[HCoop-Misc] Collocation... What does it really entail?

[Adam Chlipala]

Tanveer Singh wrote:
> 1. You have to go to the datacenter and put it in yourself?
>   

No. You can usually ship it to the datacenter and pay them to install it.

> 2. Who sees that the hardware does not fail. For example if a disk fails at 1am?
> 3. Regular hardware maintenance, who sees this
>   

These are usually the customer's responsibility.

> 4. Do you need to be present physically in the city/country where your
> hardware is collocated.
>   

No, but your life is generally easier and support cheaper if you have an 
agent nearby.

> 5. hcoop is collocating. We will have one server at first. Suppose
> some big website in the future wants to join hcoop, but their
> requirement is 2GB of RAM and 80GB of harddisk all to themselves,
> basically a dedicated server for them, can hcoop space in the
> datacenter accomodate then. Of course there will be financial
> considerations.
>   

Actually, we will have 3 servers at first, with only 2 being supported 
for the first month or so while we make sure everything is hunky-dory.

We have been considering "re-selling" colocation with extra benefits 
from the start, but we aren't going to offer such services or even 
discuss plans for them in detail until all 3 of our machines are running 
well with everyone migrated.

> 6. Tomorrow when hcoop grows, will there be enough robust support to
> handle a website which wants a downtime of less than 10 minutes a
> week? Lets say they are willing to pay 250$/month. Are we looking at
> that route?
>   

Similar answer: obviously we can provide this at that cost level, 
because commercial hosts do it, but we won't be discussing that for a while.