Edit (27 Oct 2019) : This document is supplanted by the second draft of the prospectus.

I have provisioned a machine colocation rack for the exclusive use of The Most Serene Republic, as represented by the WoT L1 and L2. If you, reader, are not in this roster, you may safely skip this article.

By explicit request of the prospective inhabitants of this rack, I have written down a properly-scientific breakdown of all pertinent costs. What follows is by no means a final document: it is subject to criticism and revision, and no one will be invoiced until (there is currently one test pilot user -- thank you, Diana Coman!) it is declared battlefield-ready.

Baseline Operating Cost:

Let's begin with the baseline cost of operation. From the upstream vendor, currently I have a service package consisting of a 22U cabinet, permitted to draw up to 1200 Watt of mains current. This is bought at a monthly rate of 295 $ (here and below in U.S. $).

Installation and Maintenance:

Subscribers will receive service of physical plant with my own hands. It is located within 20 minutes (by auto) of my place of residence. The cost of installation and regular maintenance are to be considered as covered by the operational margin (see further below.)

Risks and Defense:

Subscribers are to know that this rack lives in the heart of the reich. This location comes with well-known risks, and therefore all service shall be priced aggressively, to make for a positive ROI. As previously discussed, a smart net user ought to locate mirrors of his site in multiple jurisdictions.

In the event of serious and irrecoverable problems with the current upstream service provider, I reserve the right to move all irons to a similarly-priced alternative machine park. (The search for usable alternatives -- shall continue.)

Internet Connectivity:

IP Addresses are leased from the carrier in traditional "slash" parcels, rather than individually: e.g. currently we have a /29 for a monthly charge of 25 $; a /28 will cost 50 $, and so forth.

Three IPs at all times are occupied by "gateway", my rationing/filtration switch, and "broadcast", leaving 5 presently available to subscribers (one is already spoken for by the test pilot, Diana Coman). The IP block is expandable on several hours' notice. (In the future, I would like to actually purchase a block of IPs but presently budget does not permit this.)

For simplicity, the cost of IPs for subscribers will be billed as 3.15 $ per IP requested. Every subscriber must lease at least one IP.

Initially subscribers will share the current 100Mb/s pipe. However, provisions for rationing are in place, and arrangements can be made to purchase a dedicated portion of this pipe. I reserve the right to ask "bandwidth hogs", if such appear, to request a dedicated portion. It shall be priced exactly as physical space and energy are priced below -- i.e. in direct proportion to the percent of the total capacity reserved by the subscriber.

I expect to upgrade the installation to a 1Gb/s pipe and 42U tower when the revenue permits this upgrade.

Operational Overhead:

A monthly overhead budget of 50 $ will be included in the operating cost. This will cover "small change" expenses (e.g. petrol for my visits to the site; cabling; periodic replacements of fans; and similar.)

The total monthly operational expense, T_e not including IPs, is thereby 345 $.

Physical Space and Energy:

Pricing is to be made as simple as possible: a subscriber will be charged a baseline colo cost C, consisting of the maximum of the quantities below :

1. P_s (% of Available Physical Space Occupied) × T_e
2. P_w (% of Available Wattage Consumed) × T_e
3. (OPTIONAL) P_b (% of Net Pipe Bandwidth Reserved for Exclusive Use) × T_e

Note: no one has yet expressed interest in dedicated pipe apportionments, and so III will be omitted from the discussion further below.

First it is necessary to describe P_s and P_w. For this, the reader must be made familiar with the current physical plan of the rack:

Ergo, there are currently: 22 - 8 == 14 U of physical space and 1200 - 290 == 910 Watt of mains current made available to subscribers.

And so it follows that, for any subscriber:

P_s (% of Available Physical Space Occupied) = U-Height of Your Machine / 14

... e.g. for a 1U server, P_s ~= 0.07143; for a 2U: ~0.1429, and so forth.

And very similarly for energy consumption:

P_w (% of Available Wattage Consumed) = Watts Drawn by Your Machine / 910

... e.g., for a 100 Watt server, P_w ~= 0.1099; for a Rockchip device, which draws a maximum of 5 Watt, will be 0.0054945.

(Note: for the purpose of pricing, a Rockchip is considered to occupy "no physical space", as there is a fixation apparatus of apriori-known size reserved for 48 such devices: represented as rows 5 and 6 of the rack illustration.)

The subscriber's colo cost C will consist of the greater of P_s and P_w, multiplied by T_e. This represents the cost of the proportion of upstream-supplied resources used by the subscriber.

This pricing scheme ensures that a fully-occupied -- whether space or energy-wise -- rack, is properly paid for, and that each subscriber is billed in direct proportion to resource utilization.

The subscriber's monthly subtotal S will consist of C + L (the cost of any leased iron, detailed further below). The subscriber's final monthly cost T will equal S + (Margin × S).

Before discussing worked examples of the price scheme, let's cover the iron lease cost. The monthly cost L for the lease of a particular machine will consist of:

L == Value of Machine / A (where A is the number of months over which said value is to be amortized, presently set at 36.)

This will permit a once-per-3-years physical replacement of any particular machine, or the purchase of replacement components, as circumstances demand.

So, for example, a "Dulap"-type (32-core Opteron, 256GB RAM), not inclusive of disks, is to be valued at 1000 $, and therefore shall lease for a L of:

L == 1000 / 36 ~= 27.78 $ / month.

A Rockchip (henceforth valued at 100 $) (inclusive of heatsink, cabling, fixator, and 128GB SSD) will lease for 2.78 $ / month.

As given earlier, L is charged in addition to the colocation occupancy charge C. For customer-owned iron, naturally, L == 0.

(Note: any disks that a machine-lease subscriber does not wish to be erased and given to other customers upon the expiration of said lease, must be purchased prior to starting service. Purchase price shall be the actual market cost of said disks, incremented by the Margin. The same will apply to all irons which are purchased by subscriber request where their ownership is to be transferred to the subscriber.)

The total cost to a subscriber will consist of the colo cost C, plus the cost of requested IPs, plus the cost of any leased irons, and finally plus the margin (presently set at 15 %). All of these quantities will be detailed below, and examples supplied.

Price Examples:

The above examples represent Leased Rockchip, Leased 'Dulap', and Colocated 'Dulap' respectively.

Mechanized Price Estimator:

An automatic estimate calculator is available for prospective subscribers.
(Warning: requires Javascript)

Billing:

All billing shall be carried out in BTC (at the TMSR Auction rate, if such auction held within past month of billing; or otherwise an average of major heathen market rates, to be determined), and paid via Deedbot.

Users may subscribe in quarterly or yearly parcels, to lock in price; the discount for either option shall be 5 % (of the total T.)

Everything on this page is subject to revision after criticism by L1 (and in particular Mircea Popescu -- my teacher and at the same time the heaviest prospective industrial customer.)