400K would go -fast- if they stuck to a traditional colo setup. Donations like this are rare and it may be all they get for a decade.

Personally I would feel better about round robin across multiple maintainer-home-hosted machines.

▲ Aurornis 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> 400K would go -fast- if they stuck to a traditional colo setup.

I don’t know where you’re pricing coloration, but I could host a single server indefinitely from the interest alone on $400K at the (very nice) data centers I’ve used.

Collocation is not that expensive. I’m not understanding how you think $400K would disappear “fast” unless you think it’s thousands of dollars per month?

	▲	2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

▲ arjie 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I, personally, have a cabinet in a colo. With $400k, I can host it at that datacentre with the income from risk-free return never exercising the capital with 10 GigE, 3 kW of power. If I can do it, they can do it.

Modern computers are super efficient. A 9755 has 128 cores and you can get it for cheap. If you've been doing this for a while you'd have gotten the RAM for cheap too.

If I, a normie, can have terabytes of RAM and hundreds of cores in a colo, I'm pretty sure they can unless they have some specific requests.

And dude, I'm in the Bay Area. Think about that. I'm in one of the highest cost localities and I can do this. I bet there are Colorado or Washington DCs that are even cheaper.

	▲	lrvick 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I to am in the bay area, and clearly I have been shopping at the wrong colos. I expected to find nothing with unlimited bandwidth for under $1k/mo given past experience with what may have been higher end DCs. In any event if I was the volunteer sysadmin that had to babysit the box, I would rather have it at my home with business fiber where I am on premises most of the time because getting in and out of a colo is always a whole thing if their security is worth a damn. Even given a frugal and accessible setup like that I can imagine 400k lasting 5 years tops especially if paying for the volunteers business fiber and much more especially given I expect some of it is to provide a sustainable compensation to key team members as well. Every cent will count.

▲ pilif 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

400k would last me 13 years for a rack, power and 10Gbit/s bandwidth at my colo place (Switzerland, traditionally high prices)

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dotancohen 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, but that's not their only expense.

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throwaway2037 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Stupid question from me: What are their other costs? I'm a total newbie about data center colo setups, but as I understand, it includes: power and internet access with ingress and egress. Are you thinking their egress will be very high, thus thus need to pay additional bandwidth charges?

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Aurornis 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, but that’s not the last or only donation they’re receiving either.

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LoganDark 12 hours ago | parent [-]

Don't bet on receiving money in the future.

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Aurornis 12 hours ago | parent [-]

It's a community donation-supported project. That's kind of the whole deal.

Regardless, the ongoing interest on $400K alone would be enough to pay colo fees.

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fragmede 11 hours ago | parent [-]

Since you've already done the math, what's the interest on $400k pay for the colo costs?

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serf 11 hours ago | parent [-]

at a (fairly modest) 3.3 its like 1100/month.

I don't know what kind of rates are available to non-profits, but with 400k in hand you can find nicer rates than 3.3 (as of today, at least).

that covers quite a few colo possibilities.

	▲	throwaway2037 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		USD money market funds from Vanguard pay about 3.7% now. Personally, I would recommend a 50/50 split between a Bloomberg Agg bond ETF and a high-yield bond ETF. You can easily boost that yield by 100bps with a modest increase in risk. Another thing overlooked in this debate: Data center costs normally increase at the rate of inflation. This is not included in most estimates. That said, I still agree with the broad sentiment here: 400K USD is plenty of money to run a colo server for 10+ years from the risk-free interest rate.

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Craighead 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

▲ silisili 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For reference, in the US at least, there was/is a company called Joes Data Center in KC who would colo a 1U for $30 or $40 a month. I'd used them for years before not needing it anymore, so not some fly by night company(despite the name).

At that rate, that would buy you nearly 1000 years of hosting.

▲ throwaway2037 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Those prices are rock bottom! For that price, what do you get for (a) power budget, (b) Internet connectivity, (c) ingress and egress per month?

I Googled for that brand and got a few hits:

    - https://inflect.com/building/1325-tracy-avenue-kansas-city/joes-datacenter/datacenter/joes-datacenter
    - https://www.linkedin.com/company/joesdatacenter/
    - https://www.facebook.com/joesdatacenter/

The homepage now redirects here: https://patmos.tech/

Another under appreciated point about that data center: It has excellent geographical location to cover North America.

▲ an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

▲ Aurornis 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I was trying to avoid naming exact prices because it becomes argument fodder, but locally I can get good quality colo for $50/month and excellent quality coloration with high bandwidth and good interconnects for under $100 for 1U

I really don’t know where the commenter above was getting the idea that $400K wouldn’t last very long

	▲	esseph 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Alaska. Dollars per Mbit + reliable power in colo.

▲ stackghost 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Joe's got bought out by Patmos.

The jury's still out on whether or not this is a good thing.

▲ 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

▲ kube-system 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For a server? The going rate for a 1/4 cabinet is $300-500/month.

▲ shrubble 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

A full rack, 10 gigabits bandwidth and 1920W of power is available for as little as $800/month: https://1530swift.com/colocation.php

Of course you have to buy the switches and servers…