# Importance of A+B Power?



## concerto49 (Jun 10, 2013)

Would anyone want this or pay more for it? It applies to dedicated servers, but also VPS that comes out of it.

 

Especially seeing that a power failure could possible destroy RAID cards and the data etc causing a huge mess as well.


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## HalfEatenPie (Jun 10, 2013)

Well, this is why Catalyst makes sure all of our servers are on A+B Power, and we consider it as a feature.  I personally prefer A+B Power to be pretty important for mission critical things.


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## drmike (Jun 10, 2013)

A+B power is mandatory for any paying customer facing hosting. This means where the end users of the server or service thereon are paying.


Second leg of power is far from free and adds complexity. Certainly a save though when considering the massive damage from a brownout.


Certainly is something folks want, but most in the el cheapo sector don't want to pay for.


Yes, I'd pay more and expect to pay more for A+B power. I use it sparingly, and only where necessary.


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## Francisco (Jun 10, 2013)

concerto49 said:


> Would anyone want this or pay more for it? It applies to dedicated servers, but also VPS that comes out of it.
> 
> Especially seeing that a power failure could possible destroy RAID cards and the data etc causing a huge mess as well.


For a virtual server I doubt it. For what it's worth Linode doesn't have A+B in Fremont at the very least, who knows about the other locations.

We haven't got A+B in Vegas yet but it's on the way. Rob's still finalizing it all and I will not be bugging him about such a critical thing.

Francisco


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## drmike (Jun 10, 2013)

Francisco said:


> For what it's worth Linode doesn't have A+B in Fremont at the very least, who knows about the other locations.



Linode isn't as with it as outside PR makes them out to be. A company that has the rep of being that large, certainly should have more redundancy. But, I suspect they are playing around with redundancy on other layers.


Have to remember they don't exactly handle malicious traffic on their network too well either.


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## KuJoe (Jun 10, 2013)

I would love to do A+B power but the costs would catapult us right out of the LEB market that I love so much. We do make sure that all servers have 2 PSUs plugged in, but they are always on the same circuit. We do have 2 separate circuits in our cabinet (A side and B side) but the costs to run 2x 40Amp circuits compared to 2x 20Amp circuits is a difference of almost $700/month, I don't think the clients would want us to pass the costs onto them especially since all of our data centers have had 100% power uptime for way longer than we've even been in business.


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## concerto49 (Jun 10, 2013)

KuJoe said:


> I would love to do A+B power but the costs would catapult us right out of the LEB market that I love so much. We do make sure that all servers have 2 PSUs plugged in, but they are always on the same circuit. We do have 2 separate circuits in our cabinet (A side and B side) but the costs to run 2x 40Amp circuits compared to 2x 20Amp circuits is a difference of almost $700/month, I don't think the clients would want us to pass the costs onto them especially since all of our data centers have had 100% power uptime for way longer than we've even been in business.


We run 30A @ 208V and adding a B feed isn't too bad. $300-400/month more. PSUs already have A+B anyway. Sounds like it's quite expensive where you are.


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## KuJoe (Jun 10, 2013)

concerto49 said:


> We run 30A @ 208V and adding a B feed isn't too bad. $300-400/month more. PSUs already have A+B anyway. Sounds like it's quite expensive where you are.


Power is by far the most expensive resource for us in Tampa. Power and bandwidth are just expensive in FL compared to elsewhere (what is the proper reaction to a quote of $175/Mbps?)


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## drmike (Jun 10, 2013)

KuJoe said:


> I don't think the clients would want us to pass the costs onto them especially since all of our data centers have had 100% power uptime for way longer than we've even been in business.


Well, your data centers are the exception by far. Power is a fairly common issue. The UPS systems need serviced/replaced, the gen sets need cycled and tested, new capacity needs installed. Those are the more legitimate reasons to have power downtime.


The $700 a month divided by customers should be sustainable. Obviously isn't free and you have your business details to say otherwise.


Hopefully, you don't get caught by the universe any time soon single powered  Universe is spiteful like that


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## concerto49 (Jun 10, 2013)

KuJoe said:


> Power is by far the most expensive resource for us in Tampa. Power and bandwidth are just expensive in FL compared to elsewhere (what is the proper reaction to a quote of $175/Mbps?)


Bandwidth is the most expensive for us. Power 2nd. Most people think it's all free.


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## KuJoe (Jun 10, 2013)

Well luckily half of our cabinet is on one circuit and the other half is on the other circuit. We keep our network divided also so if one circuit goes down, we have 1 router and 1 switch still online (we do have A + B network with 2 uplinks to 2 different switches all the way up to 2 different upstream feeds).

Our Tampa DC does generator testing weekly and our Denver DC does a full load test every quarter so I'm pretty confident. Oh course this post is a tempting dare for Mr. Murphy.


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## CVPS_Chris (Jun 10, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> cody robertson c


lol, care to explain?


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## drmike (Jun 11, 2013)

CVPS_Chris said:


> lol, care to explain?


That's a funny one. I had to go back and see where you got that from.


I don't have a clue how that got in here. Only time that name has been anywhere around me was yesterday when you posted that Facebook photo and I reversed that to determine who the person was and posted here:

http://vpsboard.com/topic/606-double-expansion-chicagovps-expands-vps-hosting-services-to-two-new-areas/page-2#entry9091


Problem is that is all cut and paste on the name from the profile directly to here. I'll contact MannDude for a look at the post history. Something isn't right for sure.


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## prometeus (Jun 11, 2013)

it's a good to have feature 

However it doesn't help when murphy is after you. Imagine the scene: 

- unplug a power cable by mistake

- plug in again while thinking how you're lucky to have A+B

- spike on the A and TACK! down of the thermal magnetic circuit breaker

- more load on B and TACK! down the second circuit

- unreal silence from the rack in  front of you

;-)


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## HalfEatenPie (Jun 11, 2013)

prometeus said:


> it's a good to have feature  However it doesn't help when murphy is after you. Imagine the scene:  - unplug a power cable by mistake - plug in again while thinking how you're lucky to have A+B - spike on the A and TACK! down of the thermal magnetic circuit breaker - more load on B and TACK! down the second circuit - unreal silence from the rack in  front of you   ;-)


 

_shudder_


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## jarland (Jun 11, 2013)

No matter the company, you can most likely point out a form of redundancy that they could have but do not. I think we're all willing to sacrifice redundancy for cost, but the real question is our preference on where to take that hit. There is a lot of redundancy that one could put in place to operate a true "cloud" infrastructure that most of us don't demand that our providers put in place because we know that a brief outage of our services isn't going to start a nuclear war and we don't want to pay as if it will.


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## drmike (Jun 11, 2013)

I agree with the later posts here.  @Prometeus @jarland.

Would be interesting to see some pricing from different facilities on B leg power per month.

While I don't think everything needs B leg power, some stuff sort of does (routers and big SAN storage).

Some of these hosts, even on the low end have quite a few customers.   Even at $700 a month surcharge, talking about perhaps $1 per month per customer when up past the 500 customers mark.


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