Why Is Colo More Expensive Than Dedicated Hosting
Apr 25, 2009
For the last few weeks I have been looking around at various colo and dedi offers here and there because I was thinking of saving some money by colocating a server and I noticed that everyone who offers both colo and dedi have things fixed so that the colo is much more expensive than renting a dedi from the same people in the exact same datacenters!
You would think that since a brand new server costs between $500 and $2500 to build or buy that amortizing of the cost of the hardware would make the dedis more expensive but in fact the opposite is true 90% of the time and only rarely does a host offer a colo plan that even matches their dedi plans. There are exceptions, like FDC for example but most of the time when you sit down and look at the price per mbps and the price per amp the colocation for a standard 8GB/quadcore/500GB server doing 2 TB of bandwidth is more just in monthly rental than if you rented a dedi(that the company owns).
So, in other words if I am renting a dedi with 8GB RAM, Quadcore CPU, 500GB hard drive with 5000 GB bandwidth quota on a 100mbps uplink for $125 to $150 a month and I wanted to save money by swapping it out with my own dedi of the same specs I would right away lose the cost of the dedi and then each month lose even more just in the colo fees along.
So what exactly is going on here? Are hosts overselling their dedis and making losses on a few but profits on most? And then on top of that artificially bloating their colo prices to encourage people to rent dedis instead? Or...do they just bloat colo prices out of fear and expectation that anyone who colos will be blasting their servers to the max and sucking up the mostest amps while using all the bandwidth that they buy?
View 14 Replies
ADVERTISEMENT
Oct 19, 2007
This is probably a dumb question, but I've been curious about something. While shopping around for either a cheap dedicated server (less than $75/mo) or a cheap colo for a 1u server, I have noticed that the cheap dedicated servers are often less than a cheap colo, which seems odd to me since with a colo you bring your own machine.
For example, Sago Networks has cheap dedicateds for $50, $59, $79 etc. yet their cheapest colo option is $99. For Sago's $50 dedicated you get 1000GB transfer and 2 IP's, and with their $99 colo you get only get 100 GB transfer and 1 IP.
And Sago is not unusual in this respect. I've priced other providers that fall into this category and they have similar differences.
So why is colo more expensive than dedicated for similar, if not lower, features?
View 14 Replies
View Related
Jan 31, 2007
From reading these boards for a couple years now, I always had the impression that colo was cheapest in Texas or thereabouts, and was priciest in places like NYC. (Of course, I'm referring to relatively comparable service.)
Now I finally have a need for a single server colo (1U). The most-mentioned places in Texas on these boards are cologuys, colo4dallas, etc. Most of them have reasonable rates listed right on their website, around $100-170 for the bandwidth that I need, about 1.5Mbps.
But I've also been requesting quotes from various providers in NYC, who are also popular on these boards. And while there are some in the $200-250 range, which is what I was expecting, there are some that are mentioned highly on these boards (toqen, thenynoc, razorblue, etc.) that are quoting $60-100/month for the same amount of bandwidth.
I.e., not only comparable but in fact *lower* than the Texas colos.
What am I missing here? It's very possible that I'm comparing apples to oranges, cuz I really don't know any of these businesses. Just forming an opinion based on what gets recommended here on a consistent basis.
View 4 Replies
View Related
Sep 18, 2008
I wanted a completely fully managed server -- meaning everything is taken care of and I do not have to hire a server admin -- what would be the least expensive pricing from a reputable hosting provided?
View 14 Replies
View Related
May 2, 2008
I've been a colo since the beginning of time. My servers are getting old so I've started pricing options, and it looks like dedicated is the way to go today. But I'm not sure...
I suppose it depends on the host. My host says "if you're colo, we provide admin at an hourly rate. If your machine needs a reboot, call us and we reboot it. If you're dedicated we don't touch your server beyond repairing it. If it needs a reboot, you login to our site and click a link and it is rebooted."
That doesn't seem like much of a difference. I'd need an off-site admin, but both charge by the hour, so no big deal. A live person reboot seems no better than a web-based software reboot. In fact I'll wager that the "live person" just logs in and clicks the link for me.
Colo is about twice as expensive as dedicated. That seems like the only big difference.
It also seems to me that with today's cPanel-style admin it's trivial to migrate to a new host, so competition to keep clients is intense. I'm guessing that keeps prices down. Reading between the lines of what my host says, I can tell he doesn't really want me to go dedicated. He kinda said they don't make much money on dedicated machines.
View 6 Replies
View Related
Aug 18, 2008
I've been dealing with VPS and dedicated servers primarily.
Is there any benefit of switching to colocation? When should one consider switching to colocation? And should he at all?
View 9 Replies
View Related
Mar 12, 2008
I'm looking to get a 500mbps or a 1 gbps dedicated colo plan for 2 streaming servers.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Jul 18, 2007
I'm thinking of moving from a dedicated server to colocation. The two reasons for this are -
A. I'd like to actually own my server (considering a Dell rack.)
B. There seems to be a very big price difference between renting a high spec dedicated server and just having your own high spec server in a data centre.
My worries are as follows -
1. Should I install the new server in the data centre before putting Linux etc. on it? Or should I put everything I want on it before it goes to the data centre? Or do racks normally come with Linux pre-installed? I have no idea. What's the normal procedure for new servers?
2. Would it be easy/painless to transfer my websites from my current server to the new colo server? I rely on WHM/Cpanel for a lot of my admin work. I'm not useless, but I'm not good enough to manualy configure DNS etc. myself. Could one of the outsourced administration companies take care of all this for me?
View 14 Replies
View Related
Dec 31, 2007
I have been reviewing online price quotes for colo hosting and dedicated server hosting. To me, common sense would be that it would be less expensive to get a cheapo used server off of ebay and have it colocated. But what I am seeing is many instances where it would would actually be less expensive per month to rent a dedicated server (which might even be a better server) - including in some cases from the very same companies that offer the colo services. Is what I am seeing typical - and, if so, why is this the case? Is there an assumption that a colo customer will use more bandwidth than a typical dedicated server customer? Is the cost of servicing a colo customer significantly greater than that of a dedicated server customer?
View 7 Replies
View Related
Mar 22, 2007
We're currently with Rackspace with three dedicated boxes from them that we got several years ago. Rackspace has been a relativly good service for us up until last year.
Basically, the people before me were content with letting the servers sit there as they were loaded up more and more with virtual domains, more spam trap e-mail accounts and so on. Anyone who's been fourth in line will know the feeling.
Anyway, now that I am here, there are a lot of things that I'm finding we're paying Rackspace for that I could manage better on my own "if".
So, to cut costs, improve performance (we're still paying a premium price for machines that I've begun retiring from desktop usage) and generally give the webmaster more toys to tinker with, we've been discussing colocation of our own machines.
I've spoken to a LOT of people, having submitted Colotraq requests, googled, lurked on this forum (I've been a member for years, several times, actually) and discussed with friends and colleagues over IRC.
That said, I'm not finding a lot of "good options". Perhaps I'm a little biased, I've found a single host with just about everything I want, but due to a directive from my CEO, we can't use them.
Here I'll plug someone. One of the most attentive people I've ever met has been Dallas Kincaid of Xecu.net in Frederick MD. This man jumped through hoops to provide me information about his services, offered darn good rates and is generally a great person to deal with. The problem with using them is that one of our direct competitors, someone we've just ended years of litigation with, colocates with Xecu.net and I was barred from pursuing them as an option.
Anyway, here's what I require.
We currently run RHEL 2.1 AS, which needs being replaced, but as is the case in corporate settings, this has to be done gradually, without disturbing the delicate customers. On that system we've also got a slew of proprietary application that we're not willing to replace out right, but we plan to phase out over time in favor of Free Software offerings (some written in house).
I plan on running some kind of virtualization (not certain which yet, as there are pros for each) to keep these legacy systems in place while migrating our clients over as possible. Because I'm not sure what our needs in a year might be, we may deploy more VM's on the same physical machines.
A coloprovider with reasonable and abundant IP address policy and a TOS that allows virtual servers is a MUST.
One of our requirements is that the facility is in the general DC/Dulles area so that I may get to the server from my home or from work easily.
We also plan to utilize a dedicated firewall, a dedicated spam filtering appliance and a storage server. I have no problem paying for unused space if the price is reasonable, so colo providers selling 1/4 and 1/2 racks are fine even though we won't use it all.
Rackspace doesn't monitor 95th percentile bandwidth, so I'm not sure what I'd need if 95th percentile was used. However, the average monthly (combined) volume from our servers now is between 280 and 375 GB.
Does anybody here have experience with a provider they KNOW would meet my needs, so that I can compare pricing? If you've got kudos or horror stories, I'd like to hear those as well. I'm willing to overlook a reasonable price difference for good service, follow through or expertise.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Apr 7, 2009
I use shared web hosting service to get my website online. I'm wondering how many people use dedicated servers or virtual private servers instead and pay from $20 to several hundreds of dollars? Will I face any big problem with shared web hosting package which makes me choose dedicated servers?
View 14 Replies
View Related
Jan 21, 2007
Not sure if this is the right place for it but I am looking for a colo provider for a single server. My group is thinking about building a dual xeon clovertown server that we will be using to hosting multiple gaming servers. We currently have a server at The Planet but would like to get away from that since their high performance servers cost $300+ /month.
With that being said I will need somewhere to get the box coloed and having trouble finding providers that don't charge an arm and a leg for hosting.
I have admins in Las Vegas NV, Huston TX, and Memphis TN so anyone of those places I can get good latency too would be ideal.
The best deal so far I have found was colo4dallas that would cost us $100/month for colo and give us 200gig of bw but I would really like the server to be located in one of the cities I listed above incase something broke and we needed to send someone in.
View 2 Replies
View Related
May 22, 2007
Anyone here have a current server colocated at Surpass Hosting?
[url]
How happy are you colocating a server there?
Any gotchas that a new colo customer considering Surpass should watch out for?
View 2 Replies
View Related
Jun 5, 2008
I am used to paying costs such as $180 - $250 per month but my local colocation is charging $350 per month just for the bandwidth. Plus it is confusing how they price it they do not have a one set price for the whole month like normal hosts, they charge 1 MB per minute bandwidth average.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Mar 13, 2008
I've currently got a friend hosting me but I'm paying £5 ($10) per month ($120 per year) which is quite expensive for what I need.
I currently have two accounts- one personal FTP / Email and one shop where I'm selling CDs. So I need FTP / Email / and MySQL.
I'm winding down the CD store so I rarely get sales now, and I don't require much storage (couple of GB) or very much transfer at all.
Can anyone recommend a good host to me? I'm just looking for something reliable, the less expensive the better (Even free, if that's possible.)
I've been looking at Amazon's web services. Does anyone know if they're suitable for what I want? Their rates seem excellent.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Oct 6, 2009
I've been shopping for colocation (1U) in South Florida and the prices I've been getting were much higher then if I would just lease a server at a datacenter. I thought you could save alot of money since you are only leasing space and bandwith.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Aug 9, 2008
I'd really like to find a Hyper-V VPS provider (or a Xen/ESX provider) and I've been stunned thus far to see each provider charging more for Hyper-V than Virtuozzo (e.g.
VPSland and Crystal Tech.). Why does this surprise me? Well, Hyper-V is included with the OS, whereas Virtuozzo is an extra cost. You might say, "But yeah, Virtuozzo gets around having to have a separate license for each OS install since its actually just one OS." Actually, that's not true, Microsoft clarified their licensing position and said that each instance does need a license. I'm guessing most hosting providers know this...So why the price hike?
View 9 Replies
View Related
Apr 12, 2008
is Blue Square now starting to get too expensive for some if not most webhosts that dont already have a large customer base?
I can remember about 6 months or somthing back when rack space would to be around ~£580 for 42u but now its at £700 thats with 8amps and no transit.
Bluesquare is known to be a very good and still is a nice alternative than london, however I think now london has become a cheaper alternative, what do you guys and gals think?
Yes I understand the need to charge more as the data centre fills up to capacity, and to pay for BSQ3-4 which are opening soon etc but im just curious about what do people think etc, im not having a moan they do and still do a brilliant service regardless of price.
View 13 Replies
View Related
May 15, 2007
Ive been comparing prices from between montreal bandwidth and toronto bandwidth and i dont see why there is a HUGE difference in price.. Could anyone clear this up for me ?
I am looking to co-locate a server in the toronto area but everything is like $100 for ~160gig of monthly bandwidth.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Mar 26, 2009
Some information about my forum:
I run a VBulletin forum with - 575,614 post, 14,369 members and 2.9 million page views per month. On average there are 300 - 400 people on the site.
The server right now is a Linux CentOS VPS with 1.1 gigs of memory. The hosting provider keeps telling me that I need a dedicated server.
Question # 1 - In your opinion - do you think its time for a dedicated server?
The server I am looking at has these stats:
E8300
2 GB RAM
250GB HD
cPanel
Management
The price I was given is pretty good. So the offer is going to be hard to pass up.
Question # 2 - Has anyone here used Future Hosting for their dedicated server solution?
View 9 Replies
View Related
May 12, 2008
im planning to colo server at [url]
anyone here have any review about them
the main reason for going with them is im gonna choose hongkong data center and
warez are allowed in hongkong so thats why im preferring them , because many
of my hosting customer need to host warez.
so pls get me some Suggestion If You Have Better Options and also
reviews about them.
View 7 Replies
View Related
Aug 13, 2009
A major part of web hosts are running linux these days, with congestion control mechanism 2.6 kernel and windows 2008 are now able to get full speed over higher latency even 200+, with the DSL an all major part of countries access to internet has been easy.
Now question is how exactly an expensive carrier such as MCI/ATT can make a difference for a website. expensive i mean by anything over $10 per mbit. Am sure for things like mission critical, financial institutions and for websites who need reach for every corner of 3rd world countries would need the best of the breed bandwidth. ok for the others who is always a regular guy or small business, is the expensive provider worth it? am trying to find out. please write your opinions on cheap/medium/expensive providers worthness of using such.
Internap is whole different as it will make a bandwidth mix superior which bgp can not do.
View 6 Replies
View Related
Apr 22, 2008
I have a 1u server that I'm looking to colo. I looked around the forums but I can't seem to find exactly what I need.
I'd prefer if the hosting company was large, owned its own datacenter (as opposed to leasing), offered proactive (automated) monitoring services, remote reboot, and a superb network with little or no downtime.
I like liquidweb but it looks like they only have 500gb / month up and down or a dedicated line capped at 10mbps line. I need something in between, around 1000GB / month up and down with 100mbps port. Support doesn't really matter, nor does price.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Mar 16, 2008
I'm looking for a managed server (mid range specs) and approximately 20TB monthly bandwidth.
I'm looking for reasonably priced hosts, that have a reputation "very similiar" to Rackspace.com. I don't want to quite pay what Rackspace's pricing looks like. So, I'm looking for something slightly cheaper than Rackspcae, but that have a VERY good record for promptness in addressing issues and with proven uptime records.
So far I am considering Verio & The Planet. My knowledge of hosts beyond that is very limited. Please point me in the right direction as to where I can find hosts with SOLID records like Rackspace.com, but are slightly less expensive.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Feb 18, 2007
I currently run 16 boxes which I rent from various data centers, mark-up and resell. Conventional wisdom says that it's time for me to start colocating my own servers. I've got approval for capital (loan) so it's no problem for me to just buy these boxes and colo them. But... how the hell does anyone afford it?
I mean, I can get a cabinet in H.E. with 10Mbps burst to 100Mbps for $600/mo (through EGI). Which is an insanely good deal until you realize that it only includes 15amps of power. So (I think) that means that I can really only run about 15 or 20 Celerons at the most. So much for filling up the rack.
Optimistically, if I can run 20 Celerons which I've priced at about $700 each including shipping -- plus a switch, KVM, spare parts and bank interest over 24 months -- that's about $800/mo for the servers plus $600 for the cab, plus about $200/mo for remote hands in case I need the DC guys to do something. I'm looking at about $80/mo per server which I have to pay whether it's rented or not.
I can easily find celerons for $80/mo which include some level of support and I can very easily cancel whenever my client does and buy a fresh new one whenever I get a new client.
I was all excited to go colo -- but the numbers don't add up. What am I missing here? What's the big advantage to all the extra hassle of owning your own?
View 14 Replies
View Related
Mar 3, 2009
Is bandwidth going to be my most expensive cost if I open up a video hosting site? Is there a inexpensive alternative? Is there an inexpensive web host with low cost bandwidth allocation?
View 9 Replies
View Related
Dec 16, 2007
Please give me the difference. Colo in carrier hotel, we can choose our preferred network provider, but should we do that if we cannot have our own tech in datacenter? How about the supporting service from carrier hotel? Just general question, cause I dont address exactly which facility.
And the second would be more expensive? Saying the same number of rack, amount of bandwidth... Who is providing IP addresses then?
View 2 Replies
View Related
Jul 13, 2005
I am developing a website for a client of mine (the client is a close friend and know's that he is getting a newbie). This site will be larger (project wise) than anything that I have ever done (everything I have done in the past has been FrontPage). We will be using several third party applications that need to run on the server as well as our own custom developed applications. We do not yet know how much access to the server's deeper structures we will need for all of the applications that we want loaded on our server to run. Things we have in mind: oscommerce, mysql, php5, apache, linux, vbulletin, blogger, phpbb, adserver, ect... Would these things run ok on a shared host and would I have full authority to configure them without needing full access to the server? Or will I need access to the entire server (dedicated server) in order to have full customization capabilities? I guess all I am trying to figure out at this point is will shared hosting for a large project limit our abilities to use 3rd party apps, or do most 3rd party application designers build their stuff to work in a shared hosting environment anyway? If we need to get a dedicated server we will, but if we can get away with shared hosting for a while (especially during development when the site will not be generating revenue) it would be nice to avoid the price of a dedicated server. Many thanks for your comments, insight, and expertise! Also, if anyone can sight some common scenarios that may require a dedicated server over a shared hosting plan, that may help me to understand what the limitations of a shared hosting plan vs. a deicated or virtual dedicated server are.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Jun 13, 2008
I'm new to the VPS scene, so could someone tell me the difference between VPS and say shared hosting or dedicated hosting? Actually I really like to know what a Virtual Private Server actually is.. I know shared hosting is typically a single account on a server with several hundred other accounts which is used primarily for the sole purpose of hosting websites, and I know that dedicated hosting is functionally the same as colo except that you rent the server, instead of having your own purchased server plugged into some network. So what is VPS?
View 3 Replies
View Related
May 6, 2008
Do website builders generally go with shared hosting or dedicated server? I mean, if they work on several websites would they get a dedicated server instead of shared? From what I understand through reading shared hosting is basically if you only have one website. So one with multiple websites would go with a dedicated server?
View 12 Replies
View Related
Apr 22, 2007
I have a 'complex' situation, if you will. The site I run has free access to a variety of server hardware. Sitting under my desk, I currently have:
1. Dual Xeon 5345 (quad core, 2.33GHz) with 8GB memory, mid-tower
2. Quad Opteron 8xx (dual core, 2.2GHz) with 16GB memory, 3U
3. Dual Xeon 5160 (dual core, 3GHz) with 4GB memory, mid-tower
We also have the appropriate licenses for Windows and MSSQL (which is what we use).
I am currently on a shared host that we'd like to move away from. We would like to have the ability to run both a production and a development environment. We'd also like to be able to offer web-hosting to a couple of other small sites...
So what I'm wondering is whether it really makes sense to colo. Honestly, it seems like we'll get a lot more bang for our buck versus dedicated. Most dedicated servers that are under 200 could only be described as sad and pathetic. However, they may be enough for what we need....
View 8 Replies
View Related