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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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Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
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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
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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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.)
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
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
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.
A front door?
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Who Invented It?
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
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.
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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
(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.
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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."
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
What are the bandwidth differences between these pipes?
cpeterso
DS3 = 45 Mbps line
OC3 = 155.52 Mbps line
OC48 = 2.48832 Gbps line
cpeterso
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.)