Re: co-location and access to your server

[Kevin Stange <kevin () steadfast net>]

On 01/12/2011 03:50 PM, George Bonser wrote:
> I would say even that hosting other people's hardware on a "one off"
> basis isn't even really cost effective.  Better, in my opinion, for the
> service provider to simply buy a rack from Rackable or another vendor
> and rent the servers out to people.  At least you are then dealing with
> a known entity as far as hardware goes.  Housing who knows what gives
> you a potential mix of things like front to back, back to front, and
> side to side airflow; an assortment of network issues due to an
> assortment of NICs in the network; people wanting physical access to
> their servers for things like driver replacement, etc. 

You're talking about a dedicated server business versus colocation.
Colocation can be a better solution if you have special needs for
hardware or want to not pay for the extra overhead that needs to be
built-in for supporting dedicated hardware (like stocking replacement
parts, paying for the server's original purchase cost, extra fees for
upgrade hardware, etc).

Colo also lets customers move their hardware around if they ever want to
change providers, rather than have to do a soft migration and to deliver
a prepared server to a facility they can set up at home or in their
office beforehand.  Depending on your exact needs, some of these things
might outweigh the benefits of a dedicated server from the data center
operator.

As a colo provider, if you set up and enforce rules regarding mounting,
air flow, cabling, etc and confirm them when the customer brings them to
the facility, this problem does not really exist.

In our facilities, customers are welcome to come in to work on their
hardware at any time 24/7.  We do not guarantee or offer that we will
have the parts or tools needed to service the equipment and encourage
customers to send us those things as needed or take care of the hardware
personally in order to deal with any such concerns.

This has never been a problem for us.

-- 
Kevin Stange
Chief Technology Officer
Steadfast Networks
http://steadfast.net
Phone: 312-602-2689 ext. 203 | Fax: 312-602-2688 | Cell: 312-320-5867

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