It's been over two years since we started providing platforms (2 times lower than the market average), because in the purchase, even now, when the processors of the latest generation E5-2650 v4 are declared by the manufacturer end of life, they cost 8500 euros + 21% VAT = 10285 euros (payback period 5.7 years, taking into account the cost of colocation and traffic and do not take into account the cost of support costs):
We have successfully implemented many cluster solutions on these platforms for our business subscribers as well as individual users. We developed and successfully launched an additional product - virtual servers with dedicated drives, which allowed us to replace the initial line of dedicated servers and provide VPS servers with 10-40GB DDR4 RAM resources, 6-24 E5-2650 v4 cores, and most importantly - 1- 4 fully dedicated 4TB HDDs or 240-480GB SSDs. We have detailed the advantages and disadvantages of this product here: (available with RAID1 and RAID10).
And everything seems to be fine, we fulfilled the sales plan, sold even more than planned, thousands of users bought up our virtual solutions, thanks to which we almost completely got rid of outdated servers with E3-1230 and E5620 processors, which were ordered by those subscribers who did not could afford the Dell R730xd even though we made it as cheap as possible. After all, now they can afford, say, such a VPS (KVM) - E5-2650 v4 (24 Cores) 40GB DDR4 with 4x240GB RAID10 SSD or 4x4TB RAID10 HDD 1Gbps 40TB for the price of the same E3-1230. Why not a good replacement for the outdated E3-1230 with the same set of disks? Or they even chose the option with 2 times less resources (when so many resources were not required), and saved more than half of the budget. As a result, we not only reduced the cost of electricity and maintenance, because the new hardware breaks down less often and almost does not bug, it is more energy efficient, more subscribers can be placed on fewer units, but most importantly, we have increased the degree of customer satisfaction with our service.
However, we could not meet the needs of a small part of the subscribers. After all, it was impossible to create a full-fledged virtual environment in an existing virtual environment (although certain tricks were used for this in the form of Dockers and other things) + RAM βonlyβ up to 40GB (this problem was partially fixed by the NVMe product), there is no way to choose the desired RAID level or increase the SSD quota, while we actually hosted only 2 clients on 3 units. In general, there were shortcomings, the solution is not for everyone.
Perhaps for some I will open my eyes, but in the Netherlands, most large data centers do not have their own hardware, due to the huge taxes that arise when owning and buying it. Everything is in a long-term (ten-year contract or more) lease from the manufacturer (Dell, HP, Supermicro). Which is very limiting. Indeed, in order to provide an extremely low cost, we had to abandon a whole zoo of configurations and sign one, the most effective platform for everyone. And we used the platform's capabilities to the maximum, met the needs of more than 95% of subscribers.
But they could not solve the problem completely. And the current "over 95%" of customers are not opposed to improvements. Of course, putting another configuration is not difficult, but the whole point is the price. How can we compete with the big low-costers offerings while still offering top quality and high-end hardware at the same or lower price?
In January of this year, we opened our European representative office SIA UA-Hosting in Latvia for this purpose. This not only increased the convenience of working with us for business subscribers, but also allowed us to start refunding VAT on purchases, which also significantly reduced the price. After some time, we will definitely share our experience. There will be a detailed separate article on how easy it is to register now in Europe, instead of Belize, and how difficult it is to open a bank account in the country of registration, even if you have all the necessary documents for this. None of the help companies will offer you a bank account in Latvia for a Latvian company today, everyone will offer Switzerland and will want 4000 euros just for help with opening an account, which will not be very convenient later if you directly accept the same PayPal ( will lead to additional commissions and the amounts will result in tens of thousands of euros per year, depending on your turnover, since additional commissions are applied if your account is not in the country of registration).
But today we will continue about iron. We thought long and hard about what 1U solution to offer. What server can fully meet the needs of 5% of customers and significantly expand the capabilities of the current ones?
For several months we thought, chose, evaluated. We compared the cost-effective indicator for you. Of course, nothing is better than the Dell R730xd yet π Otherwise, we would not continue to offer these solutions, and by the way, we started doing this with updated processors, which are Tetradeca Core, not Dodeca, that is, 14 full-fledged cores in each processor, 28, taking into account hyper trading, and even with frequencies of 2.6 GHz instead of 2.2, and decided to even reduce the price by placing the equipment at the same time , but basically offering only 64GB DDR4 RAM, not 128, because not everyone needs that much:
Dell R730xd - 2x E5-2697v3 2.6GHz 14Π‘ 64GB DDR4 4x960GB SSD 1Gbps 100TB - $199 / month, although if you pay for 2 years, monthly and if you pay for a year it will be more expensive, however, look what a beauty:
We use Fortigate to provide secure access for each client to the iDrac of the leased server. Thanks to Forticlient, you have access to the internal network, and all the rest of your traffic will not go through the VPN tunnel, only traffic to the internal network will go through it, which is very convenient, unlike a regular VPN. We connect all servers to two independent PDUs (we do not save on outlets):
Each rack switch is connected by 2x10G fiber optic links to distribution switches, traffic from which is routed by two independent cores of the data center. That is, we not only gave a price 2 times lower than the market price, but also gave a premium network at the same price. Internet traffic is delivered by such Tier I transit providers as GTT and NTT, therefore, connectivity without redundancy costs about 7000 euros for 10G in the data center directly, while we provide 2N at a price of more than 2 times cheaper, each additional gigabit is $450 . Yes, of course, this price includes the fact that not every client will fully consume their limit, which is why we βriskedβ to give such a price. Statistics - many years of real experience. 500 servers with a gigabit connection and a traffic limit of 100 TB consume an average of about 20 Gb / s (and not 160-200 Gb / s, as you might think), these are the real data. Of course, subscribers who initially consume a lot by ordering Unmetered are not taken into account. Itβs just that not everyone really consumes their 100 TB, which is why we are not afraid to sell traffic to people at prices lower than the one at which the transit provider releases connectivity.
Among other things, for our subscribers we provide 1G or 10G LAN, as well as IP addresses from RU GEO or NL networks and the ability to use hardware firewalls, private switches. Nevertheless, despite the fact that we offered servers at a price more than 2 times lower than the market price, and taking into account the premium network - 3-4 times lower than the market price, the above-described part of the clients still remains who cannot afford such server, and VPS (a third of the physical server) does not suit for various reasons.
We spent a lot of time looking for the best configuration, because we still wanted to offer the "latest" but at the same time cost-effective and came to the conclusion that we would rather give 128GB DDR3 RAM than 64GB DDR4. Why?
- operating at the same frequency of 2400 MHz, the DDR3 and DDR4 memory strips show comparable results;
- latency for DDR4 in this case is 15 nanoseconds, and for DDR3 - 11 nanoseconds, that is, at such frequencies, DDR3 memory is also "faster" in terms of latency;
- any advantages of DDR4 begin to be noticeable only at frequencies above 3000 MHz, which is not necessary for every user, sometimes latency is more important.
The difference between DDR3-2133 and DDR4-2133 turns out to be practically insignificant for a number of applications, including video conversion cases. DDR3 is faster more than half the time.
And since our goal was to offer the lowest cost platform yet cost effective, we decided to try to provide the following option in the Netherlands starting at $99/month (VPS price):
Dell R420 2x E5-2430 2.2Ghz 6Π‘ 128GB DDR3 2x960GB SSD 1Gbps 100TB - order
To begin with, we want to study the demand, ask you if we made a mistake? We have already installed several such platforms for you in a rack for 1U servers (and we still have standardization so as not to mix different platforms in one rack due to the efficient use of network equipment and power) and we are finishing its construction:
Configurations support up to 8 SSD drives and up to 2 PCIe NVMe drives (if 10G network is required, then one drive, since a dual-port 10G card will occupy one of the ports). We decided not to provide power-consuming and slow HDDs with this configuration, but to provide two Samsung 960GB (MZ7LH960HAJR) at a good price. When paying for a server for a period of more than a year, additional drives are 2 times cheaper, only + $ 25 / month per drive. Yes, for $249/month you can get almost 8TB SSD quota and a nice server Dell R420 2x E5-2430 2.2Ghz 6C 128GB DDR3 8x960GB SSD 1Gbps 100TB.
An additional 1Γ3.2TB PCI-E Samsung PM1725b SSD drive will cost a lot β +$250 / month (we must at least earn something for more than 5.7 years), but discounts are possible with long-term leases. Why do we install and offer only such drives, and not NVMe hot-swap M2? These drives are still better, latency is many times lower due to the PCI-E connection. It is these drives that are used, say, by banks, or by clients using some kind of processing. M2 are much less efficient for these tasks. And although there are 1.6 TB and 6.4 TB drives on the market, the reason for not using them here is simple. In the case of 1.6 TB, the volume is too small, the PCI-E slots can be exhausted quickly, and in the case of 6.4 TB, the recovery process will take too long, because 3.2 TB was deservedly chosen as the βgolden meanβ.
We also pay great attention to such a thing as cabeling. After all, how the north will be cooled and the energy consumption that occurs as a result of this process depends on the beauty of cable laying. By grouping cables, we reduce the "blocking" area in the way of hot air and it is more efficiently dissipated from the racks, as there are fewer eddies that prevent effective heat dissipation.
In general, I believe that the configuration was successful. Nevertheless, we are ready to listen to criticism about this proposal from Habr readers, after all, very often, expressing opinions, you directed us on the right path, and we are interested in providing you with the most effective solutions in the future. Thank you very much in advance for this! The offer is limited in quantity and at the moment we have 16 servers available in the Netherlands. I do not rule out that in the future, the price of new orders may become higher, but now you have a great chance to get a server at an incredibly low price (in fact, at the cost of colocation, in view of all the advantages described).
It goes without saying that a nice bonus for Habr users is +1 month for free when paying for a Dell R420 for a period of 3 months or more (to receive a bonus, just leave the order number here in the comment and be a registered user of Habr). Thus, you have the opportunity to work for the first 4 months at a price of $119, evaluate the quality, and then switch to a two-year payment cycle, paying for the service for 2 years and receiving a unique price of $99 / month per server!
We work with physical persons and legal persons from the Russian Federation, Ukraine and the rest of the world under an agreement, agreements are concluded between us (SIA UA-Hosting, Latvia) and your company. Contact us, we will be happy to cooperate!
Source: habr.com