RE: [edlug] Dedicated Hosting Packages

[Rory Macdonald <rory@xxx.xxx.xxx>]

On Tue, 2003-01-28 at 13:53, colin wrote:

> Jon,
> 
> Am I missing something here I wonder.
> 
> Most packages like this cost 150 per month plus. Ask xcalibre. They will
> do something like this. 
> 
> I just do not believe in a free lunch. There must be some catch.
> 
> How can they even think of making any money on 29 per month is beyond
> me. The bandwidth and hosting of it will cost that much alone. Where are
> the servers? I wonder. 

[gets OT napkin out]

10GB/month. Isn't that about 31kbps? Let's say you only have 40 1U
servers in any given rack. That's an aggregated contracted bandwidth of
about 1Mbps per rack, which you can get for a little over £100 per month
if you shop about. Split that 40 ways to get a per U figure, that's
~£2.50 per U for a month of bandwidth.

As for racks. Given that *without any economies of scale* you could get
a rack for £5k p/a (£1k of which is setup) at RedBus, and let's stick
with putting 40 1U servers in it. That's a space cost to you of £125 p/a
per U, or ~£11 quid a month per U. With their own DCs (!) oneandone will
no doubt be able to make this rack space figure look like robbery.

Ok, so per U about £2.50 per month for bandwidth and £11 per month for
rack space - landing you £13.50 in debt before sticking a server in
there.

Let's say you're charging £30 per month. That £16.50 per month for the
server (and for other costs/profits which I'm conveniently ignoring).
Which is just shy of £600 over 3 years. Get a deal with Dell or Compaq
and buy them bulk and that's do-able for low-end 1U servers.

Yeah, all *very* sketchy figures and they don't factor infrastructure,
staff, yada yada yada costs, but I just wanted to see how unimaginable
it is to push for prices in that ball park.

[scrunches up OT napkin]

All in all, oneandone.com looks like a bloody good deal in this case.

Rory
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