We used to run some servers in a colo, we had 4u.

The problem with actually owning hardware is that you need a lot of it, and need to be prepared to manage things like upgrading firmware. You need to keep on top of the advisories for your network card, the power unit, the enterprise management card, etc. etc. If something goes wrong someone might need to drive in and plug in a keyboard.

Eventually we admitted to ourselves we didn't want those problems.

“Your own server in a colo” means going to the colo to swap RAM or an SSD when something goes wrong. You rent a server and the benefit is the rentor has spare parts on hand and staff to swap parts out.

You have to deal with a lot more stuff. You have to order/pay for a server (capex), mount it somewhere, wire up lights-out-mgmt and recovery and do a few more tasks that the provider has already done.

Then, say if the motherboard gives up, you have to do quite a bit of work to get it replaced, you might be down for hours or maybe days.

For a single server I don't think it makes sense. For 8 servers, maybe. Depends on the opportunity cost.

> why not your own server in a colo?

Have you seen what the LLM crowd have done to server prices ?

I Guess hetzner is basically "your server in colo"

It's also expensive (redundant server hardware, xconnect, power, firewall(s), PSU access, smart hands, sysadmin).

But it's indeed cheaper with high, sustained workloads.

Bit of waste of time for a server. Only makes sense if you actually need at least half a rack