5 ms·

As mentioned in the blog, "So many factors to consider!" Do your homework early and upfront even if planning to colo just an Atom or Soekris box. I can tell y

As mentioned in the blog, "So many factors to consider!" Do your homework early and upfront even if planning to colo just an Atom or Soekris box. I can tell you that moving many multiples of racked equipment via semi-truck from one datacenter to another is not an enjoyable experience. Ping - Power - Pipe : Ask everything you need. If a datacenter is unwilling to share or discuss who they are, what they do and what they offer then walk away. Colocation is a buyer beware environment. Here's a VERY ROUGH list/braindump of questions that AT THE VERY LEAST you need to know before placing equipment with the colocation provider/datacenter. Tier I,II,III, IV datacenter? Who owns the datacenter? Investors? What's your ASN number(s)? Carrier neutral facility? How many connectivity providers are present in the data center? Does data center run BGP over these providers? IP Transit providers - Bandwidth Pricing? Overage pricing? Straight $mbps/month? Who manages your network? Ip allotment? Assignment procedure? High density for micro vms(Heroku style)? 200 VMs per host meaning 200IPs per vm. Swip/rwhois updates on assignments? Cross-connects? Cross connect pricing? Charges? Local loop(last mile connectivity) charges? BGP support? Is our traffic on a private/separate v-lan from your other customers? Infrastructure? -Redundancy in detail -Brands -Networking -Connection -Power. Maintenance programs? A/B feeds from two separator breakers or breaker panels or better yet two Utility Power Service Provider if they are truly A/B feeds. A/B Diesel-Generators? Additional fuel storage on site? Is a PDU included? If so, how many outlets and is it accessible from the web or telnet? What type of hand off/drops to your rack will you be provided (Ethernet)? Are there raised floors? Are there any fire suppression systems in place? Physical/Video Security? Biometrics? Screening of employees? Insurance requirements to colocate equipment with you? On-site visit requirements? 24x7 staffing? Remote Hands - Cost and Abilities? What's included? Shipping/Receiving of hardware? Sas II 70 or SSAE 16 certification? Audit available for review? -Common practices -Staffing -Security -Emergencies - Escalations -Contacts Outage alerts? Notifications through Twitter or similar offsite status page? RFOs for past outages? What's been your corrective action? Power density per rack? 80% rule or true metered? Can you rack the equipment for us? Who provides cabling? Types of rails for servers? Billing-95th or other? Rack size? Partitioning available? 4u/10u/Quarter/Half? Cages? Lockable or baker's racks? Shared with others? Finally, ask for a listing of ALL fees.

wmf 14y ago
A perfect example of the time-wasting that he says you should avoid.
- justauser 14y ago
  Indeed and yet for someone who has been doing it for years, all of this can be identified in a matter of minutes. In the same vein, most programmers today don't need to know Assembly. It just depends on what you're trying to accomplish.
- merlincorey 14y ago
  Maybe for 1 or 2 servers in a quarter rack; but all of these questions and concerns are very salient if you are filling full rack(s) or cages and plan to get your own ASN and such (as any serious internet company should, since otherwise you are not PART OF THE INTERNET). Not getting the answers to these questions is the difference between quite a lot of pain, heartache, and money spent or having everything run (relatively) smoothly.
  - moe 14y ago
    I have to agree his list is a little unfortunate. It contains all the basic questions that you should ask (responsibilities/transits/power density etc.), but then also rather specialized things (PDUs, RFOs) that are a little over the top when you're going to rent half a rack without significant growth perspective. That said, the colo should indeed answer all these questions. It's just that most small shops will not be able to make sense of the answers... If you're a small shop looking to dip a toe into colo then a good summary question to ask is "Who else do you host?". If they have a few big-names to share then they'll probably be good enough for you, too. Ideally ask for permission to ring up one or two of their reference customers and then actually do that. Colos don't like that very much - but if they outright refuse then you'll know to better look at another one.
    - justauser 14y ago
      Ideally, most of this would be on a provider's website. Unfortunately, the NAPs of the world rely on multi-level sales staffing that present what they think is important(or differentiates them). The smaller colos who envision themselves the equivalent of the NAPs refrain from sharing much info as well and then the consumer ends up in a dim corner of "kinda/sorta generally acceptable commodity(service and quality) level colocation." It is then your burden to translate that to a customer why their LOLcats website is loading slowly for Uncle Bob. SLAs are hard and most providers treat them like a joke. If you're a startup and want to pass the buck, then just go with AWS. There is a solution for everyone.

wmf 14y ago

A perfect example of the time-wasting that he says you should avoid.

justauser 14y ago
Indeed and yet for someone who has been doing it for years, all of this can be identified in a matter of minutes. In the same vein, most programmers today don't need to know Assembly. It just depends on what you're trying to accomplish.
merlincorey 14y ago
Maybe for 1 or 2 servers in a quarter rack; but all of these questions and concerns are very salient if you are filling full rack(s) or cages and plan to get your own ASN and such (as any serious internet company should, since otherwise you are not PART OF THE INTERNET). Not getting the answers to these questions is the difference between quite a lot of pain, heartache, and money spent or having everything run (relatively) smoothly.
- moe 14y ago
  I have to agree his list is a little unfortunate. It contains all the basic questions that you should ask (responsibilities/transits/power density etc.), but then also rather specialized things (PDUs, RFOs) that are a little over the top when you're going to rent half a rack without significant growth perspective. That said, the colo should indeed answer all these questions. It's just that most small shops will not be able to make sense of the answers... If you're a small shop looking to dip a toe into colo then a good summary question to ask is "Who else do you host?". If they have a few big-names to share then they'll probably be good enough for you, too. Ideally ask for permission to ring up one or two of their reference customers and then actually do that. Colos don't like that very much - but if they outright refuse then you'll know to better look at another one.
  - justauser 14y ago
    Ideally, most of this would be on a provider's website. Unfortunately, the NAPs of the world rely on multi-level sales staffing that present what they think is important(or differentiates them). The smaller colos who envision themselves the equivalent of the NAPs refrain from sharing much info as well and then the consumer ends up in a dim corner of "kinda/sorta generally acceptable commodity(service and quality) level colocation." It is then your burden to translate that to a customer why their LOLcats website is loading slowly for Uncle Bob. SLAs are hard and most providers treat them like a joke. If you're a startup and want to pass the buck, then just go with AWS. There is a solution for everyone.