[sf-lug] colo Hardware

[Rick Moen]

Quoting jim stockford (jim at well.com):

> God bless you, John!

It's a well-intended offer.

You should realise, however, that there's been a race to make rackmount
machines as thin as possible, for many years.  Why?  Well, a typical 8'
rack has about 45 "U" of height to offer.  (A "U" appears to be about 5 cm,
or around two inches.)  Rack height is thus a saleable commodity sold by
the inch (per month) along with power and bandwidth.

Manufacturers in 2006 thus work hard to avoid the 4U form factor except
where it cannot be avoided, e.g. 8-way SPARC boxes with mammoth amounts
of storage and heat dissipation, because they are more expensive to
colocate.

In consequence, they _love_ getting down to 1U or even 0.5U where
feasible.

If you're seriously considering picking up a used 4U case for a
free-hosting offer, I'd advise checking with your benefactor to verify
that they're  happy giving away _that_ much rack space for free, every
month.  (You say his initial suggestion was a 1U; that might have been a
broad hint.)