4 ms·

Linode doesn't run datacenters, they colo with other providers (Hurricane Electric in Fremont). HE doesn't have the best reputation for resilient datacenter se

by mrkurt 16y ago

Linode doesn't run datacenters, they colo with other providers (Hurricane Electric in Fremont). HE doesn't have the best reputation for resilient datacenter services. However, redundant power is a very complex problem and prone to failure if you can't afford to do it right... which you can't if you're selling colocation for as cheap as HE does. I really, really wish Linode would launch a sort of premium offering in better datacenters.

jrnkntl 16y ago
I wasn't explicitly referring to Linode but to the people running the datacenter (which is, in this case, HE). I wouldn't so much wish for a premium offering, just better datacenters in general for Linode's racks.
davidw 16y ago
Incidentally, in some ways it seems kind of odd to run data centers in places like Fremont, where both land and people are expensive. Google and Facebook, for instance, have demonstrated that it's quite possible to build datacenters in rural Oregon, where land is a lot cheaper, and presumably labor costs are as well, even though my guess is that in someplace like Prineville, most of their people are imports...
- mrkurt 16y ago
  Power is expensive as well (it's usually the big expense), but there are a couple of reasons you might opt for more expensive areas for datacenters, particularly if you're selling hosting. 1) Many companies want facilities that are physically accessible to them, it's very difficult to sell to these companies if they'll have to travel 900 miles to do any work and don't trust the provider to do the work for them, or simply don't want to pay for it. Given the target market for hosting, Fremont's a pretty good option. 2) Depending on the service, a datacenter is only as useful as the transit providers you can access. We do all our hosting at a Chicago facility where we can get a cross connect to any bandwidth provider you can think of. Our services are also targeted at end users, so we're better off being centrally located and using providers with extensive peering agreements (less latency, woo!). If we had serious computation requirements rather than delivery requirements, one of those spiff Icelandic datacenters might be a good choice. I'm unsure of what Google and others stick in their rural datacenters, but I doubt it's anything that slows down your experience.
  - amock 16y ago
    Power is not the big expense and neither is land. See http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2010/10/31/DatacenterNetworksAreInMyWay.aspx http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2010/10/31/DatacenterNetwor... for a breakdown of expenses.
    - mrkurt 16y ago
      I may be missing something, but that post doesn't address the expense of power, it talks about the relative consumption of networking equipment compared to the rest of the facility. Power is expensive, and James Hamilton generally spends lots of time talking about it, his Velocity keynote (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHW-ayt_Urk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHW-ayt_Urk) about datacenter innovations focused primarily on power and cooling (heat being a biproduct of power consumption).
      - amock 16y ago
        Slide 3 says that power, power distribution, and cooling account for only 31% of the monthly cost. So while power related expenses aren't trivial they're significantly less than the cost of servers. I think land would be counted under other infrastructure so it's hardly worth considering.
- scalyweb 16y ago
  Locations are selected often due to proximity of a target market for reduced response latency. Also getting transit Tier I transit/backbone providers to lay a network in smaller markets is quite a hard sell. Google and Facebook benefit from being able to commit to large monthly bandwidth usage. It is probably going to be almost impossible to have a "carrier neutral" hotel in rural Oregon but you might get a single ATT or Level3 or if you're really sucking it, a Cogent line. HE Fremont is specifically great for reaching markets in APAC and HE itself is pushing IPv6 quite hard and so is one of the few providers that make it widely available.
  - davidw 16y ago
    > It is probably going to be almost impossible to have a "carrier neutral" hotel in rural Oregon Fair enough, but there's plenty of middle ground between Prineville and the Bay Area. The latter is expensive - it makes sense to have the really high-end things there, like Google R&D, not commodities like data centers and factories. IMO. I'm certainly not an expert in that sort of thing though. Incidentally, as a native of Oregon, I still think it's pretty funny that Facebook is building a center in Prineville, heretofore best known as the home of Les Schwab "Free Beef!" Tires.
    - scalyweb 16y ago
      Definitely I agree. But some clients will pay more for proximity such as monitoring or DNS providers. Chicago(350 Cermak) and NY are an example because of the financial trading markets. Clients pay "through the nose" for a colo spot there because every millisecond counts. If XYZ Trading Company sets up in the suburbs of Chicago, that 5milliseconds makes a huge difference. But you are definitely right that most people don't need that kind of silliness. I came from North Carolina where Google and Apple saw the lower power/employee costs as a reason to open datacenters. In the western part of the state is a beautiful city called Asheville which was never known as a network hub. But because of the geographic location halfway between Atlanta and DC a company(uberbandwidth.com/netriplex) decided to create a datacenter there. Lower costs...but the only way IN and OUT of their network was a backhaul through Atlanta or through DC. If one of those backhaul lines go down they've basically lost their single selling point.
bdonlan 16y ago
Or you can keep a backup linode in a different datacenter. Or better yet, have redundancy with a completely separate provider, so you can deal with a complete failure of either one provider.

by mrkurt 16y ago

jrnkntl 16y ago

I wasn't explicitly referring to Linode but to the people running the datacenter (which is, in this case, HE). I wouldn't so much wish for a premium offering, just better datacenters in general for Linode's racks.

davidw 16y ago

Incidentally, in some ways it seems kind of odd to run data centers in places like Fremont, where both land and people are expensive. Google and Facebook, for instance, have demonstrated that it's quite possible to build datacenters in rural Oregon, where land is a lot cheaper, and presumably labor costs are as well, even though my guess is that in someplace like Prineville, most of their people are imports...

mrkurt 16y ago
Power is expensive as well (it's usually the big expense), but there are a couple of reasons you might opt for more expensive areas for datacenters, particularly if you're selling hosting. 1) Many companies want facilities that are physically accessible to them, it's very difficult to sell to these companies if they'll have to travel 900 miles to do any work and don't trust the provider to do the work for them, or simply don't want to pay for it. Given the target market for hosting, Fremont's a pretty good option. 2) Depending on the service, a datacenter is only as useful as the transit providers you can access. We do all our hosting at a Chicago facility where we can get a cross connect to any bandwidth provider you can think of. Our services are also targeted at end users, so we're better off being centrally located and using providers with extensive peering agreements (less latency, woo!). If we had serious computation requirements rather than delivery requirements, one of those spiff Icelandic datacenters might be a good choice. I'm unsure of what Google and others stick in their rural datacenters, but I doubt it's anything that slows down your experience.
- amock 16y ago
  Power is not the big expense and neither is land. See http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2010/10/31/DatacenterNetworksAreInMyWay.aspx http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2010/10/31/DatacenterNetwor... for a breakdown of expenses.
  - mrkurt 16y ago
    I may be missing something, but that post doesn't address the expense of power, it talks about the relative consumption of networking equipment compared to the rest of the facility. Power is expensive, and James Hamilton generally spends lots of time talking about it, his Velocity keynote (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHW-ayt_Urk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHW-ayt_Urk) about datacenter innovations focused primarily on power and cooling (heat being a biproduct of power consumption).
    - amock 16y ago
      Slide 3 says that power, power distribution, and cooling account for only 31% of the monthly cost. So while power related expenses aren't trivial they're significantly less than the cost of servers. I think land would be counted under other infrastructure so it's hardly worth considering.
scalyweb 16y ago
Locations are selected often due to proximity of a target market for reduced response latency. Also getting transit Tier I transit/backbone providers to lay a network in smaller markets is quite a hard sell. Google and Facebook benefit from being able to commit to large monthly bandwidth usage. It is probably going to be almost impossible to have a "carrier neutral" hotel in rural Oregon but you might get a single ATT or Level3 or if you're really sucking it, a Cogent line. HE Fremont is specifically great for reaching markets in APAC and HE itself is pushing IPv6 quite hard and so is one of the few providers that make it widely available.
- davidw 16y ago
  > It is probably going to be almost impossible to have a "carrier neutral" hotel in rural Oregon Fair enough, but there's plenty of middle ground between Prineville and the Bay Area. The latter is expensive - it makes sense to have the really high-end things there, like Google R&D, not commodities like data centers and factories. IMO. I'm certainly not an expert in that sort of thing though. Incidentally, as a native of Oregon, I still think it's pretty funny that Facebook is building a center in Prineville, heretofore best known as the home of Les Schwab "Free Beef!" Tires.
  - scalyweb 16y ago
    Definitely I agree. But some clients will pay more for proximity such as monitoring or DNS providers. Chicago(350 Cermak) and NY are an example because of the financial trading markets. Clients pay "through the nose" for a colo spot there because every millisecond counts. If XYZ Trading Company sets up in the suburbs of Chicago, that 5milliseconds makes a huge difference. But you are definitely right that most people don't need that kind of silliness. I came from North Carolina where Google and Apple saw the lower power/employee costs as a reason to open datacenters. In the western part of the state is a beautiful city called Asheville which was never known as a network hub. But because of the geographic location halfway between Atlanta and DC a company(uberbandwidth.com/netriplex) decided to create a datacenter there. Lower costs...but the only way IN and OUT of their network was a backhaul through Atlanta or through DC. If one of those backhaul lines go down they've basically lost their single selling point.

bdonlan 16y ago

Or you can keep a backup linode in a different datacenter. Or better yet, have redundancy with a completely separate provider, so you can deal with a complete failure of either one provider.