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mgaunardtoday at 9:07 AM1 replyview on HN

you're missing 5, what they are doing.

There is a world of difference between renting some cabinets in an Equinix datacenter and operating your own.


Replies

adamcharnocktoday at 9:20 AM

Fair point!

5 - Datacenter (DC) - Like 4, except also take control of the space/power/HVAC/transit/security side of the equation. Makes sense either at scale, or if you have specific needs. Specific needs could be: specific location, reliability (higher or lower than a DC), resilience (conflict planning).

There are actually some really interesting use cases here. For example, reliability: If your company is in a physical office, how strong is the need to run your internal systems in a data centre? If you run your servers in your office, then there's no connectivity reliability concerns. If the power goes out, then the power is out to your staff's computers anyway (still get a UPS though).

Or perhaps you don't need as high reliability if you're doing only batch workloads? Do you need to pay the premium for redundant network connections and power supplies?

If you want your company to still function in the event of some kind of military conflict, do you really want to rely on fibre optic lines between your office and the data center? Do you want to keep all your infrastructure in such a high-value target?

I think this is one of the more interesting areas to think about, at least for me!

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