I'd like to know more about how you do that. I just looked at Opus' site and the 4U they advertise in Hillsboro is pretty good when compared to what I pay for 1U of hobbyist colo in Seattle. Do you put multiple machines inside the 4U with a switch in the same space? Can I be so bold as to ask for pictures? What kind of physical access do you get? I have a 1U server-grade machine but moving to a more flexible space would be nice, even if it does mean a train trip to go see my boxen.

I do put multiple machines in the 4U. I feel sheepish about sharing pictures. My setup is not as trim as I would like. Hopefully my description will give you an idea of what it looks like.

For the boxes, I have a 1U enclosure holding two Mini-ITX motherboards. Then I have a 1U switch, it's nothing special, cheapest gigabit switch that got good reviews. And then for my load balancing and SSL, I got a Kemp Technologies hardware load balancer. It's got a little ASIC in it that offloads the SSL from the servers. I think I can sustain 200 concurrent SSL requests, which is fine for me right now while I develop my app.

In my 1U holding the servers, each server has a two disk software RAID-1 setup. I can't physically get to the colo but once or twice a year max, so I need to be able to withstand a drive failure here or there.

I think I get a drive failure about once every 2 years, and one ram stick failure so far. I had one motherboard failure, but it was a VIA technologies chip/board, and since then I have switched fully to the intel-produced slim Mini-ITX Atom motherboards, and those things are rock solid - just wish I could get 8GB of ram for them for more memcached goodness. ;)

I don't even know if my dual Mini-ITX server enclosure is sold anymore, it's kindof freakish especially with heat. Since I built this box I have been investigating "shorty" or "short depth" 1U enclosures. I wanted to be able to pack in the servers, and you're allowed to bolt servers to both sides of the rack. So by transferring my servers to shorty enclosures, I should be able to spread the heat out a little better and max out my space. I think I have space right now for 3 more shorty boxes if I need to expand my cluster.

Edit: for physical access, you just call the support line and either ask for remote hands/smart hands if it's something simple like rebooting a box for you, or you can schedule a time to come in. I've never been turned away from coming in the same day and when I want to. I am usually alone in the server room when I work. With all the cooling equipment and servers, it is very loud in there. Sometimes I just wear earplugs to dampen the noise. They've never charged me for smart hands, but I don't ask very often, once a year maybe.

Awesome, thanks for the info. I might have to look into doing something like this. Right now I have a 1U with gobs of RAM and HDD space so I just virtualize everything. Having more physical segregation would make for a fun project since this is all personal stuff that I just like to use for tinkering.

I've been interested in hobbyist colo for a while but the cheapest I've found is over $100 a month. Is this in the ballpark of what you are paying or are there better deals to be had?

The rate I'm paying no longer exists and the company I'm with got merged into another one so my point of reference isn't so good. :)

That said, there are a couple of companies on Webhostingtalk that have good prices for hobbyist colo if you look in their colocation forums and search for "Seattle." Opus is nice ($129 for 4U and 3A of power with 400GB of transit) and there is a company in Seattle--their name escapes me but I've seen them on WHT--that is $35 for 1U and 1A with 500GB of transit.

So, yes, I think you can do better especially if you just want space for a medium-usage 1U.

Opus is nice, I like to support them, always very friendly and understanding with my noobishness. When I first signed up, I didn't understand how to mount my case even. There were these brass grommits that were in the toolchest off in the corner nobody told me about that needed to be snapped into the rack uprights, and that's what you screw your case into. The tech was totally nice about it when I asked and he even helped me lift the case into place while I screwed it in since I was by myself.

Yeah, I'm over $100/month. I negotiated a deal with Opus though where they wouldn't charge me extra if I ever happened to go over my bandwidth cap, just throttle me. I figured if my app ever hits the mainstream and I'm making money, my little infrastructure will crumble way before my bandwidth cap is hit and that's when I'll upgrade my plan to a private cabinet with lots more U or just move to the cloud.