Intel Atom colocation

Realized today that I want to smash a mini-ITX server. A lot of power is not needed, because Atom is enough. If I were familiar with Korbina, I would put it on 10Mbps and I wouldn’t have blown, but unfortunately there aren’t, and on Yota, there’s just no return. Hosters are ready to bet on kolo, but only with a small discount. You can take VDS - but there are some limitations (especially little memory), and unguaranteed speed on the disk. Well, there is a dedicated "grandfathers" for $ 50 / month. In general, the situation is sad, and I decided to dig a little bit of a colocation / dedicated server issue on the Intel Atom, the results are under the cut.

Disclaimer: This is a low-end segment. There are their trade-offs both in performance (which, however, will be enough for many), and in services (KVM, rreboot). Not all of these compromises will suit, but they certainly should allow to reduce the cost and attract additional customers.

What is available now

Now there are ancient, crumbling servers on P4-1.6Ghz, Athletes, samples with 0.5-1GB of memory at $ 50 / month. To use such a course is not very pleasant, and reliability is less (although “time tested”). There is Amazon, where “having bought out iron” for $ 500, you can pay $ 22 / month for 1.7 GB of memory and 1.2 GHz virtual percent (faster than a single-core atom, though), but traffic is paid. There are VDS, which for $ 25 usually give much less than 1 GB of memory, and non-guaranteed disk performance + virtualka limitations.

The bourgeoisie has MacMini colocation ($ 35 / month +) - they do not climb into 1U, but the processors are normal. It looks tough of course.
Now here is Intel Atom dedicated for $ 39 per month. The feedback is very positive, including in terms of performance - most of the servers still run into the disk.
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Why is it profitable

1. Do hosters limit on power per rack. 6 microservers eat less than 1 big one. 120W VS 200-350W. Free capacity will be available for expensive servers.
2. If you take from 6 clients $ 20-30 per colocation of such a “crumb”, the revenue per 1U will be higher than from $ 80-100 per colocation of a mono server
3. There are many new customers who are tired of the overclocked VDS - at a comparable price, orders of magnitude faster and more affordable. Yes, and your iron closer to the heart.
4. The system works in a very sparing mode, active fans only in 1U package = the probability of failure is much lower (I would hope so). Compare the circuits that work with currents of 100A at 70C and 5A at 40C. You can put an SSD disk (which I am going to), there will be no moving parts in the server at all = it can survive all of us with proper use (SSD in servers is a separate difficult question) :-)
5. One power supply for 4-6 boxes = cheaper, more reliable. Again, the 200W-250W power supply with a load of just 100W is additional reliability.

Potential problems

1. More requests for technical support - but if it is paid, there are no problems
2. Ports KVM and rreboot cost money. With a common power supply, it is traditional to turn on / off the power remotely with a power outlet. And KVM is also difficult to bring to such a heap. I propose to do without them in this Low-end segment. If necessary, a brief diagnosis is carried out by the employees of the hoster on a paid basis. From accidental loss of electricity - there is "wake on lan" and "power on after power loss". However, this is the most sports item. On host review there are heated discussions about this. If you do not do very hard nonsense, Linux is difficult to put so that it was not available from the network. IMHO is a reasonable compromise for low-end.
3. Too lazy to move the ass for $ 20-30 / month. Even with a minimum prepayment of 3 months and a small installation fee.
4. Iron breaks. You can make a paid replacement / diagnosis. The components are quite typical. It's one thing to have brooms for replacing brooms for $ 200, processors for $ 500, memory for $ 100 each, and another is $ 300-400 for the whole set

Now let's take a quick look at the iron:

1. ASUS EEE Box B202

+: Dimensions 223 * 178 * 26mm, climb 4 pieces in 1U case. 6 - with a creak and not in any building
+: Under load total consumption of 20W
-: You need 19V power, but you can put 1 notebook power supply at all.
-: Maximum 2GB of memory.
-: Single atom (so far only on sale).
Price issue: 11,500 rubles

2. Acer Aspire Revo

+: Dimensions 180x180x30mm, climb 6 pieces in 1U case.
+: Under load, total consumption is 29W.
+: Much faster memory, up to 4GB.
-: You need 19V power, but you can put 1 notebook power supply at all.
-: Single atom (so far only on sale).
Price issue: 10,600 rubles for the version without Windows

3. Zotac IONITX-AE

+: Dimensions 170x170mm, 6 pieces climbs without any problems at all.
+: Atom 330 - 2 physical cores. This already puts old dedicated servers on one P4-1.6Ghz and old single-core Sempron and Athlon on performance belt.
+: 3 SATA ports. Can do RAID-1.
+: 4GB of memory
+: Powered by Molex. Google-style. One case power supply feeds all systems.
-: All the same, 19v power is needed.

Price issue: 7700 rubles for a fee + percent. Top broom (s) and memory.

What do you think? Who is willing to pay for such a service? Who has information about the amortized price per month of KVM port and remote reboot? And most importantly, which of the hosters are ready to take on this? Chur I am the first client :-)