[ale] ATL Colocation and file server suggestions

[Ken Ratliff]

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On Jan 17, 2009, at 11:13 AM, Douglas Bridges wrote:

> Two (mostly unrelated) questions.  I am working on getting a startup  
> going, and I will eventually need a Colo spot in Atlanta to host  
> some servers.  Obviously, I am price conscious (being in startup  
> mode), but I will have approximately 7 servers that I will need to  
> initially host.  I will want a connection of at least 10 Mbps.  I  
> need somewhere that I will be able to get regular physical access,  
> as I will be getting data on hard drives and DVD's from clients that  
> I will need to transfer onto my servers.  I am going to be in  
> Northern Atlanta (Dunwoody), so anything closer to this area is  
> preferred.

Well, I'd recommend my own company, but we are not cheap.

Instead, I'll recommend these guys (whom I have a server with, since  
it's against policy for me to colo a box with my own company... grrr)

http://cyberwurx.com/colo.html

Even though they're competitors, they're pretty good guys. We're both  
located down on Marietta street, right next to the Five Points station.

If you do go with them, make sure they put you in the 56 Marietta  
building (the Telx building, aka the carrier hotel) and not 55  
Marietta. 55 Marietta doesn't have a proper power setup (which is why  
we have our offices in 55 and our Data Center in 56). 56 Marietta is  
on the Grady grid.

> On a related note, I am going to want to put together a file server  
> for my server farm, but I haven't dealt with larger file servers  
> under Linux in a long time.  I don't want to outlay the cash for a  
> high end storage solution, but I will want a server that can have  
> several (~4) Terabytes of storage available, which can be used by  
> several Windows boxes.  The files will be lots of smaller files that  
> will have lots of reads and writes (but more reads).

All depends on what you want. The proper way to do file storage is SAS  
RAID, but that gets a little pricey. For 4 TB, a properly built server  
with a decent raid card and decent sata drives should do you alright.  
I do not recommend doing software RAID5 though, get a proper card.

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