[cgsmith]

I used to colocate a 2U server that I purchased with a local data center. It was a great learning experience for me. Im curious why a company wouldn't colocate their own hardware? Proximity isnt an issue when you can have the datacenter perform physical tasks. Bravo to the comma team regardless. It'll be a great learning experience and make each person on their team better.

Ps... bx cable instead of conduit for electrical looks cringe.

[undyingtrillion]

Are there any resources on how to colocate as a hobbyist? Every colocation service makes it seem they only deal with big contract.

I'm imagining a setup that can work like this:

- I can purchase/lease from some vendor (maybe even a used dell 1U) and have it sent directly to them and they construct and install (same with ssd replacements, ram upgrade, etc.).

- They can setup remote KVM over IP access if needed.

- I never have to drive to their facility, but based in the US.

I'm willing to trade off some control and turnaround time here. The idea is to have something like a $500/month VPS but with a higher upfront cost and lower monthly cost for space, power, and bandwidth.

[vidarh]

The main reason not to colocate is if you're somewhere with high real estate costs... E.g Hetzner managed servers competes on price w/co-location for me because I'm in London.

[doublerabbit]

I colocate in London, a single server / firewall comes to around £5k a year. I also colocate two other servers in some northern UK location in some industrial estate for £2k as my backups. I've never enjoyed the cloud and dedicated server's have their own caveats too.

Budget hosts such as Hetzner/OVH have been known to suddenly pull the plug for no reason.

My kit is old, second hand old (Cisco UCS 220 M5, 2xDell somethings) and last night I just discovered I can throw in two NVIDIA T4's and turn it in to a personal LLM.

I'm quite excited having my own colocated server with basic LLM abilities. My own hardware with my own data and my own cables. Just need my own IP's now.

[vidarh]

> Budget hosts such as Hetzner/OVH have been known to suddenly pull the plug for no reason.

The same would apply for any number of hosts. Hetzner/OVH are cheap, but as your own numbers show the location price gap is more than sufficient to cover the costs of servers.

In fact you can colocate with Hetzner too, and you'd get a similar price gap - the lower cost of real-estate is a large part of the reason why they can be as cheap as they are.

Data centre operations is a real estate play - to the point that at least one UK data centre operator is owned by a real estate investment company.

[doublerabbit]

Thanks. I hadn't seen it as such and you're right. I guess it comes down to personal preference.

Where I feel that data has become a commodity in that I can sell your username and email for a few pence, I would rather prefer to have my own hardware in my own possession and that any request of it has to go to me, nor some server provider.

[vidarh]

That's a totally valid reason. I also have infrastructure I operate because of personal comfort rather than because it's financially optimal.