioned in my initial post, they won't be able to just send a bunch of stuff and expect free storage. Active means powered on.

    Also, we are currently using standard 42U racks. Sending in standard 2U rackmounted servers would be the easiest setup, and so generally have the lowest setup fees. But sending in towers and what not would add a little extra work, and so a setup fee can off-set this nicely.

  • randvegetarandvegeta Member, Host Rep

    hostdare said: 1-7 USD will work even haha

    In true LET style, I will scrap the 'free' space for a $7 charge for an in-determinant amount of physical space!

  • Apologies for the newbie question, but how does that work for a port with limited bandwidth (i.e. 1Gbps, 10TB) giving the bandwidth price is per Mbit (unlimited?) ?

  • randvegetarandvegeta Member, Host Rep

    beagle said: Apologies for the newbie question, but how does that work for a port with limited bandwidth (i.e. 1Gbps, 10TB) giving the bandwidth price is per Mbit (unlimited?) ?

    Not sure I understand the question.

    Are you asking if pricing on a per mbit basis means unlimited data transfer? If so, kind of.

    1Mbit gives you approximately 317GB of data transfer in a month. 1Mbit cannot transfer more than that in any given month (well you can get up and down for a total of 634GB, but that's 2 directions).

    So pricing bandwidth per mbit can give you 'unlmited' data transfer. But you're limited by the speed... so it's still limited.

  • Uhm, that would be about 100€/mo for a relatively modest standard server with only 50 Mb connectivity.

    For that kind of money I could easily get that incl. the server (dedi) and 100 Mb. But, of course, free space sounds attractive.

  • randvegetarandvegeta Member, Host Rep
    edited January 2018

    @bsdguy said:
    Uhm, that would be about 100€/mo for a relatively modest standard server with only 50 Mb connectivity.

    For that kind of money I could easily get that incl. the server (dedi) and 100 Mb. But, of course, free space sounds attractive.

    Not sure how you've come to that number...

    A typical server uses about 0.2-0.3 amps of power. So that's about EUR 7.30 for power.
    EUR 0.50 * 100Mbit = EUR 50 /month.

    So a colo server with 100Mbit bandwidth would cost around EUR 57.30 /month. That's 100Mbit dedicated, so 30TB traffic.

  • hzrhzr Member

    how much would you charge for a standard rpi? I have a case for it, but no rackmount chassis.

  • I don't know about your servers but the ones I know are typ. in the range of 400 to 600W which in europe (230V) translates to about 2 Amp.

    Anyway, I was just surprised. Nothing against you or your idea.

  • hostdarehostdare Member, Patron Provider

    E3 severs standalone use little power than big vps nodes with dual cpu and ram disk etc

  • @randvegeta said:

    beagle said: Apologies for the newbie question, but how does that work for a port with limited bandwidth (i.e. 1Gbps, 10TB) giving the bandwidth price is per Mbit (unlimited?) ?

    Not sure I understand the question.

    Are you asking if pricing on a per mbit basis means unlimited data transfer? If so, kind of.

    1Mbit gives you approximately 317GB of data transfer in a month. 1Mbit cannot transfer more than that in any given month (well you can get up and down for a total of 634GB, but that's 2 directions).

    So pricing bandwidth per mbit can give you 'unlmited' data transfer. But you're limited by the speed... so it's still limited.

    Again apologies if I'm mixing different concepts (i.e. port speed vs bandwidth) here, but let's suppose I want a 1Gbps port (so I can have bursts of 1Gbps) but would only use 10TB/m of bandwidth.

    For instance, a backup server that runs a job at night but needs enough speed so the job finishes before the morning shift starts. I would need the port speed but the traffic would be limited. (or maybe someone can give a better example where you need port speed but not a lot of traffic).

    What would be the costs? Assuming the typical server power consumption you mentioned above (0.2 - 0.3 A).

  • hostdarehostdare Member, Patron Provider

    beagle said: beagle

    This is a risk for the hosts too unless they have big fat pipes to absorb the spike because all upstream charge with 95% system

    Thanked by 1beagle
  • hawchawc Moderator, LIR

    What's your ability to cool like?

  • beagle said: What would be the costs?

    You'd most likely have to pay based on 95th percentile usage then.

    Thanked by 1beagle
  • What makes you better than https://www.bacloud.com/en/colocation ?

  • I like the idea of billing by the kwh instead of flat rate for X amps. I know Hetzner does that but haven't heard of it in the US. I could imagine the free space being nice if I wanted to install something like a tape library, though that's not so likely in practice.

    Asking only from theoretical interest since I'm in the US and not likely to colo anything in EU: what is the minimum increment for remote hands?

  • qpsqps Member, Host Rep

    willie said: I like the idea of billing by the kwh instead of flat rate for X amps. I know Hetzner does that but haven't heard of it in the US.

    It is definitely the default method of billing worldwide for most wholesale commits.

  • randvegetarandvegeta Member, Host Rep

    willie said: Asking only from theoretical interest since I'm in the US and not likely to colo anything in EU: what is the minimum increment for remote hands?

    I suppose 15 mins after the first hour.

  • randvegetarandvegeta Member, Host Rep
    edited January 2018

    hawc said: What's your ability to cool like?

    Ample capacity to cool. We expect to be able to keep the ambient temperature at a similar level to the outside temperature, meaning we would only need to use actual coolant during the very rare hot days. Otherwise, water based cooling should provide us ample capacity given the amount of power we have.

    lion said: What makes you better than https://www.bacloud.com/en/colocation ?

    What makes them better than us? What makes anyone better or worse than anyone else?

    Network (routing) wise, they are kind of similar to us. So pricing wise, if you assume a 999 EUR /month budget (where they offer a 42U full rack), which includes 100TB (call that an average of 300Mbit) traffic and 1.5kw of power, my pricing model would be around 330 EUR (1/3 the price) and include much more space.

    Of course maybe you specifically need 10TB burstable traffic, and we could not offer that at the moment. So if that 10TB burst is worth 670 EUR, then go for BACloud. But for that extra 670 EUR, we could offer an additional 1,340Mbit, for a total of 1,640Mbit. That equates to about 500TB monthly data transfer.

    Ultimately, there are always differences between certain providers and it will come down to preference. Our DC is based in Kaunas, and theirs is in Siaulai. Kaunas may be better for many due to better transport links over Siaulai, but then if that matters to you, maybe Vilnius or Klaipeda would be preferable.

    But ours will be based in Kaunas.

    Thanked by 1beagle
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