Note: this the third and final draft of the machine colocation rack costs sheet and service terms. Prices have not changed since the last revision. The service is now live.

Rack space, as described below, is immediately and henceforth available exclusively to my L1 and L2 WoT (presently visible here.) If you, reader, are not in this roster, or not interested in purchasing rack service from me, you may safely skip this article.

Section 1: Offerings.

Pricing:

Pricing is to be made as simple as possible: a subscriber will be charged the following monthly fee:

T = (C + I + L) × (1 + M) - D

...where C is the colo cost; I is the cost of a subscriber's IP addresses; L -- the lease cost of leased irons, if any; M is the margin; and, lastly, D is the subscriber's discount, if applicable (when purchasing service in quarterly or yearly terms.) All of these parameters will be explained below.

The impatient can skip straight to the automatic estimate calculator.

Colo Cost: C = P_u × T_e

Let's begin with T_e -- 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. $).

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 in leased machines; and similar.)

The total monthly expense of the shared physical resources T_e is thereby: 345 $.

P_u, the proportion of shared physical resource expense a subscriber is to be charged for, is defined as the maximum of the quantities below :

1. P_s (% of Available Physical Space Occupied)
2. P_w (% of Available Wattage Consumed)

In order to understand the terms P_s and P_w, the reader must be made familiar with the current physical plan of the rack:

From the above, it can be seen that I have reserved 8 U of physical space and 290 Watt of mains current supply capacity (for infrastructure expansion and electrical demand peaks, respectively.)

Ergo, there are currently: 22 - 8 == 14 U of physical space and 1200 - 290 == 910 Watt of mains current made available to subscribers. This is a conservative limit, as indicated above.)

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 device which draws 5 Watt, will be 0.0054945.

Consequently, a subscriber's colo cost C = P_u × T_e will be equal to: 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.

IP Cost I = (# IPs) * (Cost of IP)

In order to be of use, servers require Internet connectivity.

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 will 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.

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

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.

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.

Lease Cost: L = Value / Amort

A subscriber is not required to lease anything, aside from at least 1 IP address. If you are sending in iron for pure colocation service, the L term of the price equation will equal zero.

However, 12 standard machine types are available for lease; and arrangements can be made to request the construction and lease of custom iron.

The monthly Lease Cost, L = Value / Amort consists of the Lease Value of the iron in question, divided by its Amortization Period in months. The latter is currently specified as 36 months for 'Dulap'-type machines (see below) and 12 months for 'RK'-type machines. This pricing scheme permits the regular physical replacement of worn-out irons, or the purchase of replacement components, as circumstances demand.

BOMs (Bills of Materials) will be provided for all current and future irons offered for lease. However the identities of component suppliers will be disclosed at my option and not otherwise. Potential subscribers who think they can get substantially better prices elsewhere, are encouraged to assemble their machines with their own hands, and to colocate rather than lease.

The following irons are presently offered for lease:

Note: certain configurations may require up to an additional 7 days for component purchases. I will keep certain components in stock at my option.

The BOMs for the above irons are precisely as follows:

'Dulap' (1U 32-Core AMD Opteron); configurable RAM and Storage :

A 'Dulap'-type machine will consist, in all cases unless otherwise specified, of: a 'Supermicro' 1U H8DGU-FAMD with a pair of power supplies for redundancy, 2 AMD 'Opteron' 6380 16 Core 2.5GHZ processors, a LSI 9265-8I RAID Controller, and 4 3.5" to 2.5" SATA trays.

Note: The 'Remote Management' chips found in these boxes will be at all times disabled, as they are a security risk. Under no circumstances will an Ethernet connection be made to a 'remote management' jack in any machine hosted in my rack.

The "skeleton" (chassis, PS, mobo) of this machine is valued at 99.00 $. Each CPU: 88.00 $ (usually available in pairs, and in any case a maximum of 2 may be installed). The RAID card: 50.00 $. Disk trays and SATA harnesses, 11.00 $ per disk slot. RAM for this machine (in all cases ECC) is valued at 198.00 $ per 128GB, and may be installed in increments of 128GB. (For optimum operation, the total RAM is to be 128, 256, or 512 (max) GB.)

All disks, other than when customer-supplied, for 'Dulaps' and 'RK1TB', will be 1TB Samsung 860 EVO SSDs, and valued at 145.00 $ each for the purpose of leases. Note: the market price of such disks fluctuates.

Note: if a subscriber wishes to guarantee that "virginal" disks are installed in a newly-leased machine, he must purchase his disks up front; otherwise disks with "non-zero odometer" may be installed. Subscribers are encouraged to make use of their RAID cards to set up resilient systems.

If, on the other hand, a subscriber wishes his disks to be destroyed at any point in the duration, or after the termination of, his lease, he must then also purchase his disks. At all times the purchase price of a disk will be the one given in the BOM at the time of the the initiation of his subscription. Disks that the user wishes to take physical possession of after the termination of service, will be mailed to an address given by the subscriber, and the latter is responsible for postage expense.

A 'Dulap' occupies in all cases 1 U of physical space, and is rated to consume an average of 250 Watt of mains current, and each SSD adds 4 Watt to this figure.

All Dulap machines will be installed with my 'Dulap-Gentoo' operating system unless otherwise agreed upon.

'RK' ('Rockchip' 4-Core 64-Bit ARM); configurable Storage :

A 'RK'-type machine will consist, in all cases unless otherwise specified, of: a ROC-RK3328-CC board, equipped with (non-upgradable) 2GB of RAM, and a 4-core non-upgradable 1.4GHz ARM64 CPU. They are mounted in a purpose-built fixator which occupies 2 U of physical space and can house up to 48 such machines.

The RK BOM is as follows. The machine itself is valued at 40.00 $. The (vendor-supplied) heatsink : 10.00 $. The (custom) fixator mounts : 18.00 $. Screws, cabling, and the SD card which holds the boot kernel : 5.00 $. This makes for a base value of 73 $.

However, the machine is of no use without disks. The following selection of storage devices is offered:

Samsung MUF-128BE4/AM 128GB (USB 3.1) -- 26.00 $. Samsung MUF-256BE4/AM 256GB (USB 3.1) -- 53.00 $. And, finally, the Samsung 860 EVO 1TB -- 145.00 $ (and requires a 20.00 $ USB3 converter snake, and a second 1/48th U of physical space, as well as 4 additional watts of electrical supply.) All of these variants are reflected in the above Irons table.

All RK machines will be installed with my 'RK-Gentoo' operating system unless otherwise agreed upon.

The Margin: M

The margin is presently set at 45 percent.

The Discount: D

A bulk discount is obtained when a subscriber arranges to lease in quarterly or yearly intervals; this value is presently set at 5 percent.

Special Offers :

Contact me in #asciilifeform on Freenode to discuss demos, discounts and other special arrangements.

Summary:

T_monthly = (C_{olo cost} + I_{p cost} + L_{ease cost}) × (1 + M_argin) - D_iscount

This equation, as demonstrated above, determines the total monthly cost of any subscription.

Mechanized Price Estimator:

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

Section 2: Service Agreement.

Communication with Subscribers:

All subscription and service requests will be conducted via encrypted text (today -- via GPG; in the future, via a civilized replacement, at the individual subscriber's option.) Subscribers are responsible for placing the ciphertexts where I can see them; and for signing their own messages, so that I can verify their origin; and for verifying the signatures on my responses to determine that they originate from me. Unsigned requests will not be acted upon or answered. All service-related communications from a current subscriber (as well as requests for initiating a subscription) must be encrypted to my public key. All responses will be encrypted to the subscriber's public key.

Subscriber Privacy:

Identities of subscribers will not be revealed publicly (Note, however, that my L1/L2 WoT from which eligible subscribers are drawn, is visible to all.) Subscribers are of course free to publicly reveal themselves, and, if they wish, to review/criticize the service.

I make use of custom and unobtrusive seals to monitor for evidence of unsanctioned access to the contents of the rack. Colocation subscribers are encouraged to install their own seals on their irons. A quarterly photo-inspection of customer seals, on request, is included in the price of colocation service.

Billing:

Service for a new subscription will be provided within one business day after payment is processed. Please do not pay until you have selected your iron, and have been informed that the required iron is available and ready for service.

Colocation subscribers are responsible for the cost of postage, customs, etc. I will provide a mailing address on request.

All billing without exception will be carried out in BTC at an exchange rate to be mutually agreed upon by the subscriber and I at the time of billing. If the subscriber is paying via a traditional BTC transaction (as opposed to Trinque's deedbot service), an adequate TX fee must be included in the transaction. Those using deedbot are responsible for paying Trinque's processing fees, keeping their account in order, etc.

If either the subscriber or I lose access to deedbot, payment must be made in traditional BTC to an address that I will generate, sign, and encrypt to the subscriber's WoT public key. Such a payment will be considered valid after 6 confirmations (i.e. BTC blocks appearing on top of the block in which the payment TX appeared.) Payments made via deedbot are valid immediately.

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

Changes of Price:

All prices are subject to change. To lock in a price, please make a quarterly or yearly arrangement.

IP Addresses and Spam:

Be warned: A release of an IP address for any reason other than the termination of a subscription, will incur a 50 $ cleanup charge. This will happen if, for instance, the tenant commits a "coarse error of pilotage" and his IP finds its way into a public "spam database" or whatever similar "wall of shame" of a kind that may impede normal operation of the entire orchestra.

Note also that the my upstream carrier, like most other carriers, forbids spam. Subscribers who repeatedly provoke conflict with the upstream carrier (by e.g. spamming) will be banished without refund. And those who deliberately cause problems for other subscribers (I will not bother to enumerate all of the possible ways, it could fill an entire encyclopaedia) will also be negrated.

Subscribers are also advised that this rack is located in USA -- and therefore it is not a good choice of location in which to publicly host "l337 w4r3z", or whatever other easily-recognizable material Officially banned by officious busybodies.

Backups:

Subscribers are responsible for their own backups. No backup service is is included in the subscription unless special arrangements have been agreed upon with the particular subscriber.

Maintenance:

Colocation subscribers are encouraged to send in a stock of spare parts (disks, PS, fans) for their irons. Spare parts may also be purchased on request (contact me); in this case, the margin will apply.

Lease subscribers will receive required disk, PS, fan, etc. swaps, as part of their subscription. However, the subscriber is responsible for monitoring his machine's status and requesting e.g. disk swap when required; I do not have access to the internal status monitors of any customer-operated machine. This is by design: no "remote management" backdoors of any kind are in use at my ISP.

I reserve the right to perform scheduled maintenance resulting in up to 1 hour per year of down-time per subscriber. Subscribers will be notified no less than 1 week in advance of a scheduled maintenance session.

"Remote Hands":

A subscriber may request up to 2 hours of "remote hands" service (mains current reset, OS installation assistance, etc.) per year as part of his subscription. The charge for "hands" service in excess of this quota will cost the BTC equivalent of 100 $ / hr., to be paid immediately after the completion of the service call.

"Hands" service requested in connection with repair of malfunctioning leased iron, or disk swaps in either colocated or leased iron, will not count towards this quota.

Service Interruptions:

In the event of an unscheduled service interruption for reasons other than coarse error of pilotage on the part of the subscriber (See IPs and Spam above) subscribers will receive a pro-rated refund for all down-time. The individual subscriber is responsible for requesting any such refund.

Loss of Colocated Iron:

The hosting facility housing this rack is guarded 24/7, and access to the machines requires two keys, a password, and two layers of "biometric" ritual. Additionally, the grounds are equipped with a Halon 1301 fire suppression system. However it is impossible to offer a total guarantee against natural and man-made calamities. The owner of a colocated machine lost to fire, flood, theft, or vandalism, will be reimbursed the BTC equivalent of no more than 1000 $ unless otherwise agreed at the time of subscription. The tenant of a leased machine similarly lost will be reimbursed strictly for down-time.

Termination of Service:

If a subscription is terminated for any reason, the subscriber is responsible for all postage and customs expenses pertaining to recovering any colocated hardware. Arrangements for the recovery of data will also be made, for subscribers in good standing (see Spam and Billing) at the time of termination.

A GPG-signed copy of the Service Agreement can be found here. Subscribers are asked to confirm that they have read the agreement prior to paying.