openstack team mailing list archive

[Jeremy Stanley <fungi@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2013-04-22 09:34:58 -0400 (-0400), Chris Bartels wrote:
[...]
> Someone told me in IRC that some Datacenters are willing to rent
> rack space to small businesses who need the use of redundant
> infrastructure to run their operations & was wondering if anyone
> on the list here would be able to point me in the right direction
> to learn more about such services.
[...]

You're looking for "colocation" services from a data center
management company or ISP. Web searches on that term turn up quite a
lot of hits for me.

> Basically, I just want to be able to utilize redundant power &
> internet somewhere, where I’d be guaranteed a safe operating
> environment for my hardware. While I do have fiber running to my
> apartment, it’s hardly the place to run a home based business of
> this nature. I couldn’t imagine a customer wanting to rent a
> garage/apartment based VPS when they could get a proper colo for
> the same price. And I’m not in this to be the discount place
> either.

I worked for over a decade at a company providing such services.
Generally (though this varies between providers) you will pay based
on space occupied in the rack, electricity and Internet bandwidth
consumed. Billing models vary, from pay-as-you-go to long-term
bundled commit-and-overage style contracts. Some may offer physical
access to your equipment while others will require you pay for their
rack-and-stack services (particularly if you're in a cabinet shared
by other customers, for security reasons).

It's worth noting that this is proportionally less expensive the
larger your environment gets (tiered or graduated colo pricing
models akin to a bulk-rate discount). Your per-VPS cost on a single
server will likely be orders of magnitude higher than what even a
modest-sized provider with a few cabinets full of equipment is able
to charge for equivalent services. Also these days most colocation
providers are in the managed services business as well, and will be
competing against you... but they're essentially able to cover
colocation of their own equipment at cost (zero margin) since they
own and operate their facilities.
-- 
Jeremy Stanley