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a sydney hosting option

Posted: 28 October 08 11:31 am
by ideology
fyi we received an email from an acquaintance of delta_foxtrot2 offering a rack-mount slot in a server farm in sydney. we are sussing out the details and will let you know how it goes.

Posted: 28 October 08 4:36 pm
by Papa Bear_Left
If we really can get suitable performance for, say, $1500 per year, we can probably manage to raise that without external help.

Sounds promising!

Posted: 28 October 08 6:45 pm
by caughtatwork
You gotta buy the server though and renew it every so many years.
Doing some rough calculations a few months ago, the cost of a server plus the $1,500 per year averaged over (I think) 3 years meant we came out somewhere equal in terms of $'s.

Of course that depends on what server we purchase and the level of warranty from the manufacturer.

We could get a $1,000 1RU for a grand or two, but it's many moons old so you'd need to replace the HDD and possibly PSU, but the rest should be OK.

Do we want to buy a problem?

Posted: 28 October 08 7:07 pm
by Map Monkey
caughtatwork wrote:We could get a $1,000 1RU for a grand or two,
I would hope that it costs no more than $1000. :shock: :twisted:

mm

Posted: 28 October 08 8:39 pm
by caughtatwork
http://h20427.www2.hp.com/campaign/biza ... sRack.aspx
$2.6K USD and you're up for more RAM. HP is expensive, but reliable.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/HP-Proliant-DL36 ... 286.c0.m14
$2K AUD used.

They're not exactly inexpensive.

Posted: 28 October 08 8:46 pm
by CraigRat
Map Monkey wrote:
caughtatwork wrote:We could get a $1,000 1RU for a grand or two,
I would hope that it costs no more than $1000. :shock: :twisted:

mm
Highlighted so C@W gets the joke

:lol:

Posted: 28 October 08 9:06 pm
by caughtatwork
Doh! Too much explaining, not enough thinking :oops:

Posted: 16 November 08 11:38 am
by ideology
nothing much to report at this stage
we've had another high-level email exchange
we hope to hear back this coming week, but there's no hard-and-fast timeline

Posted: 16 November 08 1:13 pm
by Guest
caughtatwork wrote:http://h20427.www2.hp.com/campaign/biza ... sRack.aspx
$2.6K USD and you're up for more RAM. HP is expensive, but reliable.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/HP-Proliant-DL36 ... 286.c0.m14
$2K AUD used.

They're not exactly inexpensive.
As I said to you guys in another post, check this lot out:

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Australasian PC Distributors.  APCD Pty Ltd
16 Harbord Street, Granville.  2142.  NSW
Australia
Tel:  +61-2-8863 6666
Direct: +61-2-8863 6622
Fax  +61-2-8863 6688
SKYPE: BillVartanian_Sydney_APCD
Email  billv@apcd.com.au
WebSite   www.apcd.com.au
They sell refurb'd servers from ex-lease/govt etc.

Below is out of date pricing, and is only an example of past specials to give you an idea of budget etc:

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HP RACK MOUNT NETSERVER LP2000R (2RU)
DUAL PIII-1266MHZ, 512MB, 2 X 18GB SCSI, CD-ROM, FDD, LAN
ONLY $395ex-gst

COMPAQ RACK MOUNT PROLIANT DL380 (2RU)
DUAL PIII-1400MHZ, 4352MB, 3 X 73GB SCSI, CD-ROM – SLIMLINE, FDD, LAN
ONLY $555ex-gst

IBM RACK MOUNT X-SERIES 336 (1RU)
DUAL PIV XEON 3000MHZ, 4096MB, 2 X 73GB SCSI, DVD-ROM, LAN
ONLY $1095ex-gst

Posted: 16 November 08 1:18 pm
by Guest
Actually I just went through the last email I was sent on the 11th, and it had this, probably still current:

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DELL POWEREDGE 2850 (2RU)
DUAL PIV XEON 2800MHZ, 3072MB, 2 X 73GB SCSI + 1 X 36GB SCSI, CD-ROM, FDD, LAN
ONLY $1175ex-gst
I don't think you would have much CPU issues with one of these babies, that effectively gives you 4 xeon cores at 11.2Ghz with 3G of ram on 10 or 15krpm drives...

Questions? :)

Posted: 18 December 08 4:03 pm
by ideology
thanks df2, we've got back in touch with your acquaintance

he has generously offered hosting and rack space in return for acknowledgement (banner or similar) on the website (we think that's fair)

the downsides will be
(a) we are using unused rack space, so if he gets a paying customer, GCA gets 90 days to clear out or alternatively start paying. our understanding is that bandwidth in australia would make this approx $200/month.
(b) we'll have to buy a slightly larger server than under our (i!'s) two server proposal but this should more than even out because GCA would be getting the hosting for free for (hopefully) a long chunk of time

clearly the biggest issue is how long it would be before his rack is full. worst case we would spend (say) $2k on a server to put in, we'd immediately get 90 days' notice and then would be up for $200/month. so after one year the funds we have would be exhausted. if that is the case, we'd have been better off spending, say $1.5kpa to lease a managed server.
(btw we are not saying he would do this! we are just thinking of worst case for gca.)

our plan is to meet him in the next few weeks to better understand each others' situation and make a guess as to how long we think the arrangement could go for.

thanks df2 for the introduction! fingers crossed!

Posted: 18 December 08 5:26 pm
by Guest
ideology wrote:(a) we are using unused rack space, so if he gets a paying customer, GCA gets 90 days to clear out or alternatively start paying. our understanding is that bandwidth in australia would make this approx $200/month.
As per my PM, that's cover your butt stuff, if he's that hard up for space he's going to get another rack for his company anyways, it's just so everyone knows where they stand worst case.
(b) we'll have to buy a slightly larger server than under our (i!'s) two server proposal but this should more than even out because GCA would be getting the hosting for free for (hopefully) a long chunk of time
If, for what ever reason this doesn't pan out, I still have WAIA and PIPE contacts I can dig up for you, do I don't see a problem really. WAIA being a non-profit would probably need to deal with an official non-profit but that can be worked round via one of the state groups I assume.

If both of those fail there is a lot of companies hosting in Australia, there is a few other avenues you can look down yourself or I can dig up from my past as well. These are just the easy options ;)
clearly the biggest issue is how long it would be before his rack is full.
How long until the data centre gets full would be a more realisic question, since he will need further rack space as his business grows if he runs out of space in the current area.
(btw we are not saying he would do this! we are just thinking of worst case for gca.)
Yea, and he's just saying worst case for him ;) As I said, cover your butt stuff.

Posted: 19 December 08 8:49 am
by ideology
excellent, thanks df2
(we weren't sure whether you wanted to make your PM public!)

Posted: 19 December 08 11:55 am
by Guest
ideology wrote:excellent, thanks df2
(we weren't sure whether you wanted to make your PM public!)
I'm a techy, not a sales droid ;)

update

Posted: 01 January 09 8:25 am
by ideology
update: we have been overloaded with other things lately so haven't met df_2's acquaintance yet, but we plan to in the next couple of weeks