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Is there a potential market for this product?
Just curious to know if anyone here thinks there is a potential market in very cheap dedicated servers. I know anything dubbed "cheap" here is a good thing, but I'm curious to know what others think.
I am interested in starting to offer low end dedicated servers in Chicago. We already have premium E3 dedicated servers on offer. Here is a rough outline of what I was messing with: http://d.pr/i/oZQ3
Let me know what your thoughts, if any. Prices shown in that link may or may not fluctuate a tiny bit, but the hardware will remain as shown.
Yes, it is 4 year old hardware, but they're not the always-questionable ebay junk. The hardware is refurbished from a tech friend at HP. All hard drives and power supplies on each server would be brand new for reliability.
There may also be some RTO agreements available for some of this hardware. Yes, there are other bandwidth and storage options available that you can configure when ordering.
Lastly, there would be a 12 hour provisioning guarantee and others that I won't yet reveal.
Comments
Unfortunately in the low end dedicated market you have 4 big names to compete with
wholesaleinternet
DataShack
Hetzner
OVH
You likely could cater to MineCraft hosts and load up on ram while keeping the CPU lower to get customers that way, ChromoByte was originally for Minecraft. These packages especially the 16 and 32 seem to fit this outline, not even looking at the CPU specs. More ram for lower $ seems to be whats attracting alot of people if im not mistaken.
What type of upgrade options will you have regarding SSD/HDD/Addt'l Ram? Will you have extra parts on hand at the datacenter incase the old ones go out?
@Jack, I knew I forgot someone.
And I think ChicagoVPS is joining in on the Dedi's with their famous rock bottom prices. Or maybe that was a one time fire-sale type thing.
@WebSearchingPro I know I'd have larger budget dedicated server organizations to compete with but, from experience, Datashack/Wholesale Internet and OVH do not have the best support - those 3 leave something to be desired in that area. On the other hand, Chromobyte grew to what it is today thanks to the support on hand.
Additional SSD/HDD options are available, up to 2TB HDDs and 240GB SSDs. However, additional RAM is not shown on the order page at this time due to the higher prices of DDR2 RAM. Replacement parts would also be stored in additional storage space at the DC.
@fizzyjoe908, personally I don't have any experience with those dedi hosts, just what I hear. I do believe that strong support can get you a long way. That's why I paid 10x more for my hosting last year because tickets were usually answered in ~10 minutes any time of the day.
Looking forward to seeing a new dedicated server company in the market, hopefully one that provides quality support and help, not just leaving the customers in the dark.
Looks good, where will the location be?
@FrapHost, Looks like Steadfast in Chicago.
Steadfast Networks is where I'm trying to get them. Currently attempting to negotiate slightly lower pricing for power. If that doesn't go through, these will be in Continuum.
I like steadfast, so that is nice, but that disk space is killing me, I can get a hell of a lot more disk for the same price and close other specs at dacentec or qps, or ovh for that matter. Some kind of downgrade trading thing where you'd get maybe a lesser CPU or even less ram maybe for bigger disks would be somewhat ideal if you want to give people options that would probably attract a larger crowd over a more diverse offer. How easy this will be for you is another thing, but otherwise you will kinda just be another fish in the pond (to me) for lower priced dedis that doesn't have much going besides being at Steadfast and decent CPUs, and the supposed promise of good support, which to me personally means little as I don't need it often.
This is, entirely, just my opinion, so take it as such. Whatever way you go I wish you luck.
@Setsura I understand where you're coming from. The base storage options are not very large. That being said, these aren't meant to be high storage/high transfer machines. Also, you can configure each one of those servers in my screenshot to have up to 4x 2TB HDDs.
Personally, I have servers with 1TB - 3TB drives and I never use more than 1TB as I quite frequently clean out older files.
How much is it for drive upgrades? Or has this not been worked out exactly yet? Also I generally tend to use up quite a bit of my allotted space, probably because I like to keep everything ever + backups of backups of backups, I should probably stop that.
Edit: I just noticed you mentioned a possible RTO option for some servers, I always did like those types of offers, slightly more interested now.
can i have one bdsI for 25$/month for the openings sake
@Setsura The drive upgrade prices are just floating around right now.
@tridinebandim These are not yet available and that low of a price is not possible at this time.
I see, well, if you do go through with this idea or finalize prices a bit more please tag me in this thread again if you have some time, I'm still a bit interested in this.
Don't go with Continuum, I hear horrid stories about them. Chicago is a great central location. I will keep this on my watch list.
@Jeffrey Thanks for your input. I've used Continuum twice in the past and have had no issues. Granted, this was after their early power/network issues. I believe the fact that Nobis took over Ubiquity, which is/was one of Continuum's bandwidth providers, will improve the situation over there.
It's mostly HE if that suits you. Nobis and Telia are rarely used. I'd prefer a Noction blended equal ratio HE + Cogent to this (i.e. Firehub).
I have a dedicated server with Wholesale Internet and it has been great support so far.
As for the OP, check out Wholesale's dedicated server offerings for some configuration and pricing ideas. They don't have much offers today but that can change by the day and when posted, they sell out quickly.
Also the dedicated server offerings at WHT is another good place to get an idea on configuration and pricing as there are many lower end offerings there on a daily basis.
@arcusfront Wholesale Internet and WHT offers are from established dedicated server providers, for the most part.
Our additional storage configuration options will probably be a bit on the pricey side to start off. But, don't get me wrong, it wouldn't be some outrageous +$30/month for 500GB HDD to 1TB HDD. Still, IP space will be relatively cheap and there is a good chance I can bump the base bandwidth to 10TB.
Would it be a deal breaker for anyone if these were in Continuum's facility?
I personally was a bit more interested if it was in Steadfast, but if you can perhaps work out some better specs or prices I wouldn't die over it. I know some (more like a lot) of people seem to dislike them, so not everyone may mirror my sentiments.
Steadfast isn't budging. The quote they gave is operable if the base prices of those dedicated servers was raised a bit.
I'm also now inquiring about the DuPont Fabros facility.
Try Gigenet. There's also ServerCentral.
@fizzyjoe908 I wouldn't go in Dupont Fabros, ColoCrossing is there. How about SingleHop? Do they offer any colocation deals? What about a non-IL location?
@Jeffrey CC is there, but I wouldn't be using them directly. As for non-IL locations, I have been in touch with GoRack but they are simply too far away. I'd like to be able to pop in the facility every once and awhile. I've also contacted facilities in Indiana (LifeLine and nFrame) but they are "corporate" datacenters with expensive bandwidth rates.
@fizzyjoe908 What state do you live in?
@Jeffrey Illinois, Chicagoland area.
You have basicly named the providers in Chicago. But check out swiftway.net they will offer you Colo in chicago.
Have you reached out to South Bend/ColoStore? There are a few providers here there -- SouthBendServers and 24KHost come to mind -- but it seems 'cheap enough' since SouthBendServers has also done some low-end-ish dedis.
Would anyone be interested in an addon to put your server behind a Cisco ASA device?
EDIT: It would do the usual packet inspection, handle port forwarding, DoS protection, malware, etc but would limit your 1Gbps port to 100Mbps.
I myself would not, but that mileage may vary.