

$4.50/Month SheevaPlug Dedicated Server ($140 Setup) - codemechanic
http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/pluggr-info-4-50month-sheevaplug-dedicated-server-140-setup/

======
lambda
I like the effort they go through in the comment thread to discuss the
performance, power draw, etc. compared to a VPS. For instance, a VPS appears
to draw 56 watts per user, while the SheevaPlug plus disk at high load draw
only 20 watts; a pretty nice power savings.

From the site <http://pluggr.info/#ps>

"Please note that TonidoPlugs installed on our network have the torrent
functionality disabled, as it is a violation of our AUP to download torrents
via our network."

Sigh. I know why they do this, but I will not host on a network that forbids a
protocol just because some people use it for unsavory purposes. I like to
transfer free software and creative commons licenses work using Bittorrent; I
should be able to do that on my own server, and if they want to charge me for
the bandwidth usage, that's fine, but they shouldn't just ban it outright.
Also odd that they don't actually mention this on their AUP
<http://pluggr.info/#tos> but they do seem to forbid running IRC servers for
some reason.

~~~
ciupicri
AUP = Acceptable use policy? I'm beginning to hate acronyms from the bottom of
my heart.

~~~
LookingToBuy
When I first saw this, I felt gutted. Having quickly record the coating whilst
waiting for this pathetic ryanair flight get boarded, I feel better knowing I
have just got a fantastic deal on my VPS. Won't mention the company here
unless asked to, cost is just £10/ month.

------
stcredzero
A lot of enterprises could store all of their non-image/multimedia data on a
single 160GB server. This could be particularly true of illegal enterprises.

A bunch of SheevaPlugs connected to 2G or 3G wireless could be used to host a
distributed low bandwidth "darknet" against the wishes of a local government.
A simple peripheral with a mercury switch and a very limited UPS capacity
could hold a symmetric encryption key for the hard drive. Movement of the
physical device could trigger the erasure of the encryption key, requiring
human intervention to restart, reformat, and reconnect the SheevaPlug to the
darknet.

~~~
pyre
Issues with that:

* 2G or 3G wireless would be attached to someone's account (i.e. associated with a person).

* The authorities could just access the contents of the drive to see what is on it. (though this would obviously mean infiltrating the darknet)

It would probably be easier to setup something like this hooked into the
internet at some private business. Stick it under a desk or above the ceiling
tiles and just plug it directly into the local network. That way they would
have a hard time proving who put it there (unless it was hooked into something
that required special access.... but even then if you could gain access
without being one of the people that has access, it would throw them even
further off your 'trail').

~~~
stcredzero
_2G or 3G wireless would be attached to someone's account (i.e. associated
with a person)._

Easily solvable with shills or shell corporations. Think about the options of
the authorities in the US. Police would have to get a search warrant. Which
address are they going to get a search warrant for? The shill/shell company
might have nothing to do with the whole thing other than maintaining the 3G
accounts.

 _The authorities could just access the contents of the drive to see what is
on it. (though this would obviously mean infiltrating the darknet)_

This might also mean infiltrating the organization to get access to the
darknet. This would seem to indicate that the level of physical security I'm
suggesting is commensurate to the task.

 _It would probably be easier to setup something like this hooked into the
internet at some private business. Stick it under a desk or above the ceiling
tiles and just plug it directly into the local network._

That's exactly what I'm thinking of! That would be another viable option for
hosting such a device.

~~~
jacquesm
Shell companies will have people on the board as well. If it was that easy to
have a corporate cover for a an illegal business there would be many more than
there are today.

Drug trade and other illegal stuff is 'cash only' for a reason, you don't want
a paper trail.

And places that hand out IP numbers to unknown MAC addresses should get a
better network administrator.

~~~
tbrownaw
> And places that hand out IP numbers to unknown MAC addresses should get a
> better network administrator.

What about coffee shops, hotels, libraries, etc that offer free wireless?

Hm. Build one with a solar panel and get it onto the roof of your local
starbucks.

~~~
stcredzero
Pay off a barista and have them put a nondescript box somewhere out of sight
but plugged in to the wall.

~~~
chopsueyar
Hey, Barista!

Open these ports on your firewall, please.

~~~
stcredzero
Not reading the whole thread, I see. The 3G version would just require someone
to plug it in, no fiddling required.

------
ShabbyDoo
What are the use cases for this device which are not covered by either (1) an
EC2 "micro" instance ($82 up front + $0.007/hour * 3 years * 365 days * 24
hours/day == $7.38/month) or (2) a small form factor server in my home? If we
ignore the toy/coolness factor of having such a small form factor device, are
there any compelling use cases? I can't think of any.

~~~
pyre
Well, the advantage being that your home connection probably isn't the same,
plus you don't have support people whose job it is to keep your home server up
and running.

e.g. Say you're away from home, need something off the server, and it goes
down. With this, you can call support and probably have it up and running
again.

~~~
ShabbyDoo
I get the need for a local server if you need low latency/high bandwidth
and/or lots of storage. However, for what percentage of those use cases would
the user not be happier spending a bit more for something beefier? Why is the
form factor so appealing? Even those in a NYC studio could find somewhere to
stash a larger server. If the device is being used to serve media, it will
have a bunch of external drives dangling from it anyway.

The managed vs. unmanaged question seems important but mostly orthogonal to
locality and form factor. And, Dropbox has proven that the local/remote Hybrid
is valuable (along with management). Although the form factor is novel, I
don't think it's significant for those who only care about the benefits of a
piece of technology.

Maybe the world needs more managed services for the individual/household? I
posted a "Tell HN" a few months ago about my desire for a managed router, so I
guess I've already made this claim:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1160585>

------
pyre
For the $140 setup fee, I better own that SheevaPlug after I discontinue
service... I would feel pretty ripped off if I didn't, and they just handed
'my' SheevaPlug to the next guy that was paying the $140 setup fee.

~~~
dawson
You do, shipping fee $8 <http://pluggr.info/#tos>

------
mkramlich
I pictured a data center full of nothing but wall outlets.

~~~
mhd
You're a better man than I. The first thing that popped into my mine was a
room full of daisy-chained power strips.

I wonder what people are going to do with this. Reminds me a bit of the day
when the Mac Mini was coming out, and immediately a lot of colocation offers
were coming up.

Well, according to some RiscOS programmers I once knew, ARM assembly is quite
pleasant, one of them even preferred it to 68k. So let's see what people can
eke out of a system like this.

~~~
iuguy
ARM Assembly (with the exception of TDMI) is an absolute dream compared to
68k, Sparc, MIPS or x86. Instructions are fixed to 32 bits so everything (in
theory) should line up nicely, the predication functions are way better than
using flags and cmp-type instructions and the pipelining is much better.

Having said that, I wouldn't want to write a web app in ARM asm, I'd much
rather use Python or Ruby.

------
latch
Looks like Tonido (the maker of the hardware) is looking to get directly into
the hosting business, at the somewhat ridiculous price of $20/month:
<http://www.tonido.com/tonidocloud_what.html>

~~~
ab2525
Well, they rebrand SheevaPlugs as TonidoPlugs and install their cloud suite of
software on them. (We host both at Pluggr)

------
8ren
I thought this was going to be a joke, and that actually you buy a Sheeva and
plug it in at home. I don't think you can yet buy connectivity so cheaply, but
if you consider it as a fraction of your existing connection... + electricity
cost per month.

Of course, there are advantages for managed, off-site servers. And I applaud
<http://pluggr.info> for kicking it off. It may not be the ideal deal, but it
may (who knows?) exactly suit some niche, well enough, that's big enough - and
that is all that matters at this stage.

I think businesses would go more for not owning the Sheeva, and instead paying
less, and also getting automatic "free upgrades" when the next performance
level comes out (in the next 3 minutes.) That's a different organization of
costs and finances for pluggr.info, which probably doesn't suit them (yet),
but which I think would be more profitable both for them and for (business)
customers. But if you got a niche, you got a niche, and you've gotta start
somewhere! I hope these goes well for them.

------
jwdunne
I wouldn't bother with this at the current minute. I purchased a SheevaPlug
Colocation off Pluggr a couple of days after this was posted.

I was told it would be set up on the Friday after. Didn't happen. UPS lost
some shipment items in the post.

I was told it would be set up soon. Last Saturday comes round and AGAIN, UPS
lost the shipment. They then said that they were going to use FedEx instead
now.

Received an email this morning saying that they can't install my plug because
there's no enough room in the data centre and are now sending me the Plug and
external HDD through the post, which is probably fair. I'm still wondering
WHAT the hell I'm going to do with it using my ridiculously slow internet
connection.

I think the offer is a bit too good to be completely true. Maybe in a few
months, when they're earning a bit more money, they can offer more services
but until then, I don't think you're going to have much luck. It looks like
they've disabled the order form anyway.

------
telemachos
A side-question, but does anyone have recommendations about where to buy a
Sheeva or Guru plug in the US? (The primary seller I can find[1] has a
perpetual 4 week wait for all items, and that worries me.)

[1] <http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/>

~~~
ab2525
We (Pluggr) get ours from RainmanWeather in Florida. (Only SheevaPlugs though)

------
illumen
I've been looking for a 1TB drive connected to one.

I'd probably also want eSATA, since the hardware supports it, and you get way
better speed, and way less cpu usage.

The no bittorrent, and no IRC turn me off. Why should the provider be messing
around with the data coming in and out of my network? Both I've HAD to use on
occasion on my servers. I do understand that it would reduce the amount of bad
activity happening on their networks though.

I'm still bookmarking it for next time I want to evaluate hosting providers.

------
easp
Anyone remember the colo providers offering hosting for your cobalt qube?

------
motters
Being subject to non-torrenting, non-IRCing AUPs and other such nonsense would
seem to negate the chief advantages of something like the SheevaPlug. If
you're familiar with linux server configuration it's not any big deal to keep
your plug at home.

If you're running a commercial web site with many users then obviously the
SheevaPlug would be a poor choice, but for things like hosting your personal
web site or blog it's perfectly adequate, and unless you make a complete hash
of it maintenance is extremely minimal.

------
Osiris
In the comments someone mentions BuyVM and their VM setups with 512MB RAM, 2
CPU cores, and 50GB space are just $6.00/mn. It seems to me that's a much
better deal.

Has anyone else had experience with BuyVM? It seems really quite inexpensive.

~~~
rb2k_
I only use a BuyVM VPS it to run a cheap (15 usd/yr) VPN that allows me to do
things that usually are restricted to US IPs . I bought it as a replacement
for another VPS I have, but I was too lazy so far to complete the setup, so I
can't guarantee for it.

Their VPS boxes "come with the ability to run OpenVPN, PPTP, GRE and SIT
tunnels by default". I've had a harder time setting up the traffic forwarding
than I did on a XEN box, but I'm not particularly good with VPN
technologies...

In general, the whole process was pretty painless... An interesting bonus:
They have a pretty active IRC channel

------
aberkowitz
"Setup Fee" should be changed to "Purchase Fee" for clarity's sake. The setup
fee of a typical webhost is for configuration (plugging in, making accessible
to the world) exclusively.

------
Groxx
>* Thou shalt not host IRC servers

Thou shall be permitted to run IRC clients (and bnc/eggdrop)*

d'awww. Any reason why not?

~~~
pyre
Maybe they monitor the network for IRC traffic in an effort to detect rooted
boxes? (though that seems like a lame/hackety solution)

~~~
sbierwagen
IRC servers tend to draw DDOSes like honey draws bears.

That and if the admins aren't paying attention, someone will use it for botnet
C^3.

~~~
lhnn
Just get that node.js chat server running on your sheevaplug... nowadays there
are many new architectural iterations of IRC.

Same with BitTorrent... I wonder how they filter that. What if I set up an
Anomos server?

<http://anomos.info/>

~~~
pyre

      > Just get that node.js chat server running on your sheevaplug...
      > nowadays there are many new architectural iterations of IRC.
    

Are you saying this would prevent DDoS's or are you stating this as a 'sneaky'
way of getting an IRC server installed that the hosting provider might not
notice.

------
lzw
I'm still reading up on this, but I'm very curious as to the tradeoffs between
this and a Linode or Slicehost or other VPS system. Seems this would have the
advantage of a lot more capacity, and while I'm not sure of the performance of
the CPU it should be essentially guaranteed. If you just keep it for a year,
and consider the $140 for the plug a total write off, this comes to about $16
a month.

Is this a good deal compared to VPS offerings? It seems like it would have to
be, unless the CPU is very slow.

Amazon micro instances are close, but you can't run a web service from them
since they can lose their CPU for seconds at a time (as I understand it.)

------
gcb
it's actually 8/mo (or 4.5/mo + $?.?? '1gb nfs' that i haven't find the price
for yet.)

useful for that hack-y site that you currently host on your home connection.

*edit. found on the order page only. it's $22/mo for "raid 6 NFS mount"

