Mmm, Pricey

Config:

Xeon E3 1230
16GB ECC RAM
2 x 1TB SATA disks
2 x 100GB+ SSD

Price:

Acmemicro: $1693 (purchase price) plus colo fees
SoftLayer (list): $1209/month (with 6TB bandwidth)
SoftLayer (discounted): $659/month (with 6TB bandwidth)
I/O Flood: $250/month (with 10TB bandwidth)

I haven't included RAID controllers. (I/O Flood do software RAID free; SoftLayer don't offer software RAID at all, and I've had it up to ^HERE with hardware RAID.)  The SoftLayer price includes enterprisey WD disks and Micron SSDs, where I/O Flood offer desktop WD disks and Intel SSDs; again, neither offers any other option.  And I can get two and a half servers at I/O Flood for the price of one at SoftLayer, so unless the hardware is completely flaky, I'll be able to deliver as good or better uptime and much better performance.

I'm getting some quotes from other providers as well; my plan is to move back out to two (or more) servers, at two different providers in two different locations, so that no single event can take us off the air.

It's not that SoftLayer is a bad provider - though exactly why I still see power outages on a server with redundant power supplies and a UPS is an unanswered question - it's just that they no longer seem to be in our marketplace.

Update: I have a quote from Tailor Made Servers now; they charge one-off fees for the SSDs, which makes them more expensive to start with than I/O Flood, but they've been in the business for years and I've used them before.  One server at I/O Flood and another at TMS could work well, but they're both in the Southern US (Phoenix and Dallas, respectively) so I'm still looking to see if I can find someone good in the North-East.

Update: Got a quote back from JaguarPC.  They're a little more expensive than I/O Flood, but not much, and have five datacentres available (Atlanta, New Jersey, Dallas, Phoenix, and Los Angeles) so I can situate the servers appropriately.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:48 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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