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Yes, that's my biggest "let down" with this writing: at least in my corner of the world (Paris), colo starts at 300€/month for something reasonable, or at the v

Yes, that's my biggest "let down" with this writing: at least in my corner of the world (Paris), colo starts at 300€/month for something reasonable, or at the very least 100€ for low power 1U (so you can host... a switch). That's as much as a rent ! On the other hand you can get a nice enough dedicated server for 15€/month. So yeah, if I'm missing something please tell me because I'd love to but I can't justify the price for hobby stuff.

cm2187 2y ago
It depends what you do with it. If you only need a small VM to manage your emails nothing will beat a VPS. But I also use it for offsite backup, so need a bit of storage. When you add dozens of TB, dedicated quickly becomes way more expensive. Particularly given that I tend to park there old hard drives which cost I have already amortised.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  Well, up to a few dozens of TB hetzner will charge you €27 per month for each 22TB hard drive, so it's not that fast that colocation gets better.
  - cm2187 2y ago
    If you buy your drives smartly that's amortised after 8 months. When you are looking at the cost over 5 years, it is hard to beat colocation for specialised hardware.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      I'm ignoring upfront cost here, and going based on the premise of 100€-300€ as the monthly fee for colocation. You can't amortize your way out of that.
vidarh 2y ago
You're not really missing anything. Co-location has never scaled down to 1U very well, because of the overheads - you can't just let trust 40+ customers to slide their 1U server into the same rack without security concerns and/or losing lots of space, and having extra work with power distribution and networking that the customers themselves are responsible for with a full rack. Just access arrangement for 40x more customers adds up in admin overheads, and colocation isn't really a tech play as much as it's a real-estate play similar to parking where the goal is minimum effort rent-extraction with as little staff as possible...
- jve 2y ago
  We have colo starting from 1U/35€: https://delska.com/services/colocation-rack-rental/ https://delska.com/services/colocation-rack-rental/ - but that is for some non-power hungry <100W device. Then you buy increments of 100W power. Regarding security aspect, as for what customer can do: you can bring your device and put it in shared rack while support personnel accompanies you. Power/Ethernet and if keyboard/screen is needed will be managed/connected/wired only by support staff. One can rent a whole rack if you want dedicated access. And 1/2 or 1/4 racks are available if fullsize is not needed.
  - vidarh 2y ago
    That is making exactly the point I was making: That the price for 1U will tend to not be very competitive with renting dedicated servers (I can rent a server including hosting for that price) because the overheads to the provider of subdividing that 42U rack adds up. The point wasn't that the security can't be dealt with, but that dealing with it is one more thing that contributes to a higher cost per U if you rent 1U than if you rent quarter rack or more.
- AmericanChopper 2y ago
  A 1U can very easily contain 64+ physical cores, many TB of storage, and a few hundred GB of RAM. A 1U colo can be a great deal if you’re looking to use that much compute/storage. The admin for those arrangements is pretty simple really. Even if you’re providing supervised access, it’s not going to be much work. I run several small colo deployments like this, and I probably only visit the sites every couple of years.
consteval 2y ago
You're better off self-hosting if your needs are small enough you only require a single machine.

cm2187 2y ago

It depends what you do with it. If you only need a small VM to manage your emails nothing will beat a VPS. But I also use it for offsite backup, so need a bit of storage. When you add dozens of TB, dedicated quickly becomes way more expensive. Particularly given that I tend to park there old hard drives which cost I have already amortised.

Dylan16807 2y ago
Well, up to a few dozens of TB hetzner will charge you €27 per month for each 22TB hard drive, so it's not that fast that colocation gets better.
- cm2187 2y ago
  If you buy your drives smartly that's amortised after 8 months. When you are looking at the cost over 5 years, it is hard to beat colocation for specialised hardware.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    I'm ignoring upfront cost here, and going based on the premise of 100€-300€ as the monthly fee for colocation. You can't amortize your way out of that.

vidarh 2y ago

You're not really missing anything. Co-location has never scaled down to 1U very well, because of the overheads - you can't just let trust 40+ customers to slide their 1U server into the same rack without security concerns and/or losing lots of space, and having extra work with power distribution and networking that the customers themselves are responsible for with a full rack. Just access arrangement for 40x more customers adds up in admin overheads, and colocation isn't really a tech play as much as it's a real-estate play similar to parking where the goal is minimum effort rent-extraction with as little staff as possible...

jve 2y ago
We have colo starting from 1U/35€: https://delska.com/services/colocation-rack-rental/ https://delska.com/services/colocation-rack-rental/ - but that is for some non-power hungry <100W device. Then you buy increments of 100W power. Regarding security aspect, as for what customer can do: you can bring your device and put it in shared rack while support personnel accompanies you. Power/Ethernet and if keyboard/screen is needed will be managed/connected/wired only by support staff. One can rent a whole rack if you want dedicated access. And 1/2 or 1/4 racks are available if fullsize is not needed.
- vidarh 2y ago
  That is making exactly the point I was making: That the price for 1U will tend to not be very competitive with renting dedicated servers (I can rent a server including hosting for that price) because the overheads to the provider of subdividing that 42U rack adds up. The point wasn't that the security can't be dealt with, but that dealing with it is one more thing that contributes to a higher cost per U if you rent 1U than if you rent quarter rack or more.
AmericanChopper 2y ago
A 1U can very easily contain 64+ physical cores, many TB of storage, and a few hundred GB of RAM. A 1U colo can be a great deal if you’re looking to use that much compute/storage. The admin for those arrangements is pretty simple really. Even if you’re providing supervised access, it’s not going to be much work. I run several small colo deployments like this, and I probably only visit the sites every couple of years.

consteval 2y ago

You're better off self-hosting if your needs are small enough you only require a single machine.