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Is there a market for lower end, small datacentres in the UK?
Just wondering if there is a market for lower end datacentre services in the UK?
We are have a new industrial unit going spare along with about 250kW of power that we can reserve on a 11kV transformer. So we could handle around 25-35 racks of lower end IT equipment and cooling.
Targeting mainly people who want to self host and small businesses looking to host IT equipment offsite or have a offsite backup.
The facility would be fully backed up with always online UPS and a generator, plus we have a load of solar PV to lower our carbon footprint!
We are in talks with a T1 transit provider for 10G of transit plus the ability to have connectivity to Equinix to peer at their London IX and LINX LON1 as well.
Private peering with national ISPs is also high on the list.
Would be looking at charging £10-15 per U for rack space plus a per kW charge for power. 1G port included.
Can offer quarter, half and full racks with metered power as well, or even a whole pod of racks.
Upgrades like 10G ports, interconnects, dedicated bandwidth. Can provide remote hands services also.
Might also offer allocated power at a fixed price if customers are more receptive of that.
We could also offer shelf storage for consumer level NAS device.
Would love to hear what you guys think.
Comments
All that talk about racks makes me want some ribs now.
Market’s pretty saturated — you’ll need to stand out with niche offerings, better pricing, or solid support to make it work.
Start the thing. I’ll be your first customer.
Just make sure to have a reasonably priced 10G option.
Ill put your name down on the invite list!
What sort of 10G? Dedicated or burstable?
At the start, we would only have around 10G of transit total, with the goal of getting ISP peering up asap, typically around the 10G per ISP mark or higher.
Would be hard to offer 10G from day one without higher commitments up stream.
Would be interested if the pricing is right
Probably some kind of mini pc or something
I have buuunch of servers but everyone has "m3h" at best gpu performance
I am interested as well.
So it seems. Related, veloxserv has been wonderful!
Francisco
This is a very odd market. I know people who have tried similar before and had mixed success. Targeted marketing towards the homelab demographic could be a winner here (avoid attracting summer hosts/game server hosts like the plague).
Personally, I would be interested, depending on where it is in the country & how reasonable the power pricing is. I've got a shit load of hobby boxes and whilst I have a pretty decent home setup, I'm always happy to keep something off site.
Why not.
The worst you can do is listen to people that say it's been done and there is no room for it in the marketplace.
When are you thinking of being ready?
What redundancy plans do you have?
Considering the costs, do you have enough financial resources to see it through in the short term through to being profitable. I am in no means asking for financial information it is what I would consider as a potential customer a question.
I have a business launching next month which would be able to use it.
At the price point I'd definitely take a look. I wouldn't say it's a saturated market if the price is on the lower end in the UK - there really isn't much in the UK < £50 per month and it's difficult to find somewhere to host mini PC's here.
I used to do game server hosting. What is wrong with it these days other than all the DDOS because someone wasn't made an admin in MineCraft?
We are in the south Derbyshire area near Ashbourne.
Trying to get power to around £0.40-0.50 (includes cooling).
I also used to be a GSP, albeit I was pretty picky with my customers. The DDoS issues are not as much as a concern to me, but they do definitely attract that and having to throw money on mitigation doesn't always seem worth it.
A lot of the small game server hosts are run by kids (don't get me wrong - everyone has to start somewhere) who will look for the cheapest possible ways to host things and end up being incredibly noisy neighbours and drains on support resources, etc.
There was a firm in Northants that was doing cheap UK colocation and ended up going under, from what I could see - largely due to the above.
I know the area, that's not too bad. Doesn't put me off at least.
That's pretty reasonable power wise.
Very early cost analysis stage at the moment. And I am happy to be open with the costs and financing. I think that is only fair if you are going to use a new service.
In terms of redundancy, the fibre is mostly underground with a 7 hour SLA though they are saying typically it is less than 4 hours. Microwave link is something we can do at this site with 2 hops to the exchange. Ideally we would have fibre going out in both directions but it is one of the biggest fixed setup fees, would be done at a later stage but not from the start.
For power, we have budgeted for a full site UPS with a diesel generator.
We already have contract with the DNO to bring generator onsite for power outages due to faults that are not quickly fixed.
So, we would need to fill about 5 racks to break even with our rough estimates so far.
We would be looking at 2-3 years minimum of financing (minimum term that the operation would be covered finically in terms of running costs). But I expect we should be able to fill 5 racks by then, I hope...
I have not included any extras such as faster network ports, dedicated bandwidth, remote hands, shelf server hosting and all the other optional services on top of rack and port, the base offering. These will reduce the rack to break even point.
If we can ramp up to 100% fill of 10 racks, at 60% power draw (60kWh*year), we are looking at about 2 years to get a return. Obviously with more customers, more racks comes more data, more power, more cooling. I'm just saying if we built 10 racks and offered the base rack and port service, the power + cooling + data etc for those 10 racks, we would see that investment paid off in 2 years at 100% fill.
This is a industry you need scale to make money. Data and power being the big ticket items that don't scale well until you are at much larger numbers. One client bursting at 10G on 100G of connectivity is not a problem but at 10G of connectivity, that is 100% of what you have to offer. Peering with the major ISPs is a must and top priority. I think it is fair to say that is where most of our bandwidth will go. Power you can oversell somewhat but you run a much higher risk at the lower end.
At the 200kW point, at 80% fill we are just looking at enough profit for 2 datacentre technicians (salary) plus return for the investors and money in the company to expand.
AFAIK our IP transit allows for nulling DDOS at their end so that should not be too much of a problem on our port. I started GSP when I was 15 and did alright at it for a few years. Right at the start of MineCraft and ended up hosting a couple hundred game servers. Oh the good old times..
We are only really interested in the rack and port offering so there will have to be a very explicit notice that we are an unmanaged service with only remote hands for power (PDU does this) and hardware changes and support with network within the facility.
That power rate is if we can get the rates on our end in the region we need to make that work. We have PV which will helps but ideally we want to be on the tier that allows us to charge that amount. Expecting 1.3-1.5x IT to IT+cooling load depending on the efficiently of the cooling system. Luckily I have F-Gas cert so I can install the AC and get the equipment dirt cheap.
I would like to do the Mini PC thing. I have seen it around at £5 per unit plus power (£3-10) plus IP (£2-5) when researching.
I think shelf for us will be in the low £10 including power and port. Might have to share IPs to make IPv4 work and limit total bandwidth during peek hours.
power in uk expensive and the datacenters exists to make money...lets see how well you can pull it off.
I assume this unit you have is owned, not leased?
You mentioned the solar PV. I would definitely look into, if you have not already, matched grant funding for your power consumption and reducing that carbon footprint.
The investor owns it.
There is a load of roof space available for more. We could probably cover 100% demand with the roof space.
Yes, go for it. Ignore any who tells no.
Those are your competitors.
I'm currently doing this in the North-East of England, in County Durham.
I already have an established workload via a mutual company, and due to the ever-increasing power costs of mainstream and even semi-independent DCs, it makes financial sense to offload some workloads that aren't particularly latency or network sensitive away from the expensive power facilities.
Much like yours, the facility is in a small industrial unit, already fed with three-phase power and we had an additional low voltage (240v) install supplied by the transformer of the nearby housing estate for more resiliency.
There are a handful of core target markets in the UK currently:
As you're starting out, you have to fixate on one or maybe two of these core markets. If you're in a metro area with nearby network operators (Neos, Exa, euNet, Colt, Sky etc) then you've got a good chance of attracting those players for nearby altnets, semi/MNOs etc for network use. If not - like our facility - then you'll have to focus on another niche.
If you're taking Openreach connectivity and want diversity, make sure you order multiple tails from the same provider, and allow the provider to attain diverse paths into the facility to the nearest exchange/PoP, as Openreach will NOT pander to diversification under any other means.
Remember, you'll need planning permission from your local council for the facility, the local grid operator (sustained power load and power factor), council audit for the storage of fuels (generator), water company permission and audit if you're planning on using mains supply there. Insurance is always going to be the bugbear - I can put you in touch with a broker if you get stuck.
Happy to chat more, share renders, pics, tips, power dist tree/leaf plans etc privately. Best of luck with the project, though!
Great to see we are not the only ones! Would be great to talk to you.
Our biggest problem at the moment is that we are in the countryside. About 20km from any metro links in a straight line. We have been in talks with Zayo and Neos about it and both of them are in the city area. Neos does have a cable just south of us but no PoP. I need to ask them more about it.
Openreach (BT Business) have been quite good to talk with, they are eager to help but they are also charging 10x for the same IP Transit service as everyone else. I think they know they can get away with it having such a monopoly in the country in terms of infrastructure to the customers. HE and Cogent have been very up front with their pricing but Cogent is 30km away and HE is 70km, in a straight line. The HE location (Cogent are also there) would be best as we can peer on open exchanges at those locations as well. Would make the install and running costs of getting a service to those locations more worth it.
We will talk to council and the DNO if we get to stage 2 of the study. Right now we are just looking at connectivity, setup costs, capacity that is already on site etc.
This sounds interesting to me!
If you want to go the Small to medium business route, then go smaller partitioned racks (8th, quarter, third - rack offerings). I also think it really depends on what your connectivity price will be.
Also ensure you can get a second network operator in the facility, as that may be a make or break deal to quite a few.
Looking into getting fibre down to Equinix at the moment. This would allow for quite a bit of bandwidth and multiple IP Transit providers, public & private peers etc.