They definitely make 1/4 rack doors - a datacenter I use locally has tons of them, complete with dual combination / key locks (so end user can use a 3-digit combo to get in, and datacenter management have a physical key too).
On Saturday, July 17, 2010, Luke S Crawford <l...@prgmr.com> wrote: > "John Stoffel" <j...@stoffel.org> writes: > >> Luke, >> >> One thing I've been wondering about here is physical access issues, >> which you haven't really talked about. If you're going to let your >> customers in a 4am to muck in their 1/4 of a rack, how are you going >> to limit their access to the *other* 3/4 of the rack? What's to keep >> that user from plugging into someone else's outlets? > > I think just having seperate PDUs would be enough, especially > if I have a shelf every 'border' - I've shared racks that way > before when I was smaller an only needed 1/2 rack. SysAdmins > are pretty good about "Don't touch other people's power" I think. > > If I'm wrong, of course, I'm sunk. But compitition in that building > allows open access (though there is a process for bringing in new > servers that he.net implements. I don't think it works that well > 'cause they don't check power usage.) but I'd bet money that > my customers can keep their hands off of another person's > clearly marked PDU, especially when it's obvious that the access control > people record who comes in when. > > >> Do they even sell 1/4 rack doors with individual keys for a good >> price? And don't you need those doors on the front and back as well? > > I should check... if it's cheap, might as well, right? > >> I'd almost say that you should cut costs by only allowing physical >> access during *your* hours, with a bigger up-front fee for 24x7 >> emergency access if something goes wrong. > > eh, even in that case I'm going to charge enough to price myself out of > this market. the compitition all allows unsupervised access. > >> Basically, you're spending all this time worrying about the power and >> what happens if someone goes over their limit, and taking out someone >> else. Instead you should be working to make it as standard and cookie >> cutter as possible so that you just populate a rack and then sell the >> bits here and there. > > > Yeah, standard is important. that's why a lower density 1/4 rack has me > thinking more than a higher density rack, even at a slightly higher > cost per watt. I won't have to balance high density with low > density customers... just you stay between this shelf and this shelf. > > I will play with doing dedicated servers at some point; it's the natural > complement to the vps hosting, and the opteron 41xx series looks like it'll > let me deploy pretty cheap 4-6 core/ 16GiB ram boxes, which /might/ > be closer to the price range I can sell into. still, I'm going to want > $256/month for those, so buying will still likely be a better deal if you > keep them very long, and you don't get ripped off too badly on 1u colo. > (I've tried renting 8 core, 32GiB ram for $512 or so a month, > and I've failed. it's above the cost threshold I'm able to sell > into, and it's obvious to anyone pricing it out that you save money > quickly by buying and co-locating.) > > But even 16GiB for $256, well, I don't have a lot of faith I'll > sell many, even if that's within the price range my customers are willing > to think about, well, my customers are the sort who are willing to > do a bit of extra work to save some money. All my other plans are > cheaper than co-locating some ancient hardware you have laying about... > while this will be more expensive. > > -- > Luke S. Crawford > http://prgmr.com/xen/ - Hosting for the technically adept > http://nostarch.com/xen.htm - We don't assume you are stupid. > _______________________________________________ > Tech mailing list > Tech@lopsa.org > http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech > This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators > http://lopsa.org/ > -- Dan _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list Tech@lopsa.org http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
