Cheap Colocation as Cloud Alternative

High-Performance Computing Workstations & Servers
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So I am looking into getting a NAS or server of some sort, but I have one issue: I can’t guarantee I will live in one location continuously for it to be always up and reliable. Basically, for a variety of reasons, I can’t self-host at home.

I am looking into colocation of some sort. Is anything like that available to individuals (not just businesses)? It seems like if I can buy a $300 server on ebay (dual PSU, tons of cores and RAM, add my own HDDs), and pay like $50/mo for rack space then that is infinitely cheaper than the $150+ per month for like 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, and 1 TB of HDD on a VPS. Obviously there are downsides, like no physical access, if hardware fails idk what happens, no automated backups, etc, etc…but it’s so much cheaper.

I guess the cheapest colocation is to pay a friend for internet+power, but then I may not have a static IP or good internet.

Is there another cheap way to do it?

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Collocation and your own equipment is a nice thing, but it very quickly becomes cumbersome if you do not have the time and resources for it.
If you travel a lot or change your place of stay more randomly, then the collocation will be a bit uncomfortable. Visits to DC as well as aging equipment and possible faults. Are you ready for this?

Perhaps a better solution for you would be to rent a dedicated server for x / month.
The need to worry about aging equipment and breakdowns is gone. No visits to DC required.

A lot also depends on what you mean by collocation.
Professional colocation in a large T1 data center is not cheap at all. Is there a DC in your area? Or will you go with the server some miles / kilometers.
Cheap little DCs may promise miracles, but things can be different. I once had experience with a small company in Amsterdam that dealt with colocation. They were cheap but quality and professionalism at the floor level.
Notorious power problems and uplink downs and the icing on the cake was one day moving the entire data center to a new location without informing the people who rent the collocations. It was a pure coincidence that that day I went to visit DC because I had a job to do and I saw my two racks standing on a forklift truck just disconnected.

So since 2008, wherever I can, I try to rent dedicated machines and avoid my own equipment in collocation … Especially when you have a lot of it and in several locations around the world. Traveling DC to replace parts in times of pandemic can be problematic. Of course, in good DC you can always hire remote hands, but not everyone likes a random technician touching your server.

The cheapest thing would be to have someone who will give you a little space in the building, electricity and good quality internet, especially important upload. I do this for the NAS on Odroid HC2.

It all depends on your needs and financial possibilities as well as your preferred location in the world.

https://www.kimsufi.com/us/en/servers.xml
https://www.soyoustart.com/us/essential-servers/

For $29.99 / month you can have a server located in France / Canada with a symmetric 100Mbps.
Intel Xeon W3520 4c / 8t 2.66GHz
32GB DDR3 ECC 1333MHz
SoftRaid 2x2TB

Or

$5.99 / month for
Intel Atom N2800 2c / 4t 1.86GHz
4GB DDR3 1066 MHZ
1TB

PS
Most professional DCs will not want to talk to an individual, especially when you want a single U, you must have a company.

PS2
Such a price for a VPS with such parameters is probably the location USA? :slight_smile:

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Yeah I guess not

I will look into that.

Huh I did not know that. That is highly unfortunate :cry:

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Rent a kimsufi server for one month at least this cheap one for $6 + $11-20 one-time activation and test it. Depending on where you are closer to, choose France or Canada.
Do a test to see if 100Mb/s in this location is something that will suit you ping / speed.
After that, it is a matter of choosing the HDD and CPU / RAM to suit your needs.

Generally, no matter what company you choose, renting bare metal will probably be a better solution for you than your own server in colocation. And better than most VPS where price / performance and metal sharing are not optimal.

Remember that the price of collocation does not always include electricity and uplink. Some DCs count these costs separately from the cost of rack space.

When you sum up the cost of buying the server and HDD plus a few spare ones and add the cost of collocation and electricity / uplink where the prices are not “soho”, it may turn out that it will not come out cheaply per year.
As I mentioned before … You have to go to the data center and install the server, then you have to go to DC if something stops working in the server or pay for remote hands, provided that DC has such an offer.
And what in 2/4 years, when the equipment is old, will not be a problem for you? What about a HDD that may refuse to go to work one day? It’s all on your mind, both in terms of finance and logistics.
Add that specific location. Where would you like to have this server … close to your location? At the end of the country? Maybe a different continent? If you absolutely want DC, you have to check what is available in your area, but it may turn out that the nearest location may be quite a bit away from you.

So in conclusion, I’m not sure if it’s worth the effort for one server that would act as a home NAS or something like that. Rather, it will be art for art.

A more convenient solution is to rent bare metal, definitely not VPS or some cheap clouds …
Server crashes are not your problem, but the rental company, and in the future as the equipment becomes old and there is a new offer, you can quickly change the server.

Speaking of kimsufi, I have personally used them many times over the years and still have a few machines from them. It’s an OVH sub brand. You get what you pay, which is the minimum, but they are usually ok.

Alternatively, buy some Odroid HC2 and a large HDDs and place them with family / friends …

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This is similar to the approach I’ve taken, except I’ve gone for data redundancy as a primary goal. The family get the benefit of being able to stream video from a distributed storage pool. While also having a device that will backup their phones (and other devices) both locally and sync across all nodes.

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