10 ms·

For those in the Bay Area who are a bit more adventurous, Hurricane Electric charges only $400/mo for a full rack in their Fremont datacenter, along with 1Gbps

For those in the Bay Area who are a bit more adventurous, Hurricane Electric charges only $400/mo for a full rack in their Fremont datacenter, along with 1Gbps of bandwidth, and 12A of usable power. It’s totally overkill for the article’s use case, but it enables many cool things that need sustained bandwidth, and has been pretty fun.

cortesoft 5y ago
That is a surprisingly small amount of bandwidth for such a large amount of space. A single machine in the rack could easily saturate the network.
- jcims 5y ago
  Same with 12A of power. It's just the base offering. It's nice to get a full rack though b/c you can be more flexible with organization, have some (physical) storage space for spares, console, accessories, etc.
  - gnu8 5y ago
    If you can get three in a row you can have a place to sleep for $1200/mo.
    - bluedino 5y ago
      You can't sleep standing?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - Ostrogodsky 5y ago
        Of course, but you have to budget space for your closet
    - jcims 5y ago
      You could be on to something. Start a company that sells rackmount kitchen appliances.
    - mac-chaffee 5y ago
      If you have trouble sleeping with the fan noise, the CO2 fire suppressant will put you right to sleep :)
    - kcartlidge 5y ago
      > If you can get three in a row you can have a place to sleep for $1200/mo. Remember to set them crypto mining so you're kept warm at night.
forgotmyoldacc 5y ago
What's a full rack size? 42U? Also agreed with sibling comment that 1Gbps is pretty slow nowadays. Do you know if that can be customized?
- iancarroll 5y ago
  There are several carriers in the building that offer $200/mo/Gbps or cheaper; HE has pretty competitive additional bandwidth as well. (And yeah, 42U.)
- dilyevsky 5y ago
  This is 1gbps transit so not that low considering you will need a cdn anyway and can also peer
- electroly 5y ago
  They quoted me $900/month for a 10G port with a 3 year term at a third party data center. I'm certain you can get that deal or better as a customer in their facility.
dilyevsky 5y ago
$400/mo 42u at what power? ;)
Something1234 5y ago
Isn't 12A kind of small for an entire rack?
- bitexploder 5y ago
  Yes. The power and Internet are always the expensive parts of any colo. That is probably about 4-10 servers depending on how you spec them.
- bcrosby95 5y ago
  12A is small. We used to colocate there back around 2010 and at the time could fit anywhere from 6-10 servers depending on load. We used the extra space for spare parts.
bowmessage 5y ago
How do you deal with planned downtime / maintenance / all those nice things that clouds can manage for you?
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  You get multiple ones and failover to them or you schedule a maintenance window. Yes, it'll be more expensive, but you probably already have a good reason & the associated budget if you colocate as opposed to renting from Hetzner/OVH/etc. Is this so different from the cloud? Even an EC2 instance should be assumed to be a single point of failure and you also need multiple (preferably in different AZs or regions) if uptime is important.
- justsomehnguy 5y ago
  Depends on the type of load. Old and boring things, DNS, load balancer, yada-yada. If you save thousand(s) it is still could be cheaper.
- Dave3of5 5y ago
  Not sure what you are talking about here but for example an RDS instance is simply an EC2 instance with a bunch of automation. If you want to save some money write the scripts yourself and run them in a cron job. Took me a couple hours and I'm no sysadmin. To me the best thing to do is move all your services into k8s and automate you DB (use open source). Then you can move to any provider when you realise the cloud pricing is shit.
WatchDog 5y ago
Hurricane electric are one of those companies that have been around since the dawn on the internet, I usually run into them when I want to look at BGP information and stumble upon their BGP toolkit. I went to their home page to try and find more information about colo pricing, but it's all hidden behind a contact form. Their site design seems very 1998, makes me feel really nostalgic.
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  I still use their telnet looking glass service from time to time.
zwass 5y ago
Now THAT sounds fun!
ignoramous 5y ago
> Hurricane Electric charges only $400/mo for a full rack in their Fremont datacenter, along with 1Gbps of bandwidth, and 12A of usable power. Wonder what if Netflix turns around, and blue oceans [0] its video delivery infrastructure [1][2], like Cloudflare did for text/html. We do know that video has all but eaten up the attention that text/html once had on the Internet [3] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy#Concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy#Concept [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28584738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28584738 [2] https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/ https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/ [3] https://www.wired.com/2010/08/ff-webrip/ https://www.wired.com/2010/08/ff-webrip/
- zwass 5y ago
  This could be an interesting competitor to Mux (https://mux.com/ https://mux.com/)
- donavanm 5y ago
  There are some fundamental constraints there for both cases you mentioned, but more so Netflix. Their business model and physical infrastructure are structured around a small, popular, catalog. This enables dense storage utilization at the edge, optimizations like pushing content during troughs, etc. Because of that they're edge is generally optimized for a small number of bytes stored and a very large number of bytes served to clients. Storing a large number of "cold" or "long tail" bytes is a different physical problem when it comes to storage and IO. And that's also the exact problem you have when hosting lots of third party content (or apps, or lambdas, or anything else). There you're also optimizing for bytes stored:served, but have to place it on cheaper media and with less duplication to make the physical space/power/dollar constraints work. They certainly could change their business model and infra. But then they end up looking a lot more like a commercial CDN with hierarchal stores, more centralized POPs at IXPs, etc. Disclaimer: Principal at AWS. Used to work on Amazon CloudFront and a bit of time in AWS Elemental, served a lot of video & streaming bits. Everything above is public domain knowledge.
- paxys 5y ago
  If you mean selling their video delivery infrastructure as a commercial offering, there isn't much Netflix can do that isn't already covered by YouTube, which has a massive head start to boot.
Aeolun 5y ago
It’s still a 5x savings over AWS!
- dilyevsky 5y ago
  I think you missed a zero there
FpUser 5y ago
I am always on the lookout for dedicated server providers. However the minute I see the site not having configs / procing info I go elsewhere. The last thing I want is waste my time on negotiations.
- a2tech 5y ago
  I've been using https://www.hivelocity.net https://www.hivelocity.net for years for my dedicated server provider. There's been an insane amount of consolidation in that space in the last few years. Independent operators are getting harder and harder to find.
herpderperator 5y ago
$400/mo for the first term. Then it basically doubles. I inquired about it: > For example, with a 3-year term for a 42U cabinet, it would be $400 a month for 3 years, and that includes 1G already. After that, for another 3 years, would it be $340/mo for 1G, plus $500/mo for the 42U cabinet, which is $840/mo (more than double)? In both cases, is a /27 always included with the 1G port (pending justification)? > Yes, you are understanding what our standard rates are without the promotion. Yes, we include the /27 with service. Our promotion is currently our most cost effective solution. Let me know if you have any questions. Do you really want to build a whole 42U rack full of big heavy servers and have your price doubled after your contract expires?
- iancarroll 5y ago
  I have no inside knowledge on HE pricing, but I had my cabinet on a 1-year term and it is the same price today even though the term lapsed and I am just month-to-month. It is certainly possible that the rate increases at some point, but I don't see why either HE or you would want to commit to anything beyond 3 years from now?
- biot 5y ago
  I think you're looking at this the wrong way. You are receiving a > 50% discount for 3 years after which you pay the non-discounted price. If you'd prefer to pay full price from the start, I'm sure they'd be happy to let you.
  - solarkraft 5y ago
    The non-discounted price still isn't outrageous (I think?), but it's disingenuous to advertise a temporary discount as the price of a service. Unless you intend to only use it for 3 years, I guess. Maybe the cost savings do justify that.
- jwiz 5y ago
  At 12A, you're probably building a whole 8U of servers with 34U of airflow baffles.

cortesoft 5y ago

That is a surprisingly small amount of bandwidth for such a large amount of space. A single machine in the rack could easily saturate the network.

jcims 5y ago
Same with 12A of power. It's just the base offering. It's nice to get a full rack though b/c you can be more flexible with organization, have some (physical) storage space for spares, console, accessories, etc.
- gnu8 5y ago
  If you can get three in a row you can have a place to sleep for $1200/mo.
  - bluedino 5y ago
    You can't sleep standing?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Ostrogodsky 5y ago
      Of course, but you have to budget space for your closet
  - jcims 5y ago
    You could be on to something. Start a company that sells rackmount kitchen appliances.
  - mac-chaffee 5y ago
    If you have trouble sleeping with the fan noise, the CO2 fire suppressant will put you right to sleep :)
  - kcartlidge 5y ago
    > If you can get three in a row you can have a place to sleep for $1200/mo. Remember to set them crypto mining so you're kept warm at night.

forgotmyoldacc 5y ago

What's a full rack size? 42U? Also agreed with sibling comment that 1Gbps is pretty slow nowadays. Do you know if that can be customized?

iancarroll 5y ago
There are several carriers in the building that offer $200/mo/Gbps or cheaper; HE has pretty competitive additional bandwidth as well. (And yeah, 42U.)
dilyevsky 5y ago
This is 1gbps transit so not that low considering you will need a cdn anyway and can also peer
electroly 5y ago
They quoted me $900/month for a 10G port with a 3 year term at a third party data center. I'm certain you can get that deal or better as a customer in their facility.

dilyevsky 5y ago

$400/mo 42u at what power? ;)

Something1234 5y ago

Isn't 12A kind of small for an entire rack?

bitexploder 5y ago
Yes. The power and Internet are always the expensive parts of any colo. That is probably about 4-10 servers depending on how you spec them.
bcrosby95 5y ago
12A is small. We used to colocate there back around 2010 and at the time could fit anywhere from 6-10 servers depending on load. We used the extra space for spare parts.

bowmessage 5y ago

How do you deal with planned downtime / maintenance / all those nice things that clouds can manage for you?

Nextgrid 5y ago
You get multiple ones and failover to them or you schedule a maintenance window. Yes, it'll be more expensive, but you probably already have a good reason & the associated budget if you colocate as opposed to renting from Hetzner/OVH/etc. Is this so different from the cloud? Even an EC2 instance should be assumed to be a single point of failure and you also need multiple (preferably in different AZs or regions) if uptime is important.
justsomehnguy 5y ago
Depends on the type of load. Old and boring things, DNS, load balancer, yada-yada. If you save thousand(s) it is still could be cheaper.
Dave3of5 5y ago
Not sure what you are talking about here but for example an RDS instance is simply an EC2 instance with a bunch of automation. If you want to save some money write the scripts yourself and run them in a cron job. Took me a couple hours and I'm no sysadmin. To me the best thing to do is move all your services into k8s and automate you DB (use open source). Then you can move to any provider when you realise the cloud pricing is shit.

WatchDog 5y ago

Hurricane electric are one of those companies that have been around since the dawn on the internet, I usually run into them when I want to look at BGP information and stumble upon their BGP toolkit. I went to their home page to try and find more information about colo pricing, but it's all hidden behind a contact form. Their site design seems very 1998, makes me feel really nostalgic.

notreallyserio 5y ago
I still use their telnet looking glass service from time to time.

zwass 5y ago

Now THAT sounds fun!

ignoramous 5y ago

> Hurricane Electric charges only $400/mo for a full rack in their Fremont datacenter, along with 1Gbps of bandwidth, and 12A of usable power. Wonder what if Netflix turns around, and blue oceans [0] its video delivery infrastructure [1][2], like Cloudflare did for text/html. We do know that video has all but eaten up the attention that text/html once had on the Internet [3] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy#Concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy#Concept [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28584738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28584738 [2] https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/ https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/ [3] https://www.wired.com/2010/08/ff-webrip/ https://www.wired.com/2010/08/ff-webrip/

zwass 5y ago
This could be an interesting competitor to Mux (https://mux.com/ https://mux.com/)
donavanm 5y ago
There are some fundamental constraints there for both cases you mentioned, but more so Netflix. Their business model and physical infrastructure are structured around a small, popular, catalog. This enables dense storage utilization at the edge, optimizations like pushing content during troughs, etc. Because of that they're edge is generally optimized for a small number of bytes stored and a very large number of bytes served to clients. Storing a large number of "cold" or "long tail" bytes is a different physical problem when it comes to storage and IO. And that's also the exact problem you have when hosting lots of third party content (or apps, or lambdas, or anything else). There you're also optimizing for bytes stored:served, but have to place it on cheaper media and with less duplication to make the physical space/power/dollar constraints work. They certainly could change their business model and infra. But then they end up looking a lot more like a commercial CDN with hierarchal stores, more centralized POPs at IXPs, etc. Disclaimer: Principal at AWS. Used to work on Amazon CloudFront and a bit of time in AWS Elemental, served a lot of video & streaming bits. Everything above is public domain knowledge.
paxys 5y ago
If you mean selling their video delivery infrastructure as a commercial offering, there isn't much Netflix can do that isn't already covered by YouTube, which has a massive head start to boot.

Aeolun 5y ago

It’s still a 5x savings over AWS!

dilyevsky 5y ago
I think you missed a zero there

FpUser 5y ago

I am always on the lookout for dedicated server providers. However the minute I see the site not having configs / procing info I go elsewhere. The last thing I want is waste my time on negotiations.

a2tech 5y ago
I've been using https://www.hivelocity.net https://www.hivelocity.net for years for my dedicated server provider. There's been an insane amount of consolidation in that space in the last few years. Independent operators are getting harder and harder to find.

herpderperator 5y ago

$400/mo for the first term. Then it basically doubles. I inquired about it: > For example, with a 3-year term for a 42U cabinet, it would be $400 a month for 3 years, and that includes 1G already. After that, for another 3 years, would it be $340/mo for 1G, plus $500/mo for the 42U cabinet, which is $840/mo (more than double)? In both cases, is a /27 always included with the 1G port (pending justification)? > Yes, you are understanding what our standard rates are without the promotion. Yes, we include the /27 with service. Our promotion is currently our most cost effective solution. Let me know if you have any questions. Do you really want to build a whole 42U rack full of big heavy servers and have your price doubled after your contract expires?

iancarroll 5y ago
I have no inside knowledge on HE pricing, but I had my cabinet on a 1-year term and it is the same price today even though the term lapsed and I am just month-to-month. It is certainly possible that the rate increases at some point, but I don't see why either HE or you would want to commit to anything beyond 3 years from now?
biot 5y ago
I think you're looking at this the wrong way. You are receiving a > 50% discount for 3 years after which you pay the non-discounted price. If you'd prefer to pay full price from the start, I'm sure they'd be happy to let you.
- solarkraft 5y ago
  The non-discounted price still isn't outrageous (I think?), but it's disingenuous to advertise a temporary discount as the price of a service. Unless you intend to only use it for 3 years, I guess. Maybe the cost savings do justify that.
jwiz 5y ago
At 12A, you're probably building a whole 8U of servers with 34U of airflow baffles.