[LUAU] Colocation or plain old hosting

[Julian Yap]

It sounds like a virtual server is the only real option for you.  For your needs, a local host who hosts things physically locally would always be more expensive. Hawaii just has higher fixed costs such as energy, property and bandwidth costs.

Are you willing to pay a local premium for the same product?

Even if you host a small box locally and don't need a full 1U a unit of space, dedicated power, network cross connect need to be assigned to you. You would need to also be in the data center security system, billing system, support system.  You may as well buy a 2nd IP address from your home ISP and host your EeeBox from your home.

So given all the base fixed cost disadvantages of a local hosting firm (hosting physically in Hawaii) the overheads need to be factored in.  So as with other local businesses competing against the might of the Internet you're paying for other factors such as convenience, local access, etc...  If the premium features aren't worth it, then a virtual server from mainland hosting company X is for you.

- Julian

On Jun 2, 2012, at 11:30 AM, Jeff Mings <jeffm at lava.net> wrote:

> Thanks for taking the time to reply Laurence!
> 
>    Yes, I'm running several sites via conventional web hosting.  A few of my sites were originally hosted by Cedant, which was a very competent company.  Cedant was then bought by aplus, which was then bought by Deluxe for Business, which seems to be clueless about a great number of things.  Out of frustration with hosting companies, I'm thinking of just setting up my own box.
> 
>    Rackspace's virtual boxes are insanely cheap and offer reliably good performance.  Assuming I don't find anything better locally, I'll probably provision a Rackspace virtual server.
> 
> Thanks,
> -Jeff
> 
> 
> On 06/02/2012 09:11 AM, Laurence Laforga wrote:
>> Hi Jeff,
>> 
>> I haven't run into any local co-location companies that sell less than a 1U
>> rack space.  I think it would make more economical sense to sign up for a
>> web hosting account.
>> 
>> Good luck!
>> Laurence
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: luau-bounces at lists.freesoftwarehawaii.org
>> [mailto:luau-bounces at lists.freesoftwarehawaii.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Mings
>> Sent: Friday, June 01, 2012 11:01 PM
>> To: LUAU
>> Subject: [LUAU] Really simple colocation
>> 
>> Hi Guys!
>> 
>>      I am frustrated with hosting companies not offering quite what I want,
>> or changing ownership and then features, or suffering from strangely slow
>> MySQL servers.  I'm wondering if there is a very very basic colocation
>> option in town that will give me an IP address on a pipe with low down-time,
>> and UPS-backed power for me to plug a small box into.  I don't need loads of
>> monthly bandwidth or even a whole U in a rack.  I just want to run a basic
>> Drupal site for a local company that doesn't get huge amounts of site
>> traffic. Something as simple as an Asus EeeBox is all I need.  (No, really,
>> just a 2 GB RAM Atom box running Linux is more than enough).
>> 
>>      Has anyone found a good local company that does this for a low monthly
>> rate?
>> 
>> Thanks for reading this and giving it some consideration, -Jeff
>> 
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