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Caveat emptor ( buyer beware)

Posted on June 1, 2009
Filed Under General |

Have you seen those adverts on the web or in the internet mags advertising server co-location. Co-location is where you pay a company to place your server on the internet in a data center. You pay a monthly or fee and you may sometimes a setup fee. Just like a mobile phone, different tarrifs are available, depending on your requirements. These are the key variables which will affect your pricing.

Bandwidth
Size, 1U, 2U etc
Additional IP addressing
Physical Firewall
**Power Consumption

The reason I have placed an asterisk next to power consumption is because this is a key area where you may get stung. Most hosting providers will have an introductory tarrif which will allow your server to consume 0.4a to 0.5a of power. If your server is pulling more than 0.4a when a measurement is taken, You will be charged extra for going over your allowance,

Seems fair at first glance, power & cooling is expensive after all. However , how many servers draw 0.5amps. You are hosting a server designed to serve hundreds of people, lots of ram and redundant power supplies and hard discs. Yet you have an allowance of 0.5amps. To put this in perspective, I have seen my little Fujitsu sub-note book draw 0.3amps when on charge.

Perhaps I should co-locate my sub-notebook.

The point of this posting is to let you be aware that the headline tarrifs you see for server hosting will not always be what you will pay. It is very important to know your hardware and how much power it use’s at idle, and also on full load. That £45 per month tarrif could end up costing you £75 per month because you did not do your homework.

Caveat emptor

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