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What Should One Look For in Colocation Services?
willeg asks: "I am charged with the task of recommending a company for co-locating our auction site. The problem is that on paper, they all look about the same. What other information should be used in order to make the decision on a good hosting pick service?" This will probably be a question that many will ask in the future. With the Internet being the 'next big thing', everyone will be looking to stake a claim on their own portion the digital real-estate. Problem is, not many people can afford the bandwidth costs of getting wired for high-speed access, especially for businesses in out-of-the-way areas. Is colocation the easy answer? Or is just as expensive?
Different services require different amounts of bandwidth. The answer to this question is going to be pretty different depending on whether you're planning on putting up one "order form" for a small business, or a giant search engine that relies heavily on banner ads. It's also going to be different depending on whether you're an IT company already and have some of the equipment and personnel available already, or you're some random industrial company that just wants a web presence.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
First and foremost you want intelligent administrators at your colo. Ones with a structured regiment for backups and preventive maintenance. A very important thing you will see really quick is that you also must require good customer care. For some people 24 hour respond time is okay, for some you need it at that exact second. If the second is what you require i dont recommend colo at all of course. Basically it comes down to service.
The problem with colocation is that everyone promises the world, but non deliver.
You want the following features:
* electronic security (good to find out who was in when)
* multiple 100 meg pipes...
* full BGP4 routing so all those pipes are used at all times, not just when one fails.
* good connections... who are they peering with?
* indivdual locked cages, video security is very good.
* switched ethernet (ok, if you're talking 100 meg colos... but if you find you're on a hub, thats a major sign they are incomentent)
* obscure locations - you don't want a sign saying "very expensive computers inside"
* 24/7 on call support if necessary... what if you need to have that critical machine rebooted at night? sure it'll cost you, but it'll cost you more to have it down.
I work at a colo company, and our fast facility meets these requirements... Actually, I note that Vancouver is one of the best wired cities in North America, we got fat fat pipes to Seattle which is of course set up beyond belief..
Anyways...
You might want to check out an excellent article at TopHosts.com. You server needs to be in a secure location, physically, so it's safe from damage (natural, ie earthquakes, as well as man-made, such as theft.) It's also best if you physically own the server, and can remove it entirely if you wish. Redundant connections to the net are also useful so that you can't easily be cut off.
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You can search for weeks and not find what you want. There are companies that help you find co-lo, circuits, etc, by either putting you in touch with the right people, or with a larger need can run reverse auctions to get you a better price. It takes the guesswork out of it. Band-X (www.band-x.com) is the service out there right now.
...ask THEM.
Ask all of your bidders: "What can you give me that the others can't?" You are sure to get a bunch of crap like "a sense of well-being that your blah blah blah". Take all non-nonsensical (would that be "sensical"?) responses and redistribute to the vendors for response. Let them respond again.
At the very least, this will weed out the people who don't know what they're talking about.
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Here's generally what I expect (in Canada mind you). $250 Canadian a month should get me a single server on a 10Mbps switched port, on my own VLAN, generally connected directly to at very least a T1, but as times are changing often an OC3 in my area.
I like to know that whomever I'm collocating with is on a peered network (connected directly to uunet, sprint, or whomever), and that I'm getting high ping times and good traceroutes.
Redundancy. C'mon, this is 2000. Make sure they have some good old UPS's in place, and that you're guaranteed 99.9% reliability if at all possible.
You're never asking too much when you want your business to have minimal downtime.
Security? It might be worth the extra few bucks for a secured room on their premises. Who has access to your box?
My $0.02...
EraseMe
Are you needink to have physical access to the computer?
If you are then look for a place where the building is open as many odd hours as you can find.
Looking to just leave it there and do all the work by remote?
Look for a place that has nice people who are smart enough to cycle power for you ar do other little odd things that might need doing.
Other than that every ont your looking at should have there co-los stored within FCC regulations.
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If my facts are wrong then tell me. I don't mind.
24 Hour a day access to the co-lo site sure is nice. If your system bombs in the middle of the night, it sure is nice to be able to walk in and fix it, rather than wait until the morning after your clients have put a few hundred emails into your box...
Ask them "How many hops to the backbone?". Ask them how much bandwidth they have to their nearest peering point. Most importantly, ask them if you can put a test server in one of their racks, FTP and TTCP to it (Test TCP), really drown the link - to see what it's capable of, and then insist on comparing the results to similar results after your contract is processed. (Don't put your Auction Box in there until you've re-tested with an identical FTP set up).
"A few atoms won't even light a match" - Dr Jones, 1933
1) Price (this is a no-brainer), both the up-front cost and the bandwidth charges.
2) Connectivity: who does the host peer with and what is the quality of his connections.
3) Quality of Service: you do not want to travel to the colocation facility in order to handle basic administration tasks. What is their customer service record and are they providing you with rudimentaty system administration or just rack space?
4) Security: some premium web providers are popping up that offer additional security and support as value added services. If you want to colocate a mission critical system, this option might be for you--but be ready to pay through your nose for it.
5) Reliability: what is the host's track record? Would you be comfortable trusting your business to them?
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
a few words of advice with the first one being "STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM LEVEL3". whew. i haven't seen service this bad from a bell. all of their procedures are broken and misunderstood internally. cross-connects take a minimum of 14 business days. the sales people never call me back, and take forever to enter orders into the system. it's not like we are a one off customer either. we are in 15 of their us colocs with plans to go into the rest of their us sites as wells as several of their international sites. this plan is changing tho, and we are considering moving everything to worldcom. they may be a bit slow, but they get things done and don't pull new policies out of their ass.
at level3 the people in the gateway are pretty good on average, but the people up the chain from there are pretty much a waste of o2.
my experience with abovenet in san jose has been pretty good. they are helpful and fast. they are well connected and offer lots of service levels.
Once again, Kuro5hin and Slashdot are duplicating each other. This recent thread on Kuro5hin had some answers.
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I'll just use this question to post a related one:
I'm interested in renting (leasing) a dedicated server, such like a Cobalt, so I can build my own projects with the freedom of customizing my own system.
I think I will go with a Cobalt Raq3i, any recomendations where? Or an alternative?
Fh
Once you've decided what you want, find out who else uses a given service. This applies both if you are looking for bandwith only or are looking for full service. You want access to be fast. You want it to be reliable. Do traceroutes from different locations to determine response times to the other clients of the service you are looking at. You can figure out a lot about their peering arangements and see if there are problems with a given site.
Ask them directly about their peering arangements. Find out about failover strategies. Ask them about service guarantees and make sure that partial refunds on service are available if those marks aren't met. This is key. If they don't meet their obligations, they don't get paid.
If you are also looking for 24/7 admin, find out how familiar they are with the apps you'll be using. Find out how they monitor the apps in question. Do they have people on site 24/7 or is most of the work done remotely? Ask them about their backup strategy and how they go about recovery of a fully lost system. Ask them to recommend a configuration for your site. You don't have to use it, but it should give you a good idea of how well they understand the networking issues.
Especially if you are doing the admin yourself, you need to know where the physical facility is and what kind of access you can have to it. If you have a server at an ok prompt, you'll need to get to it physically (unless you've set up a portmaster with remote access).
That should help you get down to a few possibilities.
Where things are different is the type and level of service you'll get. Some co-lo's are just that- straight co-location. Others provide more managed services. Some claim to have really good managed services, but really really suck at it. Others specialize at managed services and suck at plain co-lo.
Another thing to worry about is the fish/pond issue. Are you a big or small fish? What sized pond do you want to swim in? Small fishes in big ponds tend to get the shaft, but their co-lo's tend to have more negotiating power with other carriers. A small fish in a small pond will get better service, but their co-lo may not have the power to get better connectivity when they need it.
Your most important thing is references from other companies with the same needs as your own. Talk to them at length and get the real scoop. When something broke, how quickly did it get fixed? Did it happen more than once? If they were down for a period of time, did the co-lo's SLA cover their lost revenues/good-will with their customers? How well were they kept informed with regards to the situation and scheduled maintenance.
My .02:
Exodus- good for straight co-lo. Lowsy managed services. Has a great or horrible backbone depending on who you ask.
NaviSite- good for high-end managed services. Lowsy at straight co-lo. Very different network design which may be a good or bad thing depending on your point of view.
AboveNet- Seems to be a nice pond to swim in, but they seem to have more than their fair share of BGP issues than most.
GlobalCenter/Frontier- Seems to have a lot of peering problems. No idea on their level of service.
they *all* suck. the best you can do is try to wrest a decent SLA from them, so that they pay for their mistakes - it's small comfort when your pager goes off at 3am because their power glitch hosed a server. They have the latest, greatest UPSs? Great! But you'd better install UPSs in your cage, too. One prominent colo dropped power to our cage 3 times in 3 months. Don't expect to pack your cage to the gills. Many providers have inadequate cooling. It got so bad at my last job that i bought a large LCD thermometer, and put it in our cage facing the main doorway. I had a silent hope that at least one prospective customer would see a reading of 82 deg. F, and ask some questions. You can shift the ventilated floor tiles around all you want, but unless you have adequate cooling power in the first place, it doesn't make a difference! (hint,hint) Don't rely on their expert technical staff. The big colo players seem to have the lowest-paid drones around. To do anything much beyond power-cycling a machine is risking more problems than you started with. And in many cases, that goes for their "security" staffs, too. enjoy!
Is it common for a coloc service to require your root password if you are having them host a *nix box? A friend of a friend's company is insisting on having root in case they notice any suspecious activity on their network. I guess I can see both sides of the coin here. I can see how they would want to be sure their network is secure, but I also want to be sure my machine cannot be messed with by anyone. What do you think?
Well, if you're colocating, meaning you are administering your own server, I would focus on one thing: Connectivity.
Granted, 100% uptime is an impossible goal. But, assuming that you can keep your server up and running, you are dependent on your colocation service for keeping your server connected to the net. The main factor here is connectivity. Make sure they are connected to multiple backbones on different carriers. Look at the network maps of their carriers and make sure the physical location of their colocation service is located near those backbones. Don't get into a situation where you depend on a single trunk line. Try testing their connectivity with a service like netmechanic.com as well. The numbers you get from the test may not be that accurate, but they'll let you know if there's a problem.
Other issues: bulding security, rack security, multiple power feeds and backup generators, dry fire suppression system. Ask them what their disaster plan is. And, of course, talk to some of their existing clients to get some feedback. Also, if you get the feeling they offer "sales support" rather than real support, forget about it. (a good sign of this is that a call to the sales number always gets through but a call to the support number more often gets a machine.)
We use multiple facilitys in our work. It depends what you want. Do you want someone else to manage your hardware and software? We do our own maintenance and have found that we get the best connectivity from Above.net and Globalcenter. Exodus is ok but they want to manage your stuff for you. So far for pure colocation I have had the best experiance with Above.net. This is not to say that any facility has been up 100% of the time but the few outages above.net has had have been the smallest ive encountered. There noc monkeys can flip a power switch and plug in a keyboard and type a few commands and even swap tapes but thats about as far as they go on service. They use open alluminum racks for almost all there customers. Larger sites can buy cages (i think 4 racks is the smallest). They have good geographic dispersion and will work with you to multihome if your looking at it. Globalcenter will also do this and uses the same alluminum racks. Both have good physical security as well. Bandwidth in either facility is good however it seems globalcenter oversubscribes there generators which is bad if the power goes out for a long period.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
1. good customer support. I don't want someone shouting at me because I called 3 am in the morning. Deal with it, the world doesn't stop. I'd prefer a organization which admits errors and try to fix it rather than those who claim nothing is wrong and put a "all-is-well" smile when the network stinks. :) :) but I'll prefer the ones which stay up longer than that. Ultimately it boils down to how much revenue u are loosing becuase of the downtime. :) (yes its happened before) :)
:))
2. less downtime. Anything less than 24hrs downtime in a day is good
3. accessable on phone/physically. If you can't call them up for a mid-night emergency reboot, then whats the point ?
4. secure cages/racks. I'll not go to an ISP which doesn't ask for my ID when I enter(atleast for the first few times). And I hope all the cages/racks don't have the same key
5. big backbone. Just incase... prepare for the slashdot effect.
6. multiple backbone connectivity. prepare for the DDoS too
7. secondary DNS support. Prepare for HDD crashes...
8. multiple installation sites... for distributed hosting. If you really become big... distribute it among all over the country or world.
9. I forgot... make sure you don't go bankrupt
Seems someone had been monkeying around my rack, or it had a bad patch cable or something, because my server was offline. After 5 reboot requests, and confirmation that reboot occurred, still didn't come back up.
I asked them if they had checked the obvious stuff, loose cables, power connection, etc. and then what happened was this: they said it was my software and I had to hire them (or visit myself, highly impractical) to figure out how I misconfigured the box. It was pretty much the same thing I run on all the other machines I maintain - RedHat 6.1 with current patches installed, so I was pretty confident the problem was not on my end.
Anyway, I got referred to sales to hire a tech. After peeing on the salespersons' desk for a while, we agreed that if it was their thing, they would fix it, and if it was my thing, I would pay them. Turns out it was their thing, they didn't explain the nature of the problem, just apologized for the 48+ hours down time. My "main" client located on the box wasn't very happy about that.
cat
Seriously, the claims are going to be very similar from co-lo companies. Previous posts really covered the technical things you want to look for. But I think the real value is in first hand experience. For my $.02 I have always liked Pair Networks, but I don't know if they offer co-location with your own servers any more.
Ultimately, I think it would come down to:
1. Support. This includes the overall competence of the company.
2. Location, so you can physically administer your servers when needed.
3. Good routing and bandwidth capabilities.
Or maybe reverse the order of these. Like I said I have always gotten a good feeling from Pair.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
Posted by 11223:
The feature you most want to look for in a server is support for NetBSD. Everybody knows that the BSD TCP/IP stack, as featured in Hotmail, Yahoo, and Netcraft, provides the best performance for a site such as an auction site. Some will claim that NT is better, and others will claim that Linux is trendier (and thus better). Don't believe them! We all know that a NetBSD computer on a 10 Megabit pipe is faster than a Linux computer on a 100 Megabit pipe when it comes to heavy, slashdot-quality loads. NetBSD is just a more mature OS.
I have dealt with damn near EVERY hosting provider and co-lo provider on the market, Exodus / UUNet / Genutity / PSI-Net / Abovenet just to name a few and i must say w/o a doubt they BEST overall value HAS To be GLOBIX. The globix corporation has an a #1 rated datacenter from zdnet and for good reason. N+2 Redundancy. not too many datacenters have backups for the backups for the backups. Yes thats right Triple redundancy. and their professional service people actually have a clue. Ive been using them for 4 months and i cant find a bad thing about them. Even the people on graveyard shift have a clue. Ask them to go over and reboot your box? no problem they dont just go over and push a button.. they will sit and watch the whole boot, file check drives if need be. etc.. they arent EXODUS!.. Exodus Sucks.... this is just my .02c
It's definately a different experience. I have a linux box a few states away that I use for mail. That one works out well because I know and trust the people housing it. My company's large production servers are all co-lo'd as well, and, generally speaking, it sucks.
If you have someone in your company who REALLY knows what they're doing, it's best to just get root on the remote box and tell the hosting company not to touch it. In every industry job I've had, the people who will most often be near your machines are the ones you least want playing with it. It's definately worth it to work out ways of doing everything remotely.
Some of the problems we have run into (not related to the hosting company) are things like Oracle installs, which behave differently from staging areas than from CD, as well as bum tape drives, etc, etc. Backups in general just plain suck. We actually back up locally over a dedicated
T-1, as well as using a 20-tape juke on the remote end for non-critical backups.
The most fun challenge of all has proven to be printing. WAN printing is a nightmare.
All in all, for an equivalent installation, it's a much, much larger pain in the ass. I honestly don't know if it's worth it, especially for what larger companies charge to host.
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There are several things that you should check -fire supression and detection : how it is set up is it both under floor and above do they have mutiple methods ie... dry chemical, compressed air, then water. Is it a controlled system so that if it is necessary for it to go into action that it will only effect 3 X 3 foot sections. - Physical security : are any data cables accessable by others above or below floor how are the cabnents set up can others see into or get into the closed cabnet. do they have 24 hr security in the form of people and biometrics(hand scanners and the like) -what is the max Amp load you can pull on a single rack... most co-lo's don't support more than 15 or 20 so if you were running 42 1u servers you would pay an ass load more for the extra circuits - how is there redundant power and cooling handled and how many days can they run with out outside support( power fule etc) - how many redundant generators do they have and how do they cycle in to provide power - how many different providers do they have comming into the facility and can you bring you own to provide backup bandwidth -do they have dark fibre available for increased usage or problems with there own lines. - do they provide POTS jacks in the rack and a phone within 6-8 ft of each rack and internet connections (other than dial up) for your engineers when they are on site. And so much more.... Email me if you have further questions
1. Multiple fiber carriers in to the building in case you need to drop a circuit or two down the way. 2. Locked cage or suite depending on your size requirement. 3. 24/7 NOC techs who can act as remote hands, open tickets, let vendor techs in, etc. 4. Conditioned power, UPS, generator, etc. 5. Multiple peers, UUnet, Level3, and GTE/Genuity should all be peers at min. You should be able to get a partial list of peers. You will not be able to see the size of the pipe to each peer. This is usually confidential. 6. Switched port if you are not going to run your own routers. Make sure they can route for you if you want to bring in dedcated lines or that you can add your own routers in later. 7. Get a tour. Make sure there are no hot spots. Avoid anything with walmart fan blowing air to relieve hot spots. It happens. Always check provisioning times. How fast can they bring another 110v 20A circuit? 220 20A? More bandwidth? Larger space? Another cabinet? Some colo's are running out of space, power, etc. Make sure they have a plan to cover growth ove rthe next year or the length of your contract. Kashani
- Why is the ninja... so deadly?
If your demands are not that serious, I would look into a local ISP.
The main benefit is that you can personally go over there and kick there ass if something goes wrong. Also, the server will be right there, and you can check out their environment.
"...we are moving toward a Web-centric stage and our dear PC will be one of
EverCode
-Bandwidth (and lots of it)
-Security (A server with important information located off-site can be exactly the kind of thing that keeps you up at night. Make sure the ISP has good security, and develop your own security procedures and systems as well.)
-Access (Make sure that you can visit your server(s) whenever you choose, not just during some restricted "visiting hours").
-Reliability (Do they have good power? Do you have a big enough UPS there? Do they have more than one connection to the net? How often are they "down" from the net? Are their routers high quality? Even 1% packet loss can be annoying (and bad for your business or interest) as hell.
-Service (If you call them up and tell them to reboot your server will they do it? Will they call you if your server goes down? If they have a problem with their internal network will they be responsive in fixing it quickly?)
You really need to get a good hold on all of your concerns, needs, as well as an understanding of important eventualities (i.e. how do you detect the server going down? what is the plan when that happens? etc.). Once you have all that down, organize it, group it, prioritize it, and then pick the ISP that gives you what you need.
My girlfriend works for AtomFilms.com in Seattle. They use Level3 and the colo building is just 1 mile from my office. When I traceroute to AtomFilms.com, Level3 routes my packets from Seattle to San Jose back to Seattle. Huh?? Why?
cpeterso
Internap claims they have "magic" routing software to minimize packet latency, but I've talked to some IT people that scoff at Internap latency claims.
cpeterso
I'm shopping for colocation as well (in this case for a financial application), and I'm having trouble sifting through the marketingspeak to figure out who's really got their sh*t together.
Does anyone know if one of the trade rags does surveys on/ratings of colocation services? I haven't been able to find anything.
FairMarket.com is a B2B auction hosting service that, as far as your customers are concerned, looks as if you are the one hosting the auction(s). I have no idea what they cost, but several large companies are using them to host their auctions. And not all of the auctions are B2B, quite a lot are B2C. You can check them out at www.fairmarket.com.
I agree about Exodus... however I am one who thinks they have a decent backbone. Exodus at least leaves you alone and makes it easy to take machines in an out. Places like QWEST require upwards of 4 forms to be filled out to bring *in* a piece of hardware to put it in your space.
F /...
QWEST sucks. Without a doubt the worst co-lo I've ever had the displeasure of using. A call to their NOC gets routed from NJ to wherever your stuff is. This usually takes upwards of 20 minutes... even for something simple. Once the tech get it... pray they can tell the difference between a tape drive and a computer or you are completely fucked. To say they hire some of the most ignorant tech people ever is quite the understatement. They often have faulty equipment, that they don't detect as being faulty because they only monitor from inside their own network, not from external locations. Wow. They are just bad. I recommend against using them... despite their amazing backbone and facilities. The staff and their NOCs are just horrendous.
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--- I do not moderate.
You should also make sure that your ISP hosts absolutely NOTHING that might ever get picked up by slashdot... Otherwise one of your rack neighbors might end up eating all of your bandwidth.
Honestly, though, remember this: The more you pay, the better service you'll get. If you pay $100/month for 10 megabit accss to the internet, you'll end up sharing your line with probably 30 other servers. If you're paying $500/month, it might just be 5 or 6 servers you're sharing with. Of course, you'll still need to actually ask and verify that that's the case... It'd be even better if the ISP you chose was nearby yourself you you could check out their facilities occassionally.
AboveNet has an excellent anti-spam reputation. Exodus has a very poor one (their abuse director was known as "Keman the Klueless" when he was at Netcom). This can have an affect on you in at least 2 ways: 1. Guilt by association. My opinion of /. went down when they signed with a colo that is so reluctant to take action against spammers. Your customers may be more broad-minded. 2. Connectivity. A blatantly pro-spam colo will probably eventually get a stay in the RBL (Realtime Blackhole List). That could be bad for your business. I've read newsgroup posts from at least 2 companies who claim to have made their vendor decision based on spam policy.
Naseby, Dunbar, whatever
A front door?
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Apparently, they had been doing a bit of electrical work near the rack and didn't want to have any debris get in the machines. Well, apparently they either work really slowly or just forgot about it (how you can forget a big blue tarp is beyond me) as the machines were up to around 140 degrees (F) internally (90s externally).
Ouch
Yeah, so, onething you should look for is that not happening.
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It is commonly believed that the Internet came into existence as part of the United State's government's nuclear war fighting strategy. Originally conceived as a robust and fast communications network called the ARPAnet (Advanced Research Project Association Network), it was designed to help scientists and technology researchers communicate, in fact, it was created in direct response to the Soviet Unions launch of Sputnik, the first man made satellite. It was part of a whole series of initiatives taken by the US government to enhance science and technology development. Later, the multi-routed and redundant telecommunications lines, switches, and computers were discovered by the military, to be an ideal network to prevent Command Control 'de-capitation,' in the event of a Soviet 'first strike' against the continental US. source
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I work at a small Co-Lo and web design company in the North West. And have worked at large ones as well. And from my experience it is not all about who has the biggest and "fattest" pipes or bandwidth. It is about the people.
Ask yourself this question would you have your server housed with 100 Network Operation people running around with their heads cut off, do not know your name, and would not give you the time of day unless you flashed $100 in front of their noses, because the are so big.
Or a small company, were you know they will know your name, and are able to take the time to hear your concerns and not pass them up the food chain to middle management. I personally know every client by name and their box even better. I know each of the boxes personal quirks and their needs as well as the box owner's quirks and needs. Because it is a small company I'm in better position to do the job I love and able to pass that along to the customer.
So my suggestion is to meet the network operation personnel the real people taking care of your investment, not just the sales manager. Ask to take a look at the server room. Make sure it is clean and free from obstruction, environmentally controlled. Do not let some yahoo tell you that you need dual oc-48's to host your site. I can host a site just as well as anybody from my dsl-line. Get a feel on how well they take pride in their job, and you should be fine.
Which one is better?
"Kill -9 needs no justification" BOFH
Sig
After you've decided who to colo with, when you sign the contract, make sure there are provisions in it for you to make X number of spotchecks of their services per month... and make sure you're able to do it without telling them ahead of time. ;) Remember, if they say they're up 99% of the time, keep checking on that figure! Remember those fire-drills you used to do at elementary school? Apply the same technique to your colo.
Chris
-- Humans, because the hardware IS the software.
One key concept people overlook: when the site goes down at 3 AM how bad will the drive over suck? When the site goes down right in the middle of rush hour, how long will it take to fight your way there? This WILL happen, and you need to make sure your hands-on people have good access.
The other thing to try out is doing some traceroutes to sites you know are already hosted in the facility. Some of these places are a REAL MESS due to the speed they had to grow the internal network to keep up with business. If you see 7 hops from their front door to the customer router, be very scared.
Another trick is to check out how professionally done the customer cages look. Slick wiring jobs? Beautiful rack mount setups? If the other IT monkeys at the place look professional, they problably didn't pick a looser to host their site.
As far as site security, power backup, etc all of these places will be selling you the same thing.
Good luck!
According to their webpage, csoft.net offers colocation for $30/mo. I am not running something extremely mission critical, but high uptime is nice. Does anyone know if this is for real, and if it's any good? They don't seem to respond to emails.
The following is a little paper I wrote on the seattle colo market last Apr.
Before we get stated let me just say that I HATE internet colo centers (ie exodus). I really perfer the telco colo areas. But they arent caged (one of the reasons I like them) and normaly use open telco racks. I have been in more than a few of them. I would do anything to get my employers data center out of the noc monkey ran exodus. Shit we lost power a week ago and they didnt even contact us because 'we wernt one of the effected customers'. Well we were and they had our power labeled wrong. Not to mention that the monkeys behind the glass never want to get off thier ass and let me in.
If you want high quality bandwidth and care about colo second find an internap.com pnap near you. Trust me that it is good. I used to build there pnaps. Not to mention 12+ backbone connections at each PNAP. The PNAPS are works of art and probably better cabled and labeled than your stuff (isnt it soposto be that way?) Have the sales guy show you a pnap. The only thing I ever saw that came close was the computers at NORAD (cept norad's computers were from the late 60's [can you say iron-farite core memory]). Hey looks arnt everthing but you when every wire has a pre ordaned path you know someone cares.
---
colo.txt
Co-Location space in the Seattle area is currently in high demand.
Customers are currently filling it as quick as providers build it. This
is not only a Northwest problem. Switch & Data Facilities Co told me that
in the last 2-3 month they have gone from virtually no customers to
filling out there 11,000 sq. ft within the next 4 weeks (they are approx.
70% full right now).
Neutral Co Co-location sites:
SDFC.net
Titan
Colo.com
Nextlink
Level3
Internet and co-loaction:
InterNAP
Exodus
Savvis
Switch & Data Facilities Co
Bill Barnard of SDFC was one of the more useful reps I talked to.
He not only knew his prices (and was willing to do over the phone quotes)
but he knew the prices for most of his competitors and was not worried
about quoting them to me even though most everybody else was less. SDFC
is the only company currently operating with there business model. They
offer truly neutral co-location space. Because of the telco space problem
around the country right now many of the big us and foreign carriers
(including Deutsche Telekom) are putting there equipment at SDFC. SDFC
space is on the high price because of the demand. They are charging
around $1300 per rack with a 20A AC feed. The are located in the Westin
building but have a north end location planed and are looking for a south
end (Renton - Auburn) location. The Westin location will be full in 4
weeks (1 May).
Titan
Titan is unique in the fact that they use old hardened military
sites. They are made to be resistant to earthquake, bomb blast, EMP.
They have other interesting features:
Electronic perimeter security systems
High security exterior lighting
Mandatory escorted accessFire resistant interior walls
DoD authorized "top secret" vault
The only problem is that old hardened military sites are not generally in
the middle of metroplexes. Titan1 is no exception, it is located at the
Moses Lake airport. So I believe this doesn't fit out need for a 30/2
response time. But Titan may be a good choice for off-line tape backup
storage where response time is not important but survivability is.
COLO.com
Colo.com is building there new space in the USWest/ATT downtown
switch (3rd and Spring). There space will be completed in June and than
will be building sites in Bothell and Tukwilla. One problem with the
downtown switch is that it is a no cell phone zone. When you enter the
building you are required to turn off you cellphone (and it wont work even
if you don't turn them off). I know when we were at the ATT facility up
on the 13th floor we were told that this wasn't a 24x7 facility. I don't
know if that has to do with the downstairs security guard of if that was
just ATT. Colo.com will be selling both rack and cage space.
Nextlink
Both Nextlink and Level3 are at the 1000 Denny building.
Nextlink is almost full and will be full shortly. I was told that 2 racks
(not cabinets) would not be a problem but cage space or much over 2 racks
would be a major issue. Note that Internap seattle PNAP2 is located in
this space also. Racks go for $750 each.
Level3
Level3 is basically full. I think mostly they are selling people
into Nextlink space. Also level3 is not really neutral because I am sure
that they would want to sell us their internet and phone service.
Savvis
I used to work for savvis so I know / built their data center.
Savvis does not currently do co-location in Seattle but I have heard they
are thinking about building out the rest of their data center do to it
because of the space shortage. Savvis is located on the 27 floor of the
Westin Building. I have had recent problems with Savvis's NOC being
unresponsive and unknowledgeable.
Last update
Tue Apr 11 09:32:20 PDT 2000
Colocation.
Not virtual hosting.
I'm not.
With colocation, you're no longer sharing machines with other sites, but you still are sharing the pipes... If one machine gets, say, slashdotted, and your host doesn't have enough bandwidth set aside to handle it, your machine is going to go without it's bandwidth until interest in that machine dies down.
Whatever. If someone advertises a 10 megabit (ethernet) connection to the backbone for your machine for less than $1200-$1500 a month, you're going to end up sharing that line with other people. You just need to make sure that the place you choose is either big enough to be able to handle the demand, or that most of their machines/sites are small enough that you'll never end up fighting for bandwidth.
Another example: Avoid colocating at places that have more than a few servers hosting adult sites.
Some things you can ask a provider for (in addition to the bandwidth and storage considerations) that might help you make the call: 1. A BCP plan, a good one should include some indication as to the likelihood of natural disasters etc. 2. Security policy and escalation plans. 3. Insurance information. How well are they bonded etc. 4. Additionally, it is important for some companies to know that the background check and HR process is at least as stringent as their own. 5. Ask for the results of their latest security audit. Just a few off the top of my head. Good luck.
Lots of places do the right thing, with regard to bandwidth, routing, contigencies, etc. Many of them suck, however, when it comes to things like remote support, or simply not screwing you accidentally. You should ask for references, having a profile similar to your company, and see what they have to say about the service. I don't know if I'd trust a babysitter, or a Colocator that wouldn't provide references. Fat pipes and low hops mean less if some idiot named Chuck keeps unplugging your uplink.
The cost of colocation is entirely dependent on bandwidth usage. Of course some companies pricing structure don't really make this clear, but it is the bottom line when it comes to dedicated servers and colocation. Actually colocation is not that expensive as long as your bandwidth is small. For example some of our colocation customers pay as little as $70 per month for 64kbps bandwidth. Of course there are those who need a full T1 and they pay for it.
With the industry being as new as it is, it really pays to shop around, since there is really no standard out there. Some companies offer great deals and others completely rip you off. Shop around...
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
They are not the same under the "glossy add brochure". In the same way that an RC cola or a PEPSI or a COKE or a TAB are all just soda pops.
First figure out what your SLA's (service leval agreements) are and how much you are willing to pay to meet those agreements. In other words if your site was down for 10 minutes how much would that cost you? What about an hour? What about 2 days?
Then you can decide whether you need full fault tolerance, and robust systems, or whether you can tolerate a system that is only up 95% of the time (18 days down a year).
Once you know what level of robustness and fault tolerance you require: Do an equipment list and remember to include things like remote access modems, toolboxes, spare parts, remote manageable power switches and terminal servers or "lights out" console devices for NiceTry NT OS systems, and terminal servers for your UNIX boxes. Think about how many network ports you are going to need and whether you need redundant networks or not. Do you need to have redundant power supplies or clusters on your systems? How many power cords and serial cables? How many SCSI/FiberChannel cords? How many ethernet ports?
Now that you have an equipment list, use visio or net-vis to figure out how you are going to rack mount all this equipment so that it breathes(cooling) and is serviceable, find out if the equipment can be mounted on rails or if it requires cabinets. Get the precise physical dimensions and use them. Find out whether the equipment is front to back or side to side ventilated.
Now that you have your virtual racks (diagrams).
Figure out how to situate them on a virtual floor so that you can access all the hot swappable parts. A general rule of thumb is 22" of clearance for any service access because there are really FAT service engineers who will need to get behind that cabinet.
Get a watt meter and plug in your equipment and measure the boot up watt usage. Double that to create a safety margin and then make sure to figure out how many power circuits you need. Don't blow fuses in a data center, they really really don't like that!
OKAY, now remember that if you have a system with two power supplies you want to plug it into different circuits on different breaker panels on different PDU's that are backed by different battery rooms with different Generator's that have power from two different power companies.
If your Data center engineers cannot explain this to you and you need it, then go somewhere else.
Make sure when you get power outlets installed in your cabinet or your cage that they come from diverse sources. Ask the electrician to explain the nomenclature for their circuit numbering schema so that you can verify the diversity of the systems.
Find out what the max power the co-lo will give you per floor space or cabinet unit. With computers as small as they are you can use more power in a rack then most co-lo providers will give you. Make sure that you can live with those limitations and get them in writing. You may find that you can fit all your equipment into 2 cabinets, but that to get the power you need you need 4 cabinets, is it worth the price?
Networking, personally I like the DIY approach.
Do your own firewalls and just get your own subnet. Try to get a full class C so you can do your own DNS as well.
If you only have a handfull of machines then you may like a company like Exodus that will do it for you, but remember that you may suffer from their mistakes. I have had 3 outages in the last year because of Exodus! Thank god the outages were very short!
Otherwise you may like a company like Equinix, they give you space, power and security, but you have to get your own ISP's. Then you need to get an ASN and a real subnet and do BGP with the big boys.
How much physical security do you need? Some of your customers may not be worried about it, others will want armed gaurds and biometric scanners. Do you need accountability with retinal scanners at every door and hand scanners on the locks?
Remember that you need to remote manage your systems, plan for it, the data center may be busy with someone elses emergency when your system needs someone to press "F2" to continue on the console boot up screen. Look into APEX Emerge 200 0 PCI cards, and APEX or CYBEX KVM switches.
Remember to keep a copy of manuals on site,
and contact phone numbers, remote access modems, spare parts, miscellaneous tools and equipment, and keep a chair and a laptop in your co-lo facility. When you are waiting for 3 hours for a call back from tech-support you will thank me.
Once you have in writing and the t's crossed and the i's dotted for all of the requirements:
SPACE, POWER/AirCond, SECURITY
Then compare the prices of your different options.
You will find that they are different for your particular situation, then they are for your friends in different industries.
It depends on your needs and your budget which of the co-lo providers you will go with.
(Disclaimer: I work for AT&T, but not in the hosting group., and this is my personal commentary, not a company statement, in spite of the occasional shameless plug in the content.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Did anyone see Jurassic Park? OK, dumb question, everyone saw Jurassic Park.
All these ultra-complicated solutions sound very Jurassic-Park-ish to me. There is, it seems, a turning point where you have such a complex setup that it is guaranteed to fail; and when it fails, it will fail in unpredictable but spectacular ways.
Like, as someone else pointed out, the colo that was so secure that he couldn't get in with a valid ID card. Doesn't it defeat the purpose of security if the people who should be able to get in cannot get in? Isn't that just as much of a danger?
And what's faster -- multiple T3s that are saturated, or single T1s that aren't?
And exactly how long does it take Cisco's biggest router to boot? And how many of them are between you and the rest of the world? And why would you want that?
The biggest difference between ALL co-los, in my opinion, is customer service. THAT is the value added that really makes a difference. Your system is unavailable at 3 AM. DOES ANYBODY CARE? This means so much more than all the geeky stats, hops off the 'bone, etc. If they CARE, they will put you right, no matter what their situation; if they DON'T care, you will be unhappy even if they have all the gear in the world.
So, evaluate your potential providers the old-fashioned way: ask other customers if they are satisfied.
--
I have come up with a few dozen ideas that did become big. Thanks to my bank account, I could not do it. I think the days of shoe string business's on the internet are kind of things of the past. :(
until (succeed) try { again(); }
I run a web hosting firm that currently does only virtual domains, but is looking at starting to offer co-location services. We're trying to figure out how much headache/cost is associated with each "level" of service: UPS backups, 24/7 support, multiple net connections, sysadminning, etc.
For those of you who already offer co-location services, what's reasonable to offer your customers who want an "average" (i.e. not ridiculously expensive) co-location experience?
Having seen my fair share of datacenters, I can't give you any reassuring advice.
:-), so just be sure that you know your stuff well enough to get things done quickly and clearly.
1) Exodus (NJ location) looks obscure, but lacks any decent security persence to the extent that I'd like. You just sign in to gain access, and all that they check that on is a contact list.
2) GlobalCenter (NY) uses the same system, but there, you can sign in as "Samuel L. Jackson," "Tommy Lee Jones," etc., and they let you in anyway. They don't even check.
These two also share another aspect that I dislike: Communal rack space. You can have your servers right next to those of another company, and there's no barriers at all. Makes it incredibly easy for gear to get inexplicably damaged, although it's rare that it happens.
GlobalCenter's got a decent amount of private cages available, though, and those are pretty good.
3) Level 3 (NY) has lockdown cabinets in the datacenter, decent security, and biometric identification for datacenter access. If you don't belong, or aren't escorted by someone who *does* belong, you're not getting in very easily.
However, they take forever to actually get your line installed sometimes, which certainly puts a damper on your critical business setups.
4) Globix (NY) has much of the same setup as Level 3. Lockdown cabinets, biometric identification, etc., but they also have beefier physical security, and even if you *do* belong there, you still have to sign a key out if you want access. For some systems, you'd need to authenticate across no less than 4 keycard locks, 3 of which are biometric, two security guards, and a room full of NOC techs. The drawback? Their turnaround time can be dog slow as well, and they have been known to oversell well beyond their frazzled tech staff's capabilities. To make matters worse, the datacenter has windows, and you can see their gear from across the street. That's extremely discomforting.
As for key questions, I'll bypass most of the redundancy, and just recommend a tour, possibly inviting your own network engineer or a consultant to help out if you don't know all the BS from the actual details. Key things to ask about are:
- Raised floors / Drop ceilings? (Key for them wiring you quickly and flood avoidance)
- Conditioned power/Backup batteries/TESTED generators?
- Glycol or Halon fire suppression? (Glycol is less likely to kill you if you're in the room.) To that end, ask if there's a way to halt the fire suppression if you're still in the room. I can't stress the importance of being able to get your people out before the FM-200 kicks in.
- Security and surveillance? You need ID checks, sign-ins, the whole nine yards, since nothing is more critical then your information and the gear it runs on.
- Network redundancy and quality. I'd focus on the redundancy more than the quality myself, since most providers do have pretty much equal bandwidth. However, if they only have one way out of the datacenter, that's going to hurt you at some point.
Those are the key points that I'd worry about. NOC competence isn't something you can always rely on with any company (I should know, I *was* one
Raptor
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
18:47, EDT Stop EOM
yeah, but at least here we won't have to deal with a cocky, immature admin like rusty. and most of the posts here will probably be more substantive than "I like this one, post it."
One advantage of some colocation services is that they provide services that you are prevented from providing due to either space, geographic, or financial constraints. Such things as redundant power supplies, hot-swappable servers, secure facilities, cooling systems, connections to multiple top tier ISPs, etc. If you're not getting at least some of those services, keep looking around.
Check out our infosecurity industry blog: http://securitymusings.com/
It's a nice site (the sister site of shellreview.com) that has reviews of various colocation services. The admin really does some nice, thorough reviews. While I wouldn't reccomend it as a primary source of information, it probably would be good to see if the companies you're considering are listed here.. And if so, if there's anything nasty said about them.
I do not claim to know everything about every provider. But they all seem to suck. I consider my job figuring out which one sucks less.
- Dustin -
I previously worked for two of the big colo providers. The two biggest problems that I have noticed are 1) peering arrangements 2) customer service. My complaints about current providers: To impress Wall Street, they all post big numbers on bandwith, power, sq ft of facility, fatness of generators, etc. For example, Exodus brags they have redudant helicopters to bring in diesel fuel with a 4 hour response time in case the generators bomb. Who cares? The overkill investments in power and bullet proof glass does not keep a customer's servers up. They need to focus on internal hardware infrastructure such as switches and routers which fail *FAR* more often then power or a terrorist attack. Staff needs to be improved from the NOC through specific expertise in core areas such as Cisco, Linux, NT, Solaris. Recommendations: They all claim to have either a big fat backbone, i.e. Qwest claims OC-192, Internap (although not a colo provider in itself) claims to have arrangements with all the major players. You need to get their peering list (usually requires a signing of an NDA) and compare. Because it is the last mile that is always the bottleneck. But more importantly, you need to check the specific site you are planning on hosting. If, for example, most of your customers are from China, you need to get some IP's from their colo center and do some traceroutes and pings to test yourself. The second issue is customer service, since most of the colo's are going through high growth, their customer service varies *greatly*. If you plan to host yourself, i.e. you hold root, they "ping and pipe" then this is less of an issue. But bottom line, you need to hammer the expertise of their onsite staff and get a copy of their escalation procedures and response times. Look for honesty. Obviously NO ONE can *guarantee* that no matter what the problem is, the box will be up by a certain amount of time. But they can guarantee their response times. So hammer the staff and get a list of existing customers to find out their experience.
See "So You Want to Run Your Own Server" (Chapter 8 of Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing), at http://www.arsdigita.com/books/panda/server. (It might be a good idea to read the other chapters also...)
You are right on target with Globalcenter I feel I spend half my job fighting with GC about peering problems with other carriers.
Here's why:
- They allow shell access via telnet and secure shell
- Supporting ssh allows me to use secure copy (scp) to upload content
- I can read my email via a shell login with Pine or Elm without downloading all my mail (important when one uses several operating systems)
- I can write my own CGI's in any programming language I want and install them myself. They provide the gnu development tools.
- They have excellent customer service. I've sent in questions in the middle of the night and got back authoritative answers within the hour.
- Their prices are quite reasonable - $25 a month for basic virtual domain hosting, which might seem high but you get the shell access and secure shell
Write to seagull@seagull.net if you want to ask the webmaster about colocation. That's not really their specialty but hosting is.I host these domains with them:
- www.goingware.com
- www.wordservices.org
- www.geometricvisions.com
In addition my fiance has two domains there and a friend has two domains there under my account (there's a discount for reselling the service - your first account is free but more under the same billing are cheaper).-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Hail,
;) (To get the shameless plug out of the way, it's Inflow -- www.inflow.com)
I work for a colocation company, so I have some idea what to look for
The most important thing, by far, is to simply talk to their other customers. Find out what sorts of experiences they've had, any problems, how the problems were handled, how they found out about the problems, etc. This is your most reliable (and best) method.
Second, many of the things listed in other posts here are simply standard for any colo. Security, climate control, if they don't have that much they aren't a colo. Keep in mind that there's -- like any industry -- a whole spectrum of things available. From the basic floor-space-and-network to a full outsourced IT department. How much do you need? If you've got a competent IT staff already, you probably don't need to pay extra for Level 3 support and such. If you're a (non-high-tech) startup that doesn't know grep from a hole in the ground (and can't afford someone who does), you might want a bit more. Match your requirements to their offerings.
Also, tour their data center. Make sure you talk with someone other than the sales guy who's going to want to take you around. Ask the techs and engineers questions, try to get them in on the tour too (we'll do it). If you're a "big" customer, it's probably not a bad idea to show up for the tour a couple hours early, or on the wrong day. Make sure the staff can do what the sales guy says they'll do -- sales often has no clue about anything IT can (or is willing) to do; any one-off agreements you get had better be cleared with at least the sales engineer before you get to end-stage negotiations.
Also, it's a good idea to stay away from any colo company that owns backbone. They may be able to get you a slightly better deal, but if their network goes down you're SOL (and it can be trivial to bring down a backbone... anyone remember AT&T a while ago?). These guys will most often not be very happy (or cooperative) about adding a connection to a competitor's backbone.
Colocation can be cheaper than trying to do it yourself. T1s don't come cheap, and it's a no-brainer that the guys with multiple OC-48s are going to get a better deal on the per-meg bandwidth than the guy trying to run a T1 somewhere. They can get more expensive if you're adding monitoring and support, but it's probably going to be worth the costs.
Anyway, the absolute basics to look for:
Climate control (both heat and humidity)
Physical security (getting in the building and seperate equipment areas -- handprint access and such is fancy looking, but not really any better than pass-cards and IDs, don't let it alone sway your choice)
Network (this is, obviously, a big one. Two different providers through two different physical connections with BGP4 on the edge routers is probably the least acceptable -- if they're not using Cisco, they're probably not what you want)
Power (UPSes, a generator, this is basic -- find out what their contract with the desiel fuel guys is if you're in an area that gets natural disasters or long power outages)
AC
PC:"There are HOW MANY GNOLLS in that courtyard ?"
GM:"Well, about 200. Want to stop and count them?"
I call a large amount of BS upon you, AC! There's a lot more to what they do over there than tier one peering. There's also a high-quality NOC out there, as well as some route optimizing stuff that whups mightily upon some of the BB providers own network diagrams. in addition, they recently just purchased some large co-lo company, Co-Space, and so they're only getting better...
For my 2 cents, not that it matters down here in moderator land, but I think the best way to get a quick fix on the quality of your co-lo is to call and ask them to locate a particular machine. Some providers, believe it or not, are incapable of actually doing this. I've seen a night tech out at verio essentially say "uhh, to find that machine, I'm going to have to just shut down the connection and wait to see which CSU/DSU lights up..."
Jeez.
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
And colocation is usually the best thing. Better than a company getting their own T-1 sometimes. T-1's go down. Do companies have the resources to monitor the T-1 and servers 24-7? We do this, as well as a lot of colocation companies.
If any one is interested, go to
http://www.cguru.com
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
As for the second bit-- that does suck. We're working on fixing the story voting thing so that (hopefully) won't happen so much.
--
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
Cause Slashdot was first to make this a viable form of website. We all owe them that, and any one of the "slashlings" that says they owe nothing to Slashdot is lying. K5 owes most of it's audience to slashdot as well.
Didja notice, though, that /. has a Kuro5hin slashbox? It's not nearly as confrontational as everyone seems to think.
--
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
It would be nice if you would move the line
I work at a colo company, and our fast facility meets these requirements...
to the TOP of your advertisement, so that we would know right off you are just trying to sell something, not give usefull information.
Anyone have experience with DellHost.com? I'm seriously thinking of going with them. Huge brand name, which doesn't mean THAT much, but at least they won't go out of business and the accountants will be happy. Plus, there prices are great: $300 for a 650 mHz PIII with 2 9 GB SCSI drives and 256 MB of RAM, plus 21 GB/month of metered bandwidth to start. Bandwidth upgrades seem quite reasonable too.
It almost sounds too good to be true though, as even very small ISPs haven't been able to beat those prices. Is this going to turn out to be a horror story?
Thanks!
--JRZ
from my experiences I have noted san jose is one of the best places in the world to colocate a box, tons of 655mbit links all over the world, above net maxim, etc. it's a huge backbone. ---- the pr0n-o-matic http://www.phatmax.net/
----
the pr0n-o-matic http://www.phatmax.net/
While most people are telling you to look for the most restrictive security, I have some other ideas on the subject.
Mind you, I'm talking about physical security here. Abovenet (which is a poor choice for a colo for the simple fact that they keep getting DoS'd, but that's another story) has a good security model - They scan your ID when you come in, and print out a little sticker that says who you are. Then they unlock your cage for you, and off you go. Security when the cage is open is your responsibility.
Meanwhile, navisite in SJ can add forty minutes of security nonsense (Being walked from place to place - You have to get permission to go the bathroom, basically -- I left school some time ago) to your visit, so if you're going to be going on-site to do labor, you want to pay attention to such things.
The important part here is to get them to give you information on basically everything. Get photos of the facility, especially the racks/cages/what have you. Ask them to give you a printed copy of the security policy. They can of course change their policy on you at any time, which is what navisite did in San Jose fairly recently.
Finally, you should colo in two different places for maximum uptime. If one building should, say, fall into a sinkhole due to a lack of ground pressure based on nearby oil production, your site won't go down. If your goal is 100% uptime, you should have servers in two widely different locations.
Oh, putting the lie to the first word in my previous paragraph, make sure your colo facility is as multihomed as possible. When AT&T goes down, maybe those packets will still go out over sprintnet.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Assuming that you find a hosting provider who meets your needs, a great way to choose between them is by who will give you the best SLA (Service Level Agreement). It is often possible to craft your SLA in such a way as to force the hosting provider to address your problems quickly or you simply don't have to pay them. Forcing them to back up their promises regarding latency, uptime, etc. with $$ is a great way to find out who actually believes their own hype.
Heck, the company I work for got their first six months of hosting free due to SLA violations, and I bet it won't be the last time, either.
--
Behold the Power of Cheese!
"I want someone to come figure out my job for me"
how bout - I am too lame to actually ask people for help. I dont want you to help me - and I wont help you.
with the people asking other network managers who may have experience - they will be better informed and will implement faster than you. Be careful - you'll prolly end up doing his nightly backups.
Always share your info - its the best job security there is.
Exodus has been mentioned several times.
Their cages, at least in New Jersey, have only about 5 different keys. That is, every key opens about one in five cages. Try it.
Either you or they should run an intrusion detection system. In the case of DOS or DDOS, your provider must be able to trace back the source of the attack. That means that you need a good procedure with them, and they need good procedures with their upstreams.
Don't just trust them. Ask for references in this area, or copies of those procedures.
Hope this helps...
One Co-Lo service I visited had nice individually locked cages, all ordered from the same manufacturer. Except that the manufacturer was cheap, and all the cages had the same key! So much for physical security.
What was really funny is that I discovered this while walking through their machine room as a potential customer. You shoulda seen the sales rep's eyes pop when I took the key from one cage and opened another one.
Listen carefully. If you're comfortable managing your servers, a vendor that is not trying to push you to use their servers may be your best bet. Also listen for the bullshit between the lines. If they are offering uptime guarantees for any server you put there, alarm bells should go off. Likewise, if they have a big installed base of FooBar OS on Baz hardware, be weary of their offer to support your Blurfle machines.
For a non-bull colo in Amsterdam, I can recommend Level3. Talk to colleagues in your region to find out what the colo's there offer.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
What are the bandwidth differences between these pipes?
cpeterso
DS3 = 45 Mbps line
OC3 = 155.52 Mbps line
OC48 = 2.48832 Gbps line
cpeterso
you are only locked into that contract as long as they meet their end of the sla.
if they fail to meet their sla then you have legal recourse to back out.
An auction site has to handle intense bursts of traffic, unless you're auctioning something only a few people care about (which could happen, I suppose, in specialty steel or some more obscure industrial material), so you probably should budget for your own data center. Do you really want your business hostage to someone else's staff? Can you afford _not_ to have your own staff right at the machines when trouble comes down?
... guess what, from the outside world, service looks better with the DSL lines. I dunno why, but guess it might partly because SDSL providers buy bandwidth based on reasonable incoming saturation levels, while co-lo providers buy it based on outgoing saturation levels, so there's more clear bandwidth available outgoing on a decent SDSL provider's lines. And I've seen this with both Covad and Northpoint service.
That said, in my own experience, between co-location (good size outfits, well-connected, even reasonably-responsive staff) and setting up in-house servers over DSL lines
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
If you want additional options to deal with bursting, check out content distribution services like Akamai and AT&T, which you can use in addition to your basic hosting system to handle peaks, or to provide other tweaks to your pricing model.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I will not name names but I used to work for a co-location facility. I think one of the most important things is to actually visit a site before you settle on a facility. On paper the facility I worked for looked great. If you took a tour of our facility you usually heard a lot of "That's scheduled to be installed." I worked there for six months and nothing got installed.
This brings me to my second point. Don't be afraid to check the financial backings of a facility you are interested in. You are trusting your buisness to a compnay, you need to make sure that the electric company isn't going to be turning the power off, or the fiber company hasn't been paid in three months.
The biggest thing is to make sure that what they claim is in fact what they say. We said 24 hour staffed, in fact I was the one who locked up the doors at the end of the night and set an alarm, which had a habit of going off when the few customers we did have attempted to check thier servers during off hours.
Ultimately I left that company mainly over a lack of paychecks, but also I just hated liying to people about who we were.
Co-location services may all look the same on the surface, but it pays off to look deeply at the history of the company.
----
"War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left"
"War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left"
Steven Wright
We are thinking of using either www.servint.net and/or www.rackspace.com to host a database backed web-site. Anyone have experience with either or both of these? I'll be happy to summarize whatever comes out of my investigations to anyone interested. --A.S. Wait
I've worked a number of years in the colocation business. Choosing a good one depends on your definition of 'good'.
Many people are solely concerned with price, and what that really comes back to is the old saying you get what you pay for.
That being said, many people have pointed out some of the more obvious (atleast to us) questions to ask.
Bandwidth is usually the first concern. People mentioned peering and how big the pipes are, but a very important factor to find out is how utilized they are. Some company might say they have 20Gb of available bandwidth (they may say 40Gb if they double their number because its full duplex). Then they say they are using only 10Gb of that 20.
Wow great, that's plenty of space left over. Unfortunately usage of the available bandwidth is not distributed that evenly. There are usually a handfull of peers which take the brunt of the traffic. If those links are at 95% all the time, you're going to see problems. Colo's always have underutilized DS-3's and OC-3's to ISP's which they may only do a few megs of traffic to.
It is also important where the traffic goes. If the colo is peered with a Tier 1 backbone, you will want to make sure the peers are to different locations on that backbone. It's much less likely to get congested, and much less likely to affect you in event of a backbone failure. How much of their traffic goes to a public NAP? These places can often be a black hole from which packets never return.
And depending on who you are, find out where the majority of your customer base is. If you are a B2B business, and you're getting or sending feeds to yahoo news, then maybe you should be on GlobalCenter's network where those servers live? Or lets say all your clients are coming from AOL, maybe a colo facility with lots of underused AOL bandwidth is right for you. Obviously these conditions change, but it's good to look at them.
A number of people mentioned physical security. It is definately good to have, but it's by no means any type of guarentee. Having things in a nice locked cage or cabinet is often more percieved security and showcasing than anything else.
Colo facilities do not have Elite Special Ops guys posted at all doors. These are underpaid security guards. So your servers are as secure as any of the items in Radio Shack in the mall. Not to say physical security is a waste, it IS good to have things locked and protected. And it's not like there are people just wandering around the datacenters looking to swipe things. But many times security is boasted upon, but behind the scenes it's kinda hokey.
Equinix is a datacenter which goes all out on security and facility. So far they have done a good job at it, though their network is second on the priority list as opposed to their facilities. There have been cases when physical security has been an issue for a site, but there are usually far easier ways to harm a site than bashing the server through a cage with the end of a broomstick.
The infrastructure the Colo run's on is important if you are looking for certain things. Network wise a switched 10/100 port is pretty standard, but remember, while it is switched, the uplink bandwidth from that switch to the core routers is shared. You are competing for bandwidth at some points. So make sure you have options. Can you upgrade to a router port directly? Can you multi home to different switches? Can you get HSRP or VRRP for redundant uplinks? Can you use IBGP or BGP for load balancing uplinks? Does the colo have their own backbone? Or is it leased from someone else?
The rest of these many people don't think about until it's far too late to change. Can you bring in an outside circuit of your own? Can you manage that connection yourself? Can you get a phone line into the cage?
One thing I have noticed more and more is that Colo's have increased the number of core, and border routers to provide additional redundancy for the customer. Unfortunately this has also vastly increased the complexity of the layer2 and layer3 fabrics as a whole. So little problems often times have a ripple effect on the whole thing with results that may degrade or bring everything down.
More facility related ones are: How much power do I get? Is that included in the price? Can I get additional power later (or do I need to order it now?) Is there additional rack/cage space near me that I can expand to? Do I have first right of refusal on that space?
Is there adequate power for the whole facility? Is there adequate UPS? Is there adequate generators for when UPS fails? Are there extra generators incase one/all of the primary generators fail? How much AC is there? Can it support the whole facility (this is important because of the popularity of 1 and 2U servers which suck up more power and put out more heat per rack).
What are the plans for current local expansion of data center space? Where do you have other large datacenters? How are they connected? How much peering does each datacenter have (remember no datacenter is an island)?
The next major piece is managed services. What this means is what will they do for you that you could do yourself but don't want to. Some colo's offer this (Exodus, Globalcenter), and some do not (Abovenet, Equinix). Bandwidth and space are becoming easier to come by, and may not always be the limiting factor in a sites growth.
Most all of them do offer some basic services such as a NOC, remote hands capability, and some basic troubleshooting. There are some people in the various operation centers who are VERY sharp, the majority of them are people fresh out of HS, or doing it as a second job to get by.
Someone mentioned earlier the little fish, big pond case. Unfortunately this seems to ring true of the colo's that offer managed services. If you're the little fish, it's very likely all of the smart people who do managed services for a large colo are busy with the bigger fish (say ebay, hotmail, geocities, yahoo, etc) than with you. You're likely to get basic services, but nothing special or out of the ordinary.
You can look back in the trade mags about 10 months and see the slamming Exodus got for customer service because they had more business than they knew what to do with. Fortunately this has gotten better, but there is way more business in the market than colo's know what to do with.
AboveNet and Equinix just plain don't have an offering in those areas. They usually partner and recommend other people who are experts in that space. Companies like SiteSmith, Emanage, MimEcom or Lante offer outsourced managed services for colo customers. Designing a scalable fault tolerant site, implementing it, and running it so the customer doesn't have to. Unless these types of colo providers develop their own managed services, the options are to outsource, or do it yourself.
No site is an island, which is why managed services become more and more important. The tier 1 colo's are all experiencing a bit of commoditization of the space and bandwidth. As a few people have already noted, many of the colo's are all starting to seem the same. Some people have personal preferences one way or another, and there are also usually niche type reasons why one is better suited for a certain customer.
Good managed services provide a way to scale a site to more users, higher levels of fault tolerance, and all over reliability. It's often hard to find people with these skills in house (or its hard to make them divide their time from whatever their primary job focus is). This is why people look for managed services from their colo, or from another managed services provider.
-Alex
I once had a friend at a start-up ask me whether they should colo or do it themselves. I have an edited reply here: http://www.nspf.net/colo.txt. In it, I talk about several things that they or a colo provider would have to think about and plan for if they were building and managing a data center. As you look at a data center, you might want to think of some of these issues as well.
One of the older reasons that people started using colocation was that local loop charges from an office into the ISPs was expensive. By putting a server at an ISP, you avoided those charges. The data centers at the colo were better than one's typical office. Once you get past DS3 speeds, the LEC charges don't look as expensive as they used to. Smaller sites (<=10Mbps) are still better served at a colo facility.
Recently, the reasons for picking a colo provider have morphed into: "What am I willing to outsource?" When you pick a colo site, you're trusting your machines, networking, facilities management and physical security to another company. Are they better at doing it than you?
Some colo providers distinguish themselves in various ways. One might be better-connected into AOL or broadband networks. Some focus on connectivity. Some might be better aquainted with NT than others. Some might have a great daytime Sun or Linux staff. One might offer database outsourcing/management. One might offer backups. One might rent you EMC/SRDF disk space. One might offer managed servers instead of using your servers. These features could good reasons to select one over another, but only if they complement your operation. Make sure, though, that you don't get attached too much to any colo provider's value-adds. For example, if they have network problems every week and your data is trapped in their managed database, you'll have to live with it until you can duplicate the functionality that you'll have to leave behind.
Initially, in an R&D and trial/rollout phase, many companies can get away with outsourcing as much as they can to focus on their site's development, but as the site becomes more popular and as users depend on it more, the uptime and reliability of the site becomes much more important. You can't just let your colo or network provider screw up anymore. It's unacceptable. Decrease your dependence on any colo provider as your site becomes more important.
A very annoying feature of running a colocation site is working remotely. If you need to do anything more than hit a power button on a machine, you need to figure out a way to not have to do that. Don't change tapes, buy an autoloader with lots of tape capacity. Don't use machines that need keyboards/monitors - use serial console servers to access the serial consoles of your devices or use something like Citrix to manage your NT boxes. Buy reliable machines that don't crash as often. Inside a server, a 10000 RPM or 15000 RPM disk tends to fail more than a 7200 RPM disk. A beefier power supply running at half capacity runs longer than a cheaper one running at capacity. Buy more servers than you need for everything so that you can migrate your service from failed servers to standby ones. Don't run the latest version of an operating system. Run the most stable/patched version of the OS. Eliminate all single points of failure from the networking side (including having more than one upstream ISP if possible). Routers and layer4 gear need to reboot sometimes. Always buy more than one of each.
The best way to avoid failure is to have multiple data centers. You can care less about the reliability/availability of one data center because you can always direct traffic to another one. Many web sites make a mistake early on of building a single dependency into their site, whether it's a database or a filesystem, something keeps the site from running in parallel with a similarly-configured. Plan from the start by running your web site from 3 locations, and you'll be able to scale your site very well. You'll also be able to pick and choose from cheaper colo providers that don't do N+1 redundancy to help reduce your costs.
At some point, every colo provider will let you down. It's inevitable that something bad will happen. Picking a colo provider that learns from its mistakes can be better than one that strives to make none. We would expect the same of our employees if we ran a data center ourselves.
If you're good at managing servers remotely, the location of your site(s) becomes less important:
Some thoughts on networking for colo providers:
Random musings:
Just stuff to think about.
--
Eric Ziegast
(PS: I used to work at ISPs and colo providers just like synx. I currently help run a very popular web site at several different colo facilities.)
This whole thing really happens to hit home to me, because current.nu has been sidelined for a couple months now, simply because of the cost of bandwidth (as if anyone cares). We use to transfer about 1G a day of stuff, almost all outgoing, and then as our reliability and speed started to suffer, it was obvious from httpd logs that people just didn't want to deal with a spotty slow server, and didn't come visit anymore. I know site content matters, but when I get 3 or 4 people a day who actually took the time to email me that the sites were just too slow, I knew something was wrong.
I use to pay out of my own pocket to colocate, just to host various GNU/GPL things I liked that people were doing (Largo's Window Maker pages were probably the most popular, followed closely by Michael's GNUstep News site). But, when it got to the point where the bandwidth bills were over half of what I pay in rent, that's just not cool...
And transfer caps just suck, and from talking to the colocation people I have called lately, when I ask for a fat pipe, they assume I'm gonna run a porn site or something and saturate it. In fact, I consider my transfer levels pretty low, and just want fast responce for httpd and ftpd (for our Window Maker mirror and Cajun CVS which now moved over to SourceForge, good move, I don't blame them). I want to see some people talk about realistic numbers here, not just service.
Service is a must, I totally agree, but What Are You Paying? I was paying around $400/month for 6 hops of a digex backbone on a T1 to patch in a K6 Linux box using a standard 10baseT NIC, but it was spotty service (IMHO). What do you pay, and do you think it's worth it?
The ability of the colo to add custom racks and cable management. Both under the raised floor and hanging from the ceiling management are sometimes required. If the colo is going to setup your boxes, look at other customer's of theirs and examine the cable management. Are they label clearly, and cable tied neatly? Is the fibre tied too tightly? These are signs of sloppy cabling. If you're putting in a farm of NT servers (which require keyboard/video/mouse connections) this could be a problem. Also, when they pull copper and/or fibre how do they test it? Do they pull it pre-terminated or do they terminate it at the rack? If its pre-terminated, then where do they keep the extra cable.
Who are their partners? What other companies does the colo outsource to? Look at companies like LoudCloud (server hosting), SiteSmith (web hosting) or StorageNetworks (outsource your disk/tape). Companies like these can ease your job of keeping your boxes up and allowing you to focus on your apps.
Infrastructure Changes How quickly can the colo pull new power for you? (not just 110, but big 220V 50a). Make sure your powerstrips are on different PDUs. What about additional phone lines? Also, can you have cabling pulled between multiple cages (both yours and a partner/customer). Can you pull up a tile? Some colos will not let you pull up a tile, even in your own cage.
The company I work for got into the web hosting business almost by mistake -- we did a web site for a client in-house using our own people and went looking for a place to put it so it wasn't intermingled with our business traffic (even on the DMZ wasn't enough in our minds).
After checking into various colocation and hosting services and doing the math, it was actually cheaper for us to host it ourselves on site with a second T1 line from our own internet provider than it was to colocate it. After all, we have dedicated AC, good power, 24x7 monitoring, etc, etc.
In the long run, we ended up telling our other business unit that "owned" the site to get lost, but if you've got a low-bandwidth site that can live on a T1 of your own AND you already have a half-assed computer room why bother with colocation at all? What does it get you?
I just think it adds up to having your own computer room * 20% markup on the stuff you'd already be paying for own your own (AC, power, etc) and a lot of hassle.
I can see it making sense if your entire business is in the cage(s) and the rest of your business overhead is a DSL connection and lost garage space, but otherwise it seems expensive and needlessly complicated.
Some people would ban the posters who really know what they're talking about, solely because of commercial affiliation. I don't buy it:
If you're in the business, you should know where the bodies are buried. There's nothing wrong with passing along what to look for.
And considering you didn't post a link until asked... doesn't seem real commercial to me.
I've used co-located servers for about 4 years now. One of the things I've found to be valuable is to use a service that specializes in the type of software/CGI/OS/hardware your using. An attentive and knowledgable staff can be a life saver... especially when you can't establish remote access to your server (this will happen sooner or later). If your website is being created by a third party... find out if they provide hosting services. When your developer is in control of your server then it can make updating and fixing problems on your server much easier. For example, with each new version of a CGI there are minute scripting incompatabilities, and who knows better than the developer what type of tag was used where?
Burlee.com will shaft you in the ass no matter what you try to do to prevent it. DO NOT SIGN UP WITH THEM.
--
|-_-| . o O ( bEef!)
One of my clients signed up with Dellhost (Dell's hosting service), attracted, no-doubt, by Dell's big-name reputation, and it turned out to be quite an unpleasant experience.
I ran up against a bunch of pretty clueless and very stuck up sysadmins who were trying to tell me through many HTML formatted (ick!) mails that though theoretically the server was mine and I could do what I wanted with it, in practice if I tried to wipe out their RH install and put in Debian, then:
1. It was not allowed and they would not let me do it.
2. If I tried I would probably fuck it up 'cos they had custom ethernet hardware and then I'd have to pay them $150 per hour to reinstall RH.
3. If I did manage it they would not support the box except to restore it to factory defaults and wipe out my OS and all my data.
I ignored them and did it anyway and then I got a mail from them complaining that I'd blocked their backdoor sysadmin access port and telling us that now they had no way to take backups (which we had not asked them to take) and basically complaining that we'd shut them out of the server and that they would reboot it into single user mode to get root on it. I didn't even grace all this shit with a reply.
There are a whole bunch of hosting services but I'd try to avoid things like DellHost or Gateway-Hosting (though I haven't tried this one) where the company's primary biz is making boxes. They will tend to have clueless sysadmins.
As I admin a few boxes from halfway around the globe, I am always on the watch for cool services like a remote console and remote hard reboot features. I heard of a company offering these but I lost the URL. I'd love to have services like that.
I was bought by these guys. But the market for webhosting is so poluted that you just can't trust anyone! ;)
Hey anyway check out my music! Nemesis 404 | if you like dance, good jams, and club music!
Got shack?
ShackCentral Network
Worlds best gaming network!!!
No. I don't promote like that. "Eats your lunch"? I don't want to eat Rob's lunch. Or Jeff's. They can keep their lunches, as far as I'm concerned.
--
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
This question is interesting because there are a lot of people out there who have never dealt with this yet and they aren't aware of all of the variables in choosing a co-lo. The big factor is price. Obviously, the better the co-lo and the more services they offer, the higher the cost.
;)
:)
:)
Here is a list of things I look for in a co-lo for my clients that require a high-uptime and reliable site:
Security
I prefer co-los with multiple physical security layers. For example, photo id's, sign-ins, and palm scanners. Keeping strangers from your physical hardware is a good thing.
Connectivity
Look for a company that doesn't oversell its bandwidth. If they have a DS-3 circuit coming in, they shouldn't be commiting to data rates equivalent to 3 times that, get my drift?
Power
Diesel backup generators just in case there is a problem with the power grid. Some high-end co-los even have connections to multiple power grids.
Space
Cabinets are fine for most, but in situations where you need to install something like an EMC Tera Closet you need cage space. Some co-los will lease you out as much cage space as you need.
Fire Supression
Halon is a must, and is pretty much commonplace in co-los these days. With halon they can extinguish a fire without doing any serious damage to your equipment.
Experienced Admins
There may be a time when a router or firewall goes on you and your admin is like an hour out. A good co-lo has kick ass cicsco gurus in the house that can get your shit back up before the admin even knows what happened
Special Features
This may sound weird, but some co-los like Digex even have some cabinets mounted on gyroscopes so that if there is an earthquake, your RAID arrays won't miss a beat. This is popular among financial institutions.
Redundancy
Power, bandwidth, staff, security, and everything else should have redundancy to reduce points of failure. This is just common sense
Well, that's my $.02
--Jon
If they allow the owners to sell *nix shell accounts. Shell accounts are (somewhat) big business for the teenie bopper crowd these days. Selling *nix shells to run IRC bots... I've been around since they came out in the early 90s and have seen many bad things happen when Erik, the 14 year old, hosts a box at X co-loc, sells a few shells, those people in turn make some bots, takeover a channel, the bots (and server) get attacked taking down the entire pipe. Theres nothing more annoying then you running a 100,000$+ year site and some 14 year old who sells shells for lunch money manages to knock out your entire pipe.. Ive seen it happen so many times.
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Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
Sounds like a Globix employee with the standard "Kill Exodus!" attitude. It's rampent there. I used to work in Professional services there myself and am currently a customer. I honestly find their service to be quite good. The data centers are top notch (except for the crappy terminal consoles) and the service staff is responsive. The PS dept has a real team attitude and there alot of knowledge sharing. I've seem them have occasional outages, but from experience, you'll have that issue everywhere. As for mentioned bandwidth issues, whatever. I don't think you'll have any issues maxing out your 100Mb handoff.
I just read an article in Wired magazine about a new startup co-location (www.havenco.com) service that is located on a semi-autonomous floating WWII gun platform off the coast of England called Sealand. Because they claim to be an autonomous nation-state, they are exempt from the national restrictions of many countries. They have armed this station with weapons, it is only accessible via helicopter or elevator in a bosuns chair, and their machine room is in a hermatically sealed nitrogen atmosphere, accessible only with SCUBA equipment. To read the complete story got to www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/haven.html
Limey "Without deviation, there is no innovation" - Frank Zappa
Here are some points you should look at in a co-location company:
1 - Secure, unaccompanied access on a 7x24 basis at no extra charge.
2 - The number of peering relationships with other providers.
3 - Number of transit connections to distinct service providers.
4 - Complete redundancy of power supply(s)(all the way back to the sub-station.)
5 - Co-location service is the core product offering (not a after thought.) This is important! It means that the company has invested into a support infrastructure and is geared to perform this service.
6 - Individual co-location space is secured from all other customer space (i.e. no open racks or cabinets without customer controlled keys).
7 - On-demand (web-based) reporting of bandwidth utilization and other events.
8 - Offers managed services such as firewalling, backups, vpn, load balancing, etc.
9 - Complete redundancy of cooling systems (cooling systems not dependant on city water supply).
10 - High physical security
11 - Burst up to 100 Mbps at no extra charge
12 - Additional bandwidth billed in 1 MB increments
Man Run Over by Freight Train Dies (The Los Angeles Times, March 2)
All things being equal(at least on paper) I would recommend looking at the providers backbone to the Internet. Go for a 1st tier or facilities based co-lo provider if you can. Check on the security of the different facilities.(they're rarely exactly the same) Also check to see if you have escorted or unescorted access to your servers. Make sure you can gain access 24x7, and it's preferable if you do not have to make an appointment. And you may want to check and see how many other users will be sharing the same switch as you, and how that is connected to the co-lo facility's backbone to the Internet. All I can think of right now. Sliverr
I've been thru this search and looking at 3 services in our area (Denver), we selected FirstWorld. They had the newest and there service is top notch. We looked at InFlow and Level 3. InFlow had an excellent facility and service, but the $$$ are high! Level 3 was only looking for big players, and if you wanted the service you needed to be on a list for the next facility because they didn't have any room. Good luck
Well yes you are right my "web page" is down not the server you moron. At least I can tell the difference between a "Web Page" and a "Web Server".
PS. Trolls always post anonymous you loser.
"Always get their username" BOFH
Sig
Has anyone hosted with Sprint? We're talking with them and the have, well, a nice network. The have tons of peering arrangements and massive bandwidth. Provisioning new bandwidth is simply not a problem, as near as I can tell.
Basically, for us, it's between Exodus and Sprint. I've seen several pluses and minues for/against Exodus, but noone has mentioned Sprint.
Going through this process as we speak. For me the prioritized list to analyze is the following: Testing -- Find a site that's doing something similar to what you want to at each colocation facility, and test access to that site from your customer's perspective!!!!! SLA's -- put yo money where yo mouth is latency, bandwidth, packet loss, and server downtime should be covered. Backbone & Peering -- They make you sign NDA's to look at this for some reason. Who cares how many people they peer with, look for the big 5 (UUNET, SPRINT, CWUSA, GTE, ATT) and see how good the peering relationship is. I personally like colo's that use InterNAP for connectivity as they proactively balance 11 different backbone connections. Facility and Security -- make sure it's appropriate to what you're paying, and what your needs are. N+1 redundancy all the way is nice, but if you can afford downtime more that $$ who cares. For security, the best facilities have security escort every visitor, and everyone has to sign in on a very short access list. Convenience is the trade off, and you may not care as much about security as you do being able to easily access you cage at all times. One thing to ask is if they ever test the power generators, and if they're kept idling. Cold starting one of those behemoths just ain't going to happen in a timely fashion. Batteries can be in line or out of line, it matters as far as power cleanliness goes, which will affect your hard drive failure rate.
I'm the VP of DC development for Hostpro, one of the up and comming organization for hosting, dedicated, shared & co-location. I've built the DC's from the ground up and know the technologies. In a previous post, someone indicated the must haves, got it! We have multiple SONET rings, UPS, generators, BGP-4, HSRP, electronic security, and we don't treat the end user like crap as others in the industry do. We also run a 24x7x365 net ops shop, this baby really smokes. I was also the CIO of a large company in Norhtern Cal, and my feelings are co-lo is it's the right choice. You do need to look at the type of cooling systems, fule delivery schedules, SLA's on network and responce time. Look at a co-lo company as an outsourced IT department. Also, once you see the buildout costs with DC space, no IT professional in his/her right mind will develop a business plan for there respective CIO to approve. vist the URL
Having worked there, I'm fully aware of what they had going on when they moved gear into that building. While a decent amount of customer gear was in cabinets, a lot of the network gear, air conditioners, and line conditioners could be seen from across Center Street. Months on end, and there were no screens up, and having passed by that building on occasion since I left the company, they still didn't have the screens that you mention.
Raptor
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."