Don't manage your own gear. It's a bad idea that almost never helps you, like doing all your car maintenance yourself. Changing your oil yourself? Cheap and eas

Don't manage your own gear. It's a bad idea that almost never helps you, like doing all your car maintenance yourself. Changing your oil yourself? Cheap and easy. Replacing your entire A/C system? Pay someone to do it. Life's too short, and you won't do as good a job as a pro who does it all day. Things a VPS provider does: - Buy hardware (every 3 years) - Rack hardware - Network the hardware - Power the hardware - Troubleshoot and replace buggy/shitty/dying hardware - Provide an API to: - out-of-band power management - out-of-band console management - remote deployment of VMs - out-of-band network maintenance - Patch security holes - Deal with internet routing issues - Move everything to a new colo once the old colo becomes more unstable and expensive If you want to do all of that, you might as well get someone to pay you to co-lo their stuff too, and then provide an interface for them to use, and then you're a VPS provider. There is only one good reason to colo your own gear: if you have to. If what you want to do simply isn't possible at a VPS provider, or is too costly, or you wouldn't get the guarantees you need. It's the last resort.