Colo servers
I know literally nothing about rack gear or that part of the industry so be patient...
Recently discovered there is a colo location near me that has a 1U for about same price as a hetzner AX41. Around £40 with everything included. Didn't realize it's that cheap...
So started looking at refurb servers to see if I can DIY this. Dell R640s look pricey so tried R630.
Add some stuff that looks good but not to top end spec and we're up to £650. And I didn't even get SSDs for that...
To get a sense of power I looked up cpu selected (2x 14 core E5-2660 V4) on benchmarks. Combined those 28 cores of xeons get the same multicore score as my rapidly aging mid tier zen2 desktop 3600X, which is ~same as in the hetzners ax41 by chance. Ouch...
So I'd be spending £650 to get a server that equals the AX41 on multi cpu, and gets its ass kicked on ssd and single cpu.
I know on VPS side one can do virtualization and higher customer density, but on dedi side how on earth are people making the numbers work with this?!? Doesn't look even close...
To be clear not planning on starting a provider. I'm all good giving that stress a miss haha.
Dell PowerEdge R630 1U 8x 2.5"
2x Intel Xeon E5-2660 V4 - 14-Core 28-Threads 2.00GHz (3.20GHz Boost, 35MB Cache, 105W TDP
2x 32GB - DDR4 2666MHz (PC4-21300, 2Rx4)
H730 1GB NV (SAS/SATA) RAID Kit - 0/1/5/6/10/50/60
2x 300GB - SAS (10K, 6G) HDD - OEM
Plus some odds & ends
Comments
Generally speaking, it all scales (and gets more 'efficient') as you go up. While you might pay £40 for a 1U, my guess is that is something like 1A and a house-blend 1G drop (hit or miss on quality here). It's not a bad price, but usually the addons will get you--remote hands, a little extra power, better/more bandwidth, 2U, etc.
Also the pricing on that server is pretty awful compared to what I assume other hosts (besides us) are getting. Something of that tier (assuming 1U, no multi-node efficiencies, and non-bulk purchase) with specs like:
Should run you closer to ~$300 delivered. You can easily beat that with patience and shopping around, but that is a pretty repeatable number. You can do better with bulk purchases, multi-node chassis, liquidation sales, overstock/gov auctions (direct), etc
Single vs Multi-CPU is just always going to be a bit of a choice, or you're going to spend top dollar for the newest shiniest Genoa just to get to ~60-70% of a 7950X or close to a 5950X.
NVMe VPS | Ryzen 7950X VDS | Dedicated Servers -- Crunchbits.com
Jikes. Well that explains a lot.
Real pity that I can't retire my desktop gear into a colo.
...0.2amps on the £40 plan. Even at 220V that's a non-starter. Didn't even spot that initially
I think you still can colo your desktop with a right chassis.
The all seeing eye sees everything...
Wait, I don't get it. Why are you getting dual E5-2660v4 server for 650 while trying to essentially have an AX41? Why not just make your own AX41 with the same components basically for the same price, and then save a ton on power?
Chassis: Get an old server that's basically worthless except for the chassis and maybe power supply. $60
Fans: Get like two really powerful fans in the 5W to 10W range each. $25
CPU: Ryzen 5 3600 for around $60 used and a 1U heatsink for probably $30
RAM Varies the most probably based on where you live, the supply, and if you can find a good deal, but probably $180
Disk: 2x512GB NVMe SSD or 1x 1TB NVMe SSD for like $50
RAID: You can pick up something similar to the H730 for about $25
Crimper tool, etc: Optional but if you want to connect the cable and make it work with all the lights and everything else, and maybe USB adapter to work with the different motherboard and so on, probably $50 in miscellaneous accessories.
If my math is correct that leaves $170 for a motherboard and whatever else. You can pick up either a cheap motherboard that's workstation for maybe $70-120 (Asus Pro B550M-C/CSM) and then look into PiKVM if the parts are back in stock.
Of course maybe I forgot an important part that ruins everything but it seems do-able.
Okay so Hetzner probably did it with more expensive motherboards and maybe some more "enterprise" parts, let's say they spent $1000 on each server in bulk, and they put about 40 of them in a cabinet. They probably use about 100W each average so about 3 meggawatt-hour or so, and wholesale electricity rate in that area is currently about $100 per megawatt-hour. That's $300 a month for the power. I'd guess maybe another $200 a month for the transit but that could vary a lot. The rent for the cabinet ends up being maybe $50 a month share of their space but this could vary a lot.
I mean it's definitely doable at least at break-even costs and profitable in the long run, especially if they can do it better than my super ballpark estimate. They do also sell more expensive products so it's probably good to attract more customers with that introductory one and their server auctions.
No I meant the AX41 is roughly 40 bucks, and the colo fee was also roughly 40. That was the comparison. The one has no hardware though, so the comparison is really more:
AX41 ~40pm <<> colo 40pm + sizable once off hardware buy.
Which is what prompted me wondering how people are doing this profitably.
The E5-2660v4 was just me pricing something out to see what that once off number may be for something not entirely unusable.
Oh? Any more info on this. I do have a 3600X rig w/ 64gb that is due for retirement at some point...
That's pretty rough on power. If you can burst for boot-up or a split second, maybe not so bad (assuming 95th billing).
If you don't need more than 1 FHHL PCIe card, just look for any 1U rackmount chassis that accepts an ATX motherboard (assuming your desktop is mATX/ATX). If you need more PCIe devices, have to step into 2U-4U range. Athena and Chenbro are pretty common low-mid tier ones that are readily available and get the job done. Sometimes you can repurpose old gen Supermicro chassis and stuff like that which can be had for pennies. They're a little more fond of doing little things to make it 'proprietary' to stop you from recycling, but almost always a way around it or with a little ingenuity a way to make it work.
Edit: Forgot to add that unless you live very close to the datacenter or plan to not tinker, I highly recommend OOB management (BMC/IPMI) which will be on nearly all enterprise boards and products.
NVMe VPS | Ryzen 7950X VDS | Dedicated Servers -- Crunchbits.com
I think you still can colo your desktop with a right chassis.
What @crunchbits said. Also maybe stick a PiKVM in there.
The all seeing eye sees everything...
Thanks for the detail
hmm...so possible but not without a lot of planning. In the middle of London without a car too so this may be a bridge to far. Certainly not schlepping a heavy case through public transport.
Actually found a colo that will take towers but too far.
Wish I was in a location that was more favourable to having a large rack at home