As with all these things all the companies want you to contact them so they can give you a quote but I have literally no knowledge in this area when it comes to pricing so I was hoping some of you might be able to give me some ballpark figures and things to look out for.
What sort of price should I be expecting to pay for a quarter rack in a Surrey DC?
- Thread starter Cromulent
- Start date
I can tell you that pay 600pcm including 12amps of power delivery for a half rack. 1200pcm for a full rack. Discounted the more racks you take. I negotiated down to about 1k on the full racks. This includes remote hands, 1gb/1gb internet etc.
Thank you. That was useful. At least I know what kind of range to expect now.
If it helps I can pm you a breakdown of an invoice so you have something to work with. Its a bit hazy (just got back tonight from a 3 day wedding in france) but i think Ive got a bit of a mix at the moment, i've got 4 racks on monthly rolling with no contract, 3 racks on 3 year deals as well as a half rack but with commitment from the dc to put no other hadware in that rack due to security concerns.
Pretty much all colo racks will include a number of ip's per rack, a full rack is a range of 24 external ip's. 24/7 remote hands x20 per year. Power included and you get x amps with the rack. You wont get any dc to move on price with power just don't even go there, there is just zero movement there and no space to negotiate.
Negotiate around the number of ip's, size of the line etc, for example the guys im with are also an isp so they just gave me as much as my firewalls can take and unlimited bandwidth at no extra cost. So where we have gigabit ethernet the machines will literally pull 1gb/s up and down on a line test. It's also fair to say that you could also get leverage if say for example the dc notice you have a large domain portfolio or something similar.
I know the guys at my dc really well now and they have been superb, they have helped me no end (I mean literally sat up with my trying to assist at 3am when things were going to ****, worked alongside me and stuck around for hours after their shift ended without a single issue or even a moan. I even had to tell one of them to go home as I felt like i was taking the ****. They are just a lovely bunch of blokes tbh) They helped me rip one of their racks out and roll one of mine in to try and save me just a little bit of time re-racking everything.
When it all went wrong with BTnet and the managed fortigates I used to have I fell back on the dc to help me out again, and at next to no cost they provided me with new firewalls, help me set them all up and chatted with me for hours about changes we should make to just make things better, honestly it cost pittance and because of how good they are I asked them to wrap a management layer around the firewalls for me which again they did and again it was really well priced. You will know when you find a good colo dc as anything will basically go and all it takes is a conversation, I can literally send a whatsapp message and any one of a number of guys will jump on any problem at the dc within minutes.
What I would also say is cast your net further than just Surrey, I looked at everything within about 150 miles of London and if you are willing to travel just a bit further you will get a far better deal. The DC i use is 80 miles away from Surrey.
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That would certainly help. One thing I've never figured out (I must have bunked off my electronics lessons at school) is working out how much power you need. I'm looking at EPYC servers and I'm guessing their power reqiorements are on the high side.
It just so happens that I have 3 epyc (rome) servers in one of my racks
This post goes into my mental move a little more: https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/posts/33746845/
And i think I waffle on about stuff in one of my other threads but I cant find that.
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Nice
What servers are you looking at? I've got dual socket servers but am currently running just 3x 7452 chips. So ive got a socket per server spare at the moment.
Tomorrow ill send you all the details but will also attempt to breakdown how to calcualte power usage on a epyc (its not a lot i can assure you of that) for example a rack full of about 30 intel 8500 i5's only pulls about 2 amps.
Ive got a spreadsheet somewhere that helped me calculate all the details on power and how to calculate it that I used when we were building our London dc. I need to find that spreadsheet.
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I'm looking for servers for maximum VM density so I was gravitating towards EPYC on that front. I'd be using qemu and KVM on an OpenSUSE LEAP host on each server. The more cores, RAM and storage I can fit in each server the better.
If you are doing what I think you are doing and based on your previous posting history you are likely better off looking at renting dedicated servers via a reseller at least until things are more established as a business or looking at options such as what AWS can provide.
Buying up rack space (beyond smaller scale co-location) directly from the DC is likely going to end up an expensive mistake if things don't pan out exactly as you hope and/or your needs change (EDIT: It has been 15 years since I've done this though - so I don't know if terms are still similar).
I assume you are a fairly established business using a fair bit of hardware, etc. - when I used to work for a reasonable size GSP we had a similar relationship - put customer service in many industries to shame - but for a smaller client you will probably get a little less of the same response (though generally they are pretty good at the DCs from my experience).
Buying up rack space (beyond smaller scale co-location) directly from the DC is likely going to end up an expensive mistake if things don't pan out exactly as you hope and/or your needs change (EDIT: It has been 15 years since I've done this though - so I don't know if terms are still similar).
I assume you are a fairly established business using a fair bit of hardware, etc. - when I used to work for a reasonable size GSP we had a similar relationship - put customer service in many industries to shame - but for a smaller client you will probably get a little less of the same response (though generally they are pretty good at the DCs from my experience).
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Soldato
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- 29 Dec 2009
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I know of a provider that can do a full rack in Pulsant, Maidenhead with 8A power for just under £600/month incl VAT.
If that's of any interest to you (or anybody reading this) then feel free to drop me a message/trust if it's of any use.
If you haven't bought any servers yet then just make sure you don't cheap out on old tech with high power usage as the power usage costs soon build up.
Supermicro is by far the best value and power friendly. Boston/Hammer (Exertis) are UK retailers.
If that's of any interest to you (or anybody reading this) then feel free to drop me a message/trust if it's of any use.
If you haven't bought any servers yet then just make sure you don't cheap out on old tech with high power usage as the power usage costs soon build up.
Supermicro is by far the best value and power friendly. Boston/Hammer (Exertis) are UK retailers.
Let me give you a bit of background. I'm trying to start a VPS hosting company with a unique selling point. I currently use Linode for my own VPS needs so my first idea was just to resell them (my unique selling point allows me to charge more) but then I thought I could get higher margins if I went with a dedicated server provider. I spent hours upon hours upon hours looking at dedicated server providers and none of them offered what I wanted. I mean I can get a VPS with higher technical specifications than most dedicated servers that are being sold at the moment. So then I started thinking about colocation and doing it myself.
If you know of a really flexible dedicated server provider that is prepared to work with a small company that offers that level of flexibility I would love it. So I'm all ears for any suggestions.
If 110 years is established then we are that
And yes I have a fair bit of hardware and some of it is very expensive @Cromulent - I could set up a call with you and a couple of DC guys for a little chat also if you wanted to get an idea what you are looking at.
That is very kind of you but I have to warn you I'm really early in the whole process. I'm currently writing my business plan, setting up a landing page and researching marketing. As long as these people realise that I am just looking for information that I can put in my business plan as a projected expense we'll be fine but if they think I'm in the market to buy in a couple of months there will be a bit of a misunderstanding.
Having said all of that if they are nice and give reasonable it would be highly tempting to go with them when I do finally reach that spot (I'm working as fast as I can on the whole project).
Just do what I do - Tell them exactly how it is!
This is what I may want /need i'm not close to ready yet but need some indicative pricing etc etc.Just do what I do - Tell them exactly how it is!
If you could give me a few days to get my sleep schedule back on track that would be awesome. It'll certainly help with the numbers anyway. In the meantime, I'll look into dedicated server providers. Maybe there is something I have missed there. I'm already pretty up to date on the VPS marketplace so I'll stick to my knowledge there.
Just let me know and ill hook you up with a contact.
Soldato
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What is the niche that you're aiming for as a VPS provider that isn't covered by the thousands of other providers out there currently? If you don't want to share publicly then feel free to message me but I'm wondering if perhaps you've not looked in the right places if you have something that you couldn't find from a provider already?
I wouldn't bother calling anybody for dedicated server pricing unless you need something really non-standard. As has been mentioned, the only wiggle room you have is if you're ordering more than a few where you might be able to sway some discount. It's pretty much a rat race and the pricing is within a few £ across all providers in the UK.
You can get live pricing on any providers website worth their salt. Any that say "call for quote" (as opposed to just giving you a base figure online) on something as simple as dedicated servers or colocation should be automatically removed from any list of contenders you're looking at as they just want to get you on the phone and start selling the world to you.
Rackspace pricing I can understand as there's a lot of factors that makes up the price but there are still a lot of providers out there that publicly list prices and features to give you a good idea of if they're having your pants down!
I wouldn't bother calling anybody for dedicated server pricing unless you need something really non-standard. As has been mentioned, the only wiggle room you have is if you're ordering more than a few where you might be able to sway some discount. It's pretty much a rat race and the pricing is within a few £ across all providers in the UK.
You can get live pricing on any providers website worth their salt. Any that say "call for quote" (as opposed to just giving you a base figure online) on something as simple as dedicated servers or colocation should be automatically removed from any list of contenders you're looking at as they just want to get you on the phone and start selling the world to you.
Rackspace pricing I can understand as there's a lot of factors that makes up the price but there are still a lot of providers out there that publicly list prices and features to give you a good idea of if they're having your pants down!
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Thought id just share this up incase it helps. As woody says its all pretty much standard stuff and you should be able to get an idea.. I sent a WhatsApp to some dudes just to gague for you...
Take from that what you will. I edited some names etc out but you get the idea. If you did need somebody to chat you through a million options and gague power useage etc then he is happy to have a chat and set you on the right path. If it comes to something or not is not important.
Take from that what you will. I edited some names etc out but you get the idea. If you did need somebody to chat you through a million options and gague power useage etc then he is happy to have a chat and set you on the right path. If it comes to something or not is not important.
Soldato
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Pretty fair pricing that is, a lot of factors go into pricing but a Quarter Rack with 2A is generally around £200-240 excl VAT from a few providers I can think of if you're north of the M25 for another idea on cost.
You don't even need to attend a data a datacentre yourself to operate co-lo so no reason to consider a DC slightly further away from home if starting on a budget and a few extra ms of latency from London doesn't matter for your project. Most will happily receive + rack servers for no additional charge under your monthly remote hands allowance.