Is there any good and cheap Colo in SF?

September 6, 2007 10:52 AM

Where can I get good, relatively inexspensive, colo space?

This is somewhat hypothetical at the moment, i.e. I'm still working the feasibility out. Basically, I'm interested in getting 1U of colo space. I know what you're thinking - "Why not a virtualized server". Decent thought, but it does me know good.

I potentially have a 1U email appliance that I want hosted. It would be relatively low bandwidth, just handling inbound mail for my domain, which is basically me.

So what I'm looking for is to have the box hosted someplace, (preferably in the SF Bay Area, but I am willing to ship it somewhere with competent people for a good price), but so far I haven't really found much in the way of places that will sell you 1U of colo space. I can understand this, but I also have to believe that somewhere out there is a way to do this.

So, does anyone have any experience and our recommendations of something like this? I don't have a max price figured out yet, but I know renting a quarter cabinet for $450/mo is not going to work.

posted by mrthotep to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

I've never used these guys, but they were recommended by another company who had that I worked with in passing...

Best deal I've seen at least...
http://www.cihost.com/products/colocation/family-colocation.php
posted by vitrum at 11:09 AM on September 6, 2007

Well, some friends and I use ServePath for roughly that (1U box serving http and receiving mail); when we signed up it was $100/mo for hosting in a building in the Financial District (our server has a great bay view!). Lately they jacked it up to $200 though, so we're looking into alternatives. Still, $200 is much below 450, so maybe it'll do for you...
posted by rkent at 11:27 AM on September 6, 2007

And by "hosting" I mean colo of our 1U box, just to be clear. We're not using a virtualized server.
posted by rkent at 11:28 AM on September 6, 2007

I usually search for this kind of thing on www.webhostingtalk.com. Lots of ads and lots of reviews/experiences. It is a good way to find options and weed out crap providers.
posted by joelr at 12:03 PM on September 6, 2007

Response by poster: Via webhostingtalk.com I found http://www.vix.com/personalcolo/ which seems to be a pretty good list.
posted by mrthotep at 12:16 PM on September 6, 2007

I found JohnCompanies through Metafilter four years ago - love them.
posted by annathea at 1:40 PM on September 6, 2007

I second Servepath/Coloserve. I've used them since January and had a great experience so far. I'm bummed that the cost doubled, but it's still a deal. I had a tough time finding other places around SF that would let me colo a single box. The $199 a month price will let you have up to 3U or a single full height desktop/non-racked machine. I think you might want to look at the Coloserve site, rather than Servepath; they maintain a psuedo-separate identity for the small-fry colocation services, but it's all the same building, employees, etc etc. I was just down there last night dealing with a failed disk in my server...
posted by autojack at 4:41 PM on September 6, 2007

I love the guys at waveform.net! It's $59/mo for 1Mbit unmetered, their service is reliable, and you can even colo any old midtower box (which is nice if you don't want to bother paying for a rackmount server).
posted by AaronRaphael at 12:40 AM on September 7, 2007