nanog mailing list archives

Recommendations for Hong Kong datacenter, and a sanity check for my geopolitical conclusions ?


From: George Sanders <gosand1982 () yahoo com>
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:23:35 -0700 (PDT)



I will be expanding a small network infrastructure service (read: DNS and mail ... a few 1u and 2u servers) to Hong 
Kong next year.

We don't have any particular customer base in Hong Kong - rather, we have customers all over southeast asia and would 
like to serve them better, as well as attract more SE Asia customers.

I chose Hong Kong for the following reasons:

- South Korea is alternately happy with / upset with Japan, and I don't want to deal with that

- Japan is is alternately happy with / upset with South Korea, and I don't want to deal with that

- Mainland China is out of the question, for obvious reasons

- The smaller (Thailand, Vietnamese, Phillipines, etc.) countries all have their own particular issues (recent coup in 
Thailand, etc.)

So the choice came down to Hong Kong or Singapore, and I chose Hong Kong because it seems easier to "just get things 
done" there.  I realize that in the long term there is a greater risk of social paradigm shift in Hong Kong because of 
mainland China, but in the short run it seems that Hong Kong is more "functional" than Singapore.

Any comments on the above thought process ?


The obvious follow-up is, which datacenter ?

I need a full service center that will give me rackspace and let me just plug ethernet into their switch.  I am not 
interested in brokering my own connectivity, nor am I interested in running my own routers.  I want to pay one bill to 
one organization and get one cable.  The end.

I think there are further considerations though ... I read details of one very modern, very sexy datacenter housed in a 
skyscraper, but my research showed me that this building has been built on land reclaimed from the sea, and there is 
reasonable concern that the sand underpinnings could liquify, to a degree, in a seismic event.  I'd also like to be 
more than a few feet above sea level.  Honestly, as sexy as it would be to be in a slick tower right on the bay in 
Central Hong Kong, I would much rather find some nondescript, one story building, miles from the coast and a few 
hundred feet above sea level.

What recommendations might someone have ?

Thank you very much for any comments or suggestions you may have.





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