

Ask YC: Colocation? - reidman

Anyone have recommendations/information for US colocation outside of California or the east coast?<p>A resource which plots backbone servers and major datacenters on a geographical map would be especially helpful. The only two half-decent (emphasis on 'half') resources we've found so far are:<p>http://www.colotraq.com
http://www.datacentermap.com<p>It would be nice if there was a Google Maps mashup or something better than DataCenterMap, but apparently that is (was?) considered a part of our nation's obscurity plan:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23689-2003Jul7
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reidman
Some additional info/clarification:

Several of us who are involved with the business are going to be moving, and
it would be nice to know what kind of facilities will be nearby. The reason
we're not looking at CA or east coast is purely preference, though I should
note that Oregon/Washington are fair game.

For the record, we've been running on dedicated servers for almost 10 years
now, and since we finally got around to making a business out of it we're
looking at our upgrade options.

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iigs
That Washington Post article is excellent. It's too bad the student undertook
it so close after 9/11... it would have probably been much better received,
and perhaps even productized, today. I suspect he could tell a lot of large
corporations things about their exposure that they didn't know.

On the topic of hosting, you don't say why you're not satisfied with the
coasts, so I can't qualify my suggestions. Here are some unordered thoughts,
perhaps they will send you the right direction:

1) Without doing a detailed analysis, I'd guess that Dallas is probably the
best location to host a server outside of the Pacific/Eastern timezones. There
are some very large colo centers (the infomart, <http://www.infomartusa.com/>
comes to mind) that resell space to large carriers/providers. Many providers
peer with each other in these spaces, which is the internet equivalent of
being at an intersection. Even if you don't colo at one of these centers ($$$)
you're bound to reap the benefits from this, as your traffic will likely end
up backhauled to a place like this anyway.

2) If you're talking about a decent amount of capacity (more than a couple
rack-U or more than about a T1 of bandwidth) call a couple carriers and ask
for maps. Sales often has maps / diagrams that are a little more detailed than
the stuff you can find on carrier sites, and they'll generally be happy to
give you some suggestions for spaces in the area that are served by their
products (i.e. where they terminate).

3) Unless you're solving for a specific problem the variability of individual
colo providers generally outweighs the differences in locations. That is to
say, you'd be better served by a well run provider in your home city than a
bunch of imbeciles 5ms from a PAIX peering point. Don't over-think the
physical facility/location aspects.

~~~
reidman
"Don't over-think the physical facility/location aspects."

Excellent advice! And, incidentally, Dallas was one of the places I was
looking at, so it's good to hear that it's well-connected.

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bjclark
I used to be a customer of Data393 in Denver. Infact, there's quite a few good
DC's in Denver. Data393 (data393.com) Via West (which has 2 more in SLC and 1
in Las Vegas) Internap (<http://www.internap.com/contactus/seo/page964.html>)

There is also ThePlanet in Dallas/Houston There is the DC in St. Louis that
slicehost is in, I'm sure you could colo there, no idea the name.

There's ALOT of datacenters out there and most of them will deal on the
cabinet level and up.

www.webhostingtalk.com is the best place for this stuff though.

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TheBosch
I've been with GNAX / Net Depot for the last few years. You can co-locate
there and the service has been rock solid apart from a lightning strike
DIRECTLY on a transformer. But they have dual power inputs and gas backups on
site. They're located in Atalanta.

<http://gnax.com> <http://gnax.com/network.php#gold> <http://netdepot.com>
(send an e-mail and ask about colo as this is the dedicated renting site they
run)

Also, if you're looking for more info check out the Colo forum on Web Hosting
Talk:

<http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=44>

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mileszs
<http://nframe.com> hosted Monster.com (or part of it), until they chose to
open their own facility. Finish Line is a colo customer, ChaCha is a customer,
as well as many others. It is located a couple miles north of Indianapolis.

nFrame is owned by Continental Broadband, who also owns Expedient data centers
(Boston, Pittsburgh, Cleveland), as well as DCs in Chicago, and a few others.
<http://continentalbroadband.com>

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raamdev
I use LiquidWeb (<http://liquidweb.com>) for managed servers, although they
also offer colocation. Their datacenter is entirely self-owned and their
technical support is outstanding. They always have very helpful, very
knowledgeable technical people on-hand, at any hour. They're located in
Lansing, MI.

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davidw
Why not just use something like linode?

~~~
reidman
We've been on dedicated servers for a long time, and we're at a point where
cost-efficiency and flexibility are our two biggest factors.

We're expecting pretty linear growth, so scaling isn't a huge deal. Up until
now we would regularly switch to a better server, stay there until we outgrew
it, and then jump again. It's kept us relatively lean/current and our costs
have stayed low as the cost/quality of hosting has changed (and we've gotten
better at sniffing out good hosts).

Places like linode and slicehost would have been decent options in the past,
but we serve 1-2 TB of data each month, so we like to have lots of bandwidth
available. And while many dedicated servers offer that, our server admin is
pretty picky about the hardware, so she'd like to be able to manage it on her
own.

Out of curiosity, how easy is it to 'hook up' two separate Xen instances,
assuming Xen is what slicehost and Linode run on? I'm not a server guy, but I
actually share a slicehost plan (separate from this particular venture) with
one of our fellow News.YC hackers, so I'm familiar with how excellent the
company/service is. If they're really that easy to connect/scale then it might
be worth the extra cost...

~~~
mileszs
There's a story about a site named FaceStat that was linked on the front page
of Yahoo! one day, and had to spin up several Slicehost slices, complete with
load balancing and all (or most) of the trimmings. Unfortunately, the admin's
site is suspended by bluehost (or someone), and I don't remember the details.
Here's a post by Slicehost that is related:
[http://www.slicehost.com/articles/2008/6/4/facestat-
scales-f...](http://www.slicehost.com/articles/2008/6/4/facestat-scales-fast-
for-yahoo-traffic)

It is definitely possible to create a VPS-based system to replace your
dedicated servers. In fact, that is the direction a lot of people are going,
because it's relatively cheap to spin up a new VPS to scale horizontally, as
opposed to purchasing a new server. Without knowing what your needs are in
more detail, I couldn't say with any confidence whether Slicehost or Linode
would work for you, or something else.

Do note that many traditional datacenters are starting to offer some sort of
"cloud" solution, or at least some solution involving virtual machines that
they have made sure involves the word "cloud", for the buzz factor. So, you
could find a reliable colo facility, and work with them to migrate to a VPS-
like solution.

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staunch
If you're more concerned with quality than cost you can't go wrong with
Equinix. They're carrier neutral and extremely well connected.

<http://equinix.com/equinix/locations/map/northamerica/>

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Tangurena
I recently went on a "plant trip" to visit our local ViaWest datacenter. From
memory, their facilities are mostly in CO, UT and TX. It looks like they want
to sell managed hosting mostly, but they also have a lot of colocation.

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blender
BlueLock:

<http://bluelock.com/solutions/hosting/sharedhosting.html>

They are in Indianapolis and Salt Lake City.

Cheers

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epi0Bauqu
<http://www.ilandinternet.com/>

Resells level3 space on the cheap. Had great experiences with them in Boston,
but they have data centers all over.

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mleonhard
I don't think colocation is worth the hassle. Datacenter operations teams can
manage hardware much more efficiently than any small company can.

