co-location and access to your server

[gbonser at seven.com (George Bonser)]

> From: david raistrick 
> Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2011 1:44 PM
> To: Jeroen van Aart
> Cc: NANOG list
> Subject: Re: co-location and access to your server
> 
> On Wed, 12 Jan 2011, Jeroen van Aart wrote:
> 
> > I guess knowing who entered the building by means of a keycard and
> having
> > cameras isn't considered enough to deter potential "evil doers". I
> know it's
> > not enough for places like equinix, but that's of a different
> caliber.
> 
> Paying for 1u of colo justifys a keycard for you, cameras and keycard
> hardware for the facility?   you're paying what, 50-100$ a month,
maybe
> less?   you realize that low prices comes at the cost of reduced
> services?

I would say even that hosting other people's hardware on a "one off"
basis isn't even really cost effective.  Better, in my opinion, for the
service provider to simply buy a rack from Rackable or another vendor
and rent the servers out to people.  At least you are then dealing with
a known entity as far as hardware goes.  Housing who knows what gives
you a potential mix of things like front to back, back to front, and
side to side airflow; an assortment of network issues due to an
assortment of NICs in the network; people wanting physical access to
their servers for things like driver replacement, etc. 

Even having someone willing to allow individuals to house their own
single servers in a rack is amazing.  Complaining about the service as
far as access just seems like looking the gift horse in the mouth!