Re: Colo in Africa

[Akshay Kumar via NANOG <nanog () nanog org>]

Then you are "doing it wrong(tm). Good luck.

On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 5:40 PM Ken Gilmour <ken.gilmour () gmail com> wrote:

> These are actual real problems we face. thousands of customers load and
> reload TBs of data every few seconds on their dashboards. We have busy
> servers. We tried cloud. I passionately hate it. We choose to use Bare
> Metal.
>
> On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 10:34, Akshay Kumar <akshay () mongodb com> wrote:
>
> > Go look at the actual specifications for one of the metal boxes - you are
> > not going to come close to maxing anything out with the workload you
> > describe. FSB hasn't been a thing in over a decade. If you really wanted to
> > go crazy you could do some build a custom solution in FPGA on the F1s.
> >
> > It's a moot point since none of this is going to be available in time but
> > perf is a bogus reason and a lot of the times price is too.
> >
> > On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 5:12 PM Ken Gilmour <ken.gilmour () gmail com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Speed is not the issue, it's IO. Also streaming 100Gbps of video is very
> > > different to streaming 100Gbps of files smaller than 100kb (average of
> > > about 30kb) the issue on the network level is the number of connections and
> > > CPU, on the server side it's IO and FSB
> > >
> > > On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 08:55, Akshay Kumar <akshay () mongodb com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > The 2nd requirement seems artificial. The new hypervisors have come a
> > > > long way and the overhead is minimal. Also you can run bare metal instances
> > > > in AWS if you really need them with 100Gbps.
> > > >
> > > > Just just use the South Africa AWS region.
> > > >
> > > > On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 3:35 PM Ken Gilmour <ken.gilmour () gmail com>
> > > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Hi Folks,
> > > > >
> > > > > I work for a Security Analytics org and we're looking to build a small
> > > > > POP in Africa. I am pretty clueless about the region so I was wondering if
> > > > > you could help guide me in the right direction for research?
> > > > >
> > > > > The challenges:
> > > > >
> > > > >    1. Network needs to be able to receive millions of small PPS (as
> > > > >    opposed to serving smaller numbers of larger files).
> > > > >    2. Can't be cloud (need bare metal servers / colo). We use the
> > > > >    full capacity of each server, all the time.
> > > > >    3. Must have good connectivity to most of the rest of Africa
> > > > >    4. We can initially only have one POP
> > > > >
> > > > > This is not like a normal website that we can just host on "any old
> > > > > provider", the requirements are very different.
> > > > >
> > > > > Is there a good location where we could either rent bare metal servers
> > > > > (something like Internap - preferred) or colocate servers within Africa
> > > > > that can serve most of the region?
> > > > >
> > > > > "Good" is defined as an area with stable connectivity and power, no
> > > > > legal restrictions on things like encryption, and good latency (sub 100ms)
> > > > > to the rest of Africa.
> > > > >
> > > > > Our two closest POPs are in Singapore and The Netherlands, so I'd like
> > > > > something closer to the middle that can serve the rest of Africa. Middle
> > > > > East will be deployed after Africa.
> > > > >
> > > > > I hope this is the right place to ask.
> > > > >
> > > > > Thanks!
> > > > >
> > > > > Ken