FreeBSD Co-location Service & prices

Idiom's FreeBSD Co-location Service includes the following:

• FreeBSD System design, purchase, and installation.
• Remote serial console
• Remote power control
• Remote OS rescue capability
• Remote OS install capability
• Rack space for a desktop system.
• 5GB/month of incoming or outgoing network traffic.
• Daily backups (optional)
• System adminstration (optional)

Target

Idiom's co-location services are designed to meet the needs of people who want to offer services using FreeBSD systems but reside in countries where Internet access is expensive.

Facility

Idiom serves co-location customers out of it's main facility in downtown Oakland. This facility is in a building with dual PG&E power feeds and fiber from more than three telcos.

Remote Console

We will provide remote access to a console serial port on your system.

Remote Power Control

We will provide a method of turning the power for your equipment on and off.

Remote Operating System Installation & Rescue Capability

When rebooting from a power loss, the FreeBSD system can either boot normally off the hard drive (default) or be placed in a repair mode with access to a full NFS-mounted FreeBSD 2.2-STABLE system.

When in repair mode it is possible to install a new operating system on a blank disk. It is also possible to repair an existing installation.

System purchase and leasing

We can put systems together on your behalf.

We have a working relationship with ASA Comptuers and will purchase most systems through them. If you want to see what they have, please look at their online catalog. Not all components work equally well so please don't design your system in detal. Instead, please decide on the gross parameters: which cpu, how much memory, how many slots, how many disks, what size, etc. With those parameters, we will obtain a quote from ASA Computers.

Prices

The base price for Idiom's FreeBSD Co-location Service is $400 setup + $400/month.

FreeBSD Co-location Service includes one regular telnet account on idiom.com.

Bandwidth or Usage

FreeBSD Co-location Service can either have measured bandwidth or rate-limited bandwidth.

With measured bandwidth, any traffic over 20GB/month will be charged at $0.015/MB. Either the incoming or the outgoing bandwidth will be used - not both. Whichever is higher on a given day will be counted.

Rate-limiting prevents you from sending or receiving data faster than the rate that you have purchased. Any rate limit may be specified. The first 100kbps is free, after that it is $100 per month per 100kbps.

System Purchase

Systems may either be purchased or they may be leased. If they are purchased, Idiom will add 15% margin.

If leased, the system will be part of your monthly service and your monthly service cost will be increased by 8-12% of the cost of the system. A minimum service commitment of four months must be prepaid. The 8-12% choice will be made based upon how useful such a system would be for Idiom should you not keep using it. All such systems must meet some requirements: parity or ECC memory, Seagate SCSI disks, and x86-compatable CPUs.

You may also supply your own computer. If so, the components and configuration must be approved by Idiom. The system must be less than 19" wide and if it's more than 6.5" tall, the extra height will be charged at $15/inch/month.

Systems Administration Tasks

It is not required that you use Idiom for any of your system administration tasks. If you should want to use us, here are some prices.

Install FreeBSD 2.2-STABLE: $250.

Upgrade to the latest 2-2-STABLE: $350 once. Add $50 / month to continue.

Install Apache: $50.

Add a virtual web server: $100.

Nightly backups: $100 / month. Only includes partitions less than 2GB and total disk space less than 8GB.

Restore system from tape: $200 + $100/GB for anything over 2GB.

Add a user: $50.

Other: $150 per hour, one hour minimum.

Hardware service

To be determined.

Physical Access

Idiom does not have a 24x7 staff available to let you in to visit your equipment (we do have 24x7 coverage for emergencies though). Most days, it won't be a problem for us to let you in, but we would not be happy if we had to let you in too often. Off-hours (read inconvienent for us) access is only available for a $300 fee per visit.