todd glassey wrote:

On 1/12/2011 12:28 PM, Matt Kelly wrote:

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When you are talking single or partial rack colo it is generally done

policy. The ISP's limited access policy has to do with their overhead models and that's all there is to that.

Sorry to bring daylight into this but it is what it is... YOU MUST plan for redundancy.

Thanks for all the replies, I understand that allowing access to other people's servers unsupervised could be a bad idea. Problem for my specific situation is that the 10 to 6 access is exactly the time I generally am NOT in town. I guess knowing who entered the building by means of a keycard and having cameras isn't considered enough to deter potential "evil doers". I know it's not enough for places like equinix, but that's of a different caliber. Thanks, Jeroen -- http://goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/ http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.html

From: david raistrick Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2011 1:44 PM To: Jeroen van Aart Cc: NANOG list Subject: Re: co-location and access to your server

On Wed, 12 Jan 2011, Jeroen van Aart wrote:

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I guess knowing who entered the building by means of a keycard and having cameras isn't considered enough to deter potential "evil doers". I know it's not enough for places like equinix, but that's of a different caliber.

Paying for 1u of colo justifys a keycard for you, cameras and keycard hardware for the facility? you're paying what, 50-100$ a month, maybe less? you realize that low prices comes at the cost of reduced services?

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. Even having someone willing to allow individuals to house their own single servers in a rack is amazing. Complaining about the service as far as access just seems like looking the gift horse in the mouth!

From: Kevin Stange

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.

Agreed on the above two points. I was thinking that it was great just to find someone these days that would accept a one-off server and that should be enough to be thankful for! The access requirements can be a pain but if you are in a shared cabinet, you have people installing rack mounts, pulling servers in and out around your stuff, etc. I can see where I would probably want the colo provider to have someone supervising what that other customer is doing right next to my server (did he cover my air vents with a bunch of cables?) The degree of clue varies widely between people who might want to collocate a single server and if I am unlucky enough to be hosted directly above/below someone who is in/out of their server every week, I might get a little nervous. Knowing that there is someone with a bit more clue (does that for a living) supervising (or at least witnessing) might ease my anxiety somewhat about what is going on in the cabinet where I am being hosted.

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.

To some extent, that is true. I guess it depends on what is going on, too. Does the customer arrive, request their server and the colo provider pulls it for them and deliver it to a work area or does the customer go get the server themselves under supervision of the colo provider? There can be a lot of variables.

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.

Awesome. It's good to know that there are still operations like that around. That is probably found more often in local providers and not so often in the big operations. The more community oriented providers would be much more accepting of such a situation than a large operation. But having clueful people around 24x7 to assist customers in shared cabinets may not be effective for them if they have just opened up and might not have a lot of customers yet. If they only get one or two customers who come in after hours, I could see where they might figure it isn't cost effective for them to have staff on the swing and graveyard shifts. Larger operations might have an easier time with that, but having someone "on call" probably isn't that bad if it is infrequently needed.

On 12/01/11 4:28 PM, Jeroen van Aart wrote:

George Bonser wrote:

...

Awesome. It's good to know that there are still operations like that around. That is probably found more often in local providers and not so often in the big operations. The more community oriented providers would be much more accepting of such a situation than a large operation.

Community oriented provider, that's what I am talking about. I just couldn't find the right term.

...

but having someone "on call" probably isn't that bad if it is infrequently needed.

I'd be willing to pay extra for access after hours, either a recurring fee or on a case by case basis. I am not searching for the cheapest option and demanding that in addition my car be detailed weekly. But just some co-locating space for one or a few servers where I don't have to plan a week ahead or miss half a day of $dayjob in order to work on it (which would cost me more).

Scruz is ~30-45 minutes from the heart of the internet on the west coast (Silicon Valley). If your $dayjob isn't in scruz, then it's most likely IN Silicon Valley. So locate your 1U server in Silicon Valley, where there are a plethora of colos with varying costs and access options. I suggest looking at layer42 - the last time I did a RFQ for a 1U server, they had the best price and most robust colo (providers and peering, adequate cooling, backup power, etc.) over other providers (offering 1U services) in the SF Bay Area. Yes, if you have an outage at night you have a longer drive to the colo. But it does no you good to locate your server in a "closer" colo if you can't access it at night anyway! From the colo provider's perspective, 1U clients are the least profitable clients. Setting them up and servicing them involves the most paperwork and communication "per dollar", and 1U clients tend to need more hand holding, ask stupid questions, etc. on average than bigger clients. To further complicate matters, 1U clients tend to be VERY cost conscious, so they don't want to pay what it really costs the colo to provide service to a 1U client (factoring in the sales time cost, the customer service time cost, etc.). jc

On 1/13/11 11:30 PM, Jeroen van Aart wrote:

JC Dill wrote:

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Scruz is ~30-45 minutes from the heart of the internet on the west coast (Silicon Valley). If your $dayjob isn't in scruz, then it's most likely IN Silicon Valley. So locate your 1U server in Silicon Valley, where

Yes it's in the Valley and I do consider locating it there. But I would like to do the whole "support your local business" thing. And the idea of being able to get to the server within 10 minutes is appealing.

Colos are where the fiber is, and if you want to know where the fiber is follow the flow of money. santa cruz is in fact not someplace with either a lot of carriers or a lot of fiber diversity. vixie had a wild hair at some point and created the personal colo registry a couple of years ago. http://www.vix.com/personalcolo/ it is not extensive but the port/power/transit business for quantity one box is not real profitable either and piecemeal expansion means you're reserving space for customers that aren't paying for it.

...

have a longer drive to the colo. But it does no you good to locate your server in a "closer" colo if you can't access it at night anyway!

True, it's one of the reasons I was nitpicking about it. No 24/7 access eliminates one big advantage.

...

From the colo provider's perspective, 1U clients are the least profitable clients. Setting them up and servicing them involves the most paperwork and communication "per dollar"

I understand. I did emphasize in my communications I expect the 1U to expand in the future. It's just a starting point. Though so far no answer. Thanks for your pointer wrt layer42, I will certainly look into it.

Greetings, Jeroen

On 01/12/2011 06:57 PM, Justin Scott wrote:

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I was thinking that it was great just to find someone these days that would accept a one-off server and that should be enough to be thankful for!

Especially true with providers like SoftLayer which can turn up a fully dedicated server to spec at any of several locations within a few hours. No hardware to manage or worrying about getting direct access at all. They even give you the ability to cycle the outlet(s) the server is plugged into if needed. Unless there is some really specialized hardware, location-specific or regulatory need, I couldn't imagine a desire to deal with putting my own single box at a co-lo anymore. Of course, since you're leasing the box you pay a premium over a pure bare-bones co-lo, but it vastly simplifies things.

That's true. Most dedicated server providers will get you remote power outlet control and many can get you remote console (IPMI, DRAC) as an included feature, so you can take care of almost all administration on your own, including OS reinstalls and fscks. There's still sometimes an edge in price and control when you use your own hardware and that's definitely worth it for some. -- Kevin Stange Chief Technology Officer Steadfast Networks http://steadfast.net Phone: 312-602-2689 ext. 203 | Fax: 312-602-2688 | Cell: 312-320-5867

Kevin Stange wrote:

I guess what you're saying holds true if the facility doesn't already offer /anyone/ this access regardless of how much equipment and space they have.

They offer 24/7 access to 1/3 racks or more. The price is not that low, $100/month for 1*1U and 1 IP. I'd say that's not a sales bin style rock bottom price where expecting even free coffee is excessive. ;-) There is another small colo in town which to the best of my knowledge does provide 24/7 access with a keycard. Greetings, Jeroen -- http://goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/ http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.html

On Jan 12, 2011, at 3:49 PM, david raistrick wrote:

On Wed, 12 Jan 2011, Jeroen van Aart wrote:

...

What is considered normal with regards to access to your co-located server(s)? Especially when you're just co-locating one or a few servers.

For less than 1 rack, or specialty racks with lockable sections (1/2 or 1/3 or 1/4 racks with their own doors), I'd consider any physical access to simply be a plus. I wouldn't expect any at all. You're not paying for enough space to justify the costs involved in 24x7 independant access, and the risks to other customers gear.

When you get a full rack+, or cage+, I'd expect unfettered 24x7 access since your gear should be seperated and secured from other folks gear.

You would think so, wouldn't you? Many years ago I had a cage in 811 10th, with the usual pile 'o goodies in it... I have simple script (aka "tail -f | grep -v" ;-)) that I leave running in the background that tails syslog and only shows me "interesting" messages. One day I notice messages scrolling by, so I go see what is grumping about. Apparently the CF / PCMCIA card in one of the Cisco 7507s has just unmounted. No! Wait, it's back. Nope, gone again. Back. Gone! Back! Yay! It's back... Whoop, I lied, gone.... still gone... still gone... Bah, I figure that the card has just died and the appearing / disappearing trick was just the death rattle, so I take a wander over, and notice that it didn't just unmount, it's completely missing... I manage to get one of the security folk to pull the camera footage for around that time and I see some chappie wanding up and down the aisles, looking in though the mesh at everyone's toys. After the third or forth circuit past our cage he suddenly perks up and hustles off camera. He comes back 2 minutes later with a broom and proceeds to poke the handle through the mesh and bang on the back of the router. Eventually he manages to thwack the eject button hard enough and the flash drops onto the floor -- he wiggles it over, slides it under the edge of the cage, grins like a monkey and scampers back to his cage... I guess when you *really* needs some flash, you *really* needs some flash... W (I have also learnt the hard way not to use the edge of the cage as cable management...)

Some specialty providers would be exceptions, of course (ie, I used to colo gear inside tv stations, satellite downlink stations, etc).

Telecom colo (switch and network gear in a dedicated but shared space for providers providing service) would be an exception, of course.

-- david raistrick http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html drais@icantclick.org http://www.expita.com/nomime.html