

NewServers: Bare Metal Cloud - z8000
http://newservers.com/
"The only server cloud that delivers dedicated servers instead of virtual instances on shared servers."
======
mattj
Doesn't softlayer (<http://softlayer.com/>) provide this same service?

~~~
joshfinnie
It is even called the same thing "Bare Metal Cloud™" And it seems as though
softlayer has a trademark on that... interesting!

<http://softlayer.com/cloudlayer_computing.html>

------
jrnkntl
Well, if the responsiveness of their website is representative for their
servers & service then I'll happily pass "NewServers".

~~~
blhack
Seems really snappy to me...I'm in Phoenix on Verizon.

I looked for a decently large file to download from their site, but couldn't
find one.

Granted, I'm used to dealing with VPS hosts like linode and slicehost; maybe
offering something like that isn't customary for hosts like this.

------
jcapote
<http://newservers.com/nap-of-the-americas.html>

They are hosted in NAP of the americas, which is based out of Miami,FL.

Not exactly the best place for a datacenter (except if you want extra low
latency to south/central america)

~~~
z8000
<http://www.cloudclimate.com/newservers>

"PING Times from Locations Around the Globe (48 Hours)"

------
sant0sk1
Is it just me or does that attractive, female customer service technician work
for a lot of companies..?

[https://support.newservers.com/themes/client_default/staffon...](https://support.newservers.com/themes/client_default/staffonline.gif)

~~~
jrwoodruff
Headset hottie. Every business targeted at geeks must have one.

------
pierrefar
I don't understand it because their content is very Buzzword Compliant, but
this is what I can gather: they sell you dedicated servers billed hourly and
provisioned quickly, much like a cloud provider.

~~~
peterwwillis
It's a cloud provider that doesn't use Virtualization. You don't need Xen or
OpenVZ to have a handful of boxes and an API to address them as a distributed
redundant machines. (Does anyone even know what Beowulf clusters are anymore?)

~~~
pierrefar
Oh man, that's a blast from the past. Haven't use a Beowulf since my PhD days
5 years ago. Thanks for that.

------
mrkurt
That's a pretty cool setup, really. I almost made an ass of myself by saying
"they should be using blade servers" when they are, in fact, using blade
servers.

I would really, really like to know how the power density of blades like this
compares to the potential power density of hefty machines running virtual
instances. If you can get close with dedicated blades, something like this
would make a really desirable (and sustainable) premium "cloud" offering.

------
ErrantX
I dont see the niche myself..

If you want instant provisioning and scalability then use the cloud. If you
want dedicated servers, well, buy a dedicated.

~~~
z8000
I became interested in NewServers while looking for affordable dedicated
server hosting providers. I am personally less interested in "cloud"
scalability for my pet project, and more in getting a "decent" quality
dedicated server or 3 for a "decent" price (lots of hand-waving here I know).
That is, I find EC2 to be "expensive" for what I want; I'm not super
profitable yet in my tiny little startup so saving money yet maximizing server
performance at the same time is the tradeoff I'm researching.

I have not found any hosting providers besides NewServers that are as
affordable for "lots" of RAM. Also, NewServers' bandwidth quota is 3GB/hr with
$0.10/GB overage.

NewServers offers add-ons like extra RAM. These require maybe a couple of days
but for me, I don't need pure cloud scalability in minutes. I just want a few
cheap dedicated servers.

Consider this configuration;

    
    
               Intel Processor           Cores  RAM  HDD                    Price/Hour
        Jumbo  2 x E5405 Quad Core 2Ghz  8      8GB  2 x 500GB SATA RAID 1  $0.38
    

An always-on Jumbo is thus:

    
    
        Jumbo = 720*0.38 = $273.60/month
    

RAM add-ons:

    
    
        8GB     $0.04/hr    720*0.04 = $28.80/mo. more
        16GB    $0.08/hr    720*0.08 = $57.60/mo. more
        24GB    $0.12/hr    720*0.12 = $86.40/mo. more 
        32GB    $0.16/hr    720*0.16 = $115.20/mo. more
    

Thus, a Jumbo with 24GB RAM = $273.60 + $86.40 = $360.0/month with _lots_ of
bandwidth transfer.

Compared with something like EC2, this is a no-brainer on the cost front,
_provided_ you do not need the other Amazon features... (I don't, but that
should be made clear).

Also, I talked with Alex at NewServers and their turnaround time for
provisioning servers with the above add-ons is "2 or 3 days". Good? Bad?
That's fine _for me_ but do note that servers with add-ons are not provisioned
on the order of minutes but days.

Thoughts? What am I not considering but should be?

~~~
ErrantX
Well the prices didnt look very great to me.

For example I rent a few UK based dedicated servers which cost me (converting
in my head here) $150-$190 a month. Specs are similar to their Fast package
but with 8GB of RAM and unlimited bandwidth.

That is around average price here in the UK; I assumed things were similar in
the states, but I guess not?

------
z8000
FWIW

    
    
        We do not keep any servers unused, all servers are recycled 
        and added to queue so the customers have equal rights to get 
        them... and we cannot keep them reserved because of the costs... 
        instead you should consider leasing them for longer periods 
        so you have them available.

~~~
z8000
Also, random comparison of Redis performance on NewServer vs a Linode
(dedicated vs VPS):

<https://gist.github.com/e115e1f62f5f5bad55ee>

------
z8000
"The only server cloud that delivers dedicated servers instead of virtual
instances on shared servers."

------
dnsworks
I interviewed these guys at Structure 2008 for my blog. They were pretty nice
and rather reasonable people. They seemed to have an understanding of their
strengths and weaknesses. To be fair, they're not targeted at the Web 2.0
market that EC2 has targeted. They're more suited as an alternative to
dedicated servers, and seemed to be targeting traditional businesses who are
bad at capacity planning.

<http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/29307> was the interview if
anyone's interested.

~~~
z8000
Could you elaborate on your comment about targeting companies bad at capacity
planning? I did not get that from the interview at least. Also, I am
considering using them and wonder how I might be implicitly bad at capacity
planning :)

~~~
dnsworks
Forgive me, I'm a much better technologist than I am a blogger .. Hence the
sparse number of entries on my blog!

In general, I feel that the whole EC2/instant provisioning model of servers,
which for any moderate (10+ serverS) application tends to be far more
expensive than owning your own hardware over the long run, is a sign of an
infrastructure that either does not excel at capacity planning, or that is
unable to plan for capacity.

