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I am considering partnering with someone who has funds, renting some office space, retrofitting it with whatever electrical and cooling is necessary for a small datacenter, and renting out server "slots", for people who can no longer host their rigs in their apartments/houses/basements.

The service would only use a basic internet service with connections only allowed for VNC/SSH and the bitcoin mining applications themselves.  No webhosting, etc allowed.  Mining rigs ONLY.

The service would track electricity usage, and would charge a base rate per rig + actual electric usage each month.  If mining became somewhat unprofitable for a week or two, you could simply turn it off, and only be charged the base rate for that period.

You wouldn't have remote control of the power directly, so in the even of a hard lockup or shut down, we would provide a "request power on" button in a web interface.  Your rig would be powered back on within 24 hours.  For this reason, it is imperative that you already have a stable configuration prior to shipping to our facility.

All management of your mining rig(s) would be done by you.  We wouldn't touch it.  You would be responsible for remotely accessing your server, once we unpackage it and start it up, to get the mining running.  You would also be responsible for your own software security.  Given that many machines would be on the same network, you should set up a software firewall appropriately to isolate your rig(s) from the other rigs.

A security firm would be hired for installation and monitoring of a security system intended to protect the building from theft.  Insurance would also be purchased to cover the contents of the building in the event of damages.

Rates would be something along the lines of:
$20-$30 per rig per month
$0.10-$0.15 per kwh per month

Would you use such a service at such rates?  If so, how many rigs would you rent space for?  Vote in the poll!

Also, do you see any potential problems that I have not addressed?  Any potential security or performance issues?

Is a "slot" a 4U spot?

What amperage circuits would be provided? Does each slot get a 20 amp circuit? What is the temperature control of the facility?

But I could install my own remote-power device, correct?

Will you install video cards? Rigs shipped with heavy video cards installed are likely to be damaged by the shipping companies.

You really should enforce separate rig networks, otherwise customers could interfere with each others, like with incorrect networking settings, either through mistakes or on purpose.

What is the length of contract for a slot? Do you guarantee uptime (network, electricity, etc) of the facility?

Good questions.

A slot could be 4U, or could be any size tower up to a full size tower.  Provisions will be made for both, with expectations of most people using towers, since they are cheaper.

Circuits would be 20 amp.  Each machine wouldn't necessarily be on its own circuit, but we would take a look at the hardware inside each machine, determine an estimate for amperage draw at full load, and balance the machines across the electric circuits appropriately.  Please clarify regarding your question about temperature control - the temperature would be controlled.

Yes, you could provide your own power-control device for us to install if you would like.

I meant to mention that as well - everyone would have to uninstall their video cards prior to shipping the system to us.  They should be clearly labeled as to what slot each one is to be installed in.  Video card installation will be done by us at no additional charge.

I would like to hear more information about enforcing separate networks for each rig.  What would be necessary to accomplish this?  It is something I have not done before.  I am assuming a dedicated IP address for each machine would be necessary at a minimum.  Probably a special type of router/firewall device...  I do agree this would be the optimal route to go though.  Perhaps I could include a small monthly charge for each dedicated IP address a person wanted, and they could choose whether they wanted to go that route or not.

Billing would be monthly with no contract.  Invoicing would be done on the same day of every month.  The base fee would not be pro-rated if a person decided to pull their rig out early.  In order to retrieve their rig, a person would have to pay shipping costs as well as their latest month's bill.

Not sure about whether uptime would be guaranteed or not.  On the one hand, I think that it should be.  On the other hand, a day of downtime with 40 rigs could put me out of business.  I need to find the optimum solution with regards to that potential issue, and am open to suggestions.

You could set it up so that each user gets an individual vlan and a vpn account.  That users machines are put on their own vlan segmented from the rest of the data center.  To access your machines you would have to access the centers VPN service first.  The access to individual vlans could be controlled at the user level of the vpn service.

From the end users point of view they would connect their home pc to a vpn connection and then be able to vnc/ssh/telnet/ping whatever was open on their systems in the data center.

From the centers perspective each user is assigned a vlan and their systems are placed on it.  You'd need a router and someone savvy to set it up.  The center would also need to host a vpn service that provided access control mechanisms to restrict each account's rights to access only certain vlan's behind the firewall.

That's how it has been done in the traditional data center hosting services I've used in the past.  They typically use proprietary commercial versions but I believe there may be open source solutions for both the vlan management and vpn solutions.


 

Thanks alans, I'll have to do some research on that front.  It might be cost-prohibitive to set up something like that for a small/startup operation, but worth checking in to nonetheless.

Don't let the startup cost scare you too much.  For a router you could setup a pfsense box with 1 NIC for the external connection and 1 NIC for each user.  pf sense would provide firewall and connectivity (dhcp...) services for the clients and routing for the vpn clients.  Then another system to run OpenVPN or some other protocol.  The routing setup might get a little tricky once you max out the number of NIC's you can put in the pfsense box but by then you should have the income to justify a real router...

It would take 20-25 rigs to break even on monthly costs at the price levels described above, without accounting for initial expenses.  Even maxing out the slots in a pfsense box wouldn't bring me close to that number, unless several people rented several slots each.

A "real router" might be cheaper and quicker to go with in the first place.  What sort of router would be required to run these services?  A Cisco solution, perhaps?  Or something like this?  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833706014

You would only really need one port or one nic in a pfsense box for each customer.  If they ran >1 machine then you'd just need a hub/switch to connect each of their machines back to that master port/vlan. 

Couldn't you just use 1 NIC and a large switch for everyone. Can pfsense create 100+ Virtual LANs?

You're going to be hard pressed to offer space for the prices your mentioned.  Don't forget fire suppression, multiple ISPs, UPS/Generator and redundant power feeds.

Without the ISPs you're a DDoS away from losing customers.
Without a UPS/Power conditioner one lightning strike could do you in.
Multiple power feeds are also a concern along with standby power.  How long is acceptable downtime?

There's a reason most CoLo facilities charge $150-$200 base + a charge per extra 1U per month.

multiple ISPs is usually not possible in most places in America because Comcast has a monopoly. I don't think we have to worry about lightning strikes with the modern PSU's in the machines now-a-days.

BTW SteveFL are you in Florida?

Still, if I get 20 customers with 2 rigs, I'd need 20 ports.  That's going to either be extremely costly on a pfsense box (with NICs that have four ports each), or would require some special router.  I would rather go the router route to begin with, but I have no idea what I should be looking for as far as features go.

The point of this would be to offer low-cost CoLo for miners.  It wouldn't have all the features that your typical datacenter might have, and probably won't have the 99.% uptime that your typical datacenter might have.
- Fire suppression is important, but I would only go so far as the fire marshall/insurance required on that front.
- I wouldn't have a UPS/Line conditioner or generator.  People could provide their own if they like.  The most I will provide is a fuse-protected power strip.
- There wouldn't be multiple power feeds.  We VERY rarely get any sort of power outages here, so I'm not worried about that.  In the city, we probably get 1 power outage every two years.
- DDOS is a major concern, and something I am still researching (and open to suggestions on).  I have several potential providers, but am unsure that any of them could provide DDOS prevention in any capacity.

Throw pfSense (http://www.pfsense.org/) in front of the servers.

Thanks.  It's that easy, huh?  I'll definitely have to do some reading/experimentation on pfsense.

Thinking about cooling now.... I figure for 40 rigs, it'll probably be, on average, around 500w of electric usage per rig.  So 20kw.  That's fine, but then I'll need an estimated 70,000 BTU a/c (3-4 ton) to cool it.  Yikes!  :o  That'll definitely bring the initial investment cost up...

Right now, it's looking like initial investment will be $6000 to $9000.  Quite a large amount for relying on bitcoins to recover it.  I wonder if there would be enough interest from investors to put up the capital for it.  Heck, that's only 642 BTC.  :P

I am definitely happy to see the poll results thus far.  If there are truly at least two people willing to pay for 9+ rigs each, that would be a great jumpstart to such a business.  The two who voted that way - if you wouldn't mind, PM me so we can talk in further detail.

I setup a pfSense box at my house running 10/100/1000 nic [motherboard/lan (private)] and an 10/100 nic [pci/wan (public)], 1GB DDR3, 4x i5, 80GB HDD (for squid).
Had one of my buddies DDoS me with 2 servers (1Gb/s each) from a DC totaling 2Gb/s, my home network maxed out at 300Kb/s but I could still browse websites and talk on messenger.
pfSense had blacklisted his IP leaving me with a slight lag but still able to view sites like youtube without a hitch because of how I had caching/squid setup.

This is probably a crazy idea, but I'm going to toss it out there anyway. What if you simply don't offer customers VNC/SSH at all? You could stipulate that customers all use the same OS - BAMT let's say. It is the customers responsibility to get the rig optimized and running rock-solid stable before they ship it to you. Then, if they want to make an adjustment, they would simply email you a new configuration file, and you replace this file with the old one and reboot the rig. You could charge a small fee for this. They would do this at their own risk, since if it didn't work, they would have to either revert to the old file, or you would charge them an hourly rate to trouble shoot. You might even have them ship the rigs with an extra copy of the OS configured how they want, so if the rig goes haywire, you can stick in the backup copy and reboot (again for a small fee). If you are worried about customers installing something weird on the OS (even malware) that could bolix up the network, you could stipulate what version of the OS they are going to run, which they could download from your web page, configure how they like, then just send you the config file which you would put into your own copies of the OS, and boot up. The BAMT config file is pretty simple, so it would be easy to check to make sure they didn't add any abnormal scripts. The author of BAMT might even be willing, for a reasonable fee, to create a more stripped down and newbie friendly version of the OS to suit your needs.

Personally, I'm not sure how much need I would have for access to my software once I get everything set up the way I like. And the only personal info I might have on the rig would be my public bitcoin key and/or my worker names and passwords. Most of the adjustments I might want to make could be handled by replacing the config file. It might also be a hell of a lot easier for you to maintain a network like this if very rig is running the same OS. One major downside here is that it is harder to overvolt cards in linux (but pretty much everything else is relatively easy at this point). I'm not sure how much of a con this is, though, since it probably isn't wise for people to be overvolting cards that are going to be run at a remote location (i.e. cards that they can't keep close eye on).

Anyway, just a thought I had that I think would work for me as a customer.    

I like crazy.  :)

Interesting idea, and I think it has merit.  I suppose the biggest difficulty would be for those who do not know how to configure a rig in the given OS environment that is chosen.  I don't think that renters would be very fond of the idea though, but I am interested in fleshing it out and getting more opinions.

ya, I guess this would really be plan B if it proves too difficult to offer remote connection for everyone. You don't need to know much about linux to confgure BAMT. You need to know how to find your adapter #s, but the rest of the config is just a matter of specifying pools, clocks, fan speeds, etc. Your customers are going to have to know how to run headless, connect remotely, and configure for automated operation anyway, and this will be much easier if it is all ready to go via a config file. You can monitor things like temp, hash rate, share submission rate, and set email alerts if these get below/above specified limits. You probably don't want to get too complicated, but it wouldn't be that hard to have various configurable recovery routines for the more common difficulties. Also, there is no reason (I think) why the config file needs to be on the usb - this could be fetched from somewhere on the network. And customers could login to their accounts to modify the file themselves (if you want to get fancy you could have a web interface for this so they are just filling in boxes). And if the rig can be alerted when the config file is changed, it could just fetch the new file and restart. In addition to the config file, you could offer a few basic web options, such as 1) shut down rig, 2) restart miners, 3) reboot rig, 4) fetch new config file and restart. So I think you could offer customers quite a bit of control without any direct connection to their rigs. Perhaps you could offer this as the "basic" package, and charge more for those who simply must have remote connection (or charge for remote connection on a per-use basis). Another advantage of this is that it makes software troubleshooting very simple. If a customer's rig isn't acting right, the first step is to revert to an earlier configuration that is know to be stable (they do this). If that fails, you yank the usb, put in a new one, and reboot. If that fails, then it is probably a hardware problem, and the customer can decide to have the rig shipped back to them, or you offer technical support at an hourly rate.

I don't have enough knowledge of linux to set up that complex of a system, but it's possible I could recruit a linux guru for the purpose at not too high a cost.

Probably could just code something up in PHP to allow remote SSH (keep SSH information private to just have web interface).
http://kevin.vanzonneveld.net/techblog/article/make_ssh_connections_with_php/

At the very least I'd be happy to pay the monthly premium during the summer months. I live in Las Vegas and my air conditioning isn't as up to the task as I'd like :P

As long as mining profitability stays high enough to make it worth the price (which is looking questionable these days) I would love a service like this.

Edit: Where would this be physically located? I'd be much more likely to partake if I could physically hand my rigs to someone instead of ship...

NothinG - if a person has SSH access to their rig, even through a web interface, couldn't they still wreak havoc on other machines on the network if they knew what they were doing?

It would be physically located in or around Eugene, OR.  I suppose if you want to make a road trip, you could hand them off.  :P

If successful, I could of course consider creation of satellite facilities, but the ideal location has low summer heat and low electric costs, neither of which (I believe) Las Vegas or surrounding areas have.

What I meant was you setup a web interface and have people login to control their server.

Ok, so if I understand you correctly:
- Set up PHP backend that only forwards certain SSH commands to the server(s) on the users account.
- User can login and send commands that are necessary for configuring and starting a mining operation, but no other commands are allowed (to prevent them from haxing on the LAN).

It seems that there would be other potential conflicts with an actual LAN as well though.  I couldn't have people configure static IP's on their rigs before sending them to me, and I wouldn't want to deal with configuring a static IP myself, so I would have to issue dynamic IP's.  This could be a problem when I also want to give them steady access to their server via SSH or VNC.

I think I like the idea of a virtual LAN for each user, whether that user rents a single slot or multiples.  I would like to know what router would be necessary to accomplish this though.  Not real keen on creating my own router, as it seems like it would be expensive and a headache to configure.  Bonus if the router has decent built-in DDOS protection so I don't have to use a pfsense box in front.

I've considered this for my own personal experience (setting up a 'bitrack' here at my location).

Anyways, here's the idea -- just have them fill out a form that asks them what they want to have their machines doing. Have them submit tickets for updated things (such as solo mining..etc).

Here's a couple of examples I came up with:

A non-tech user wants to help the community and wants to start mining. He doesn't know much about hardware/software. He decides instead to sign up for your service, and fills out a form.
This form will contain data for everyone -- everything from the most advanced user to the most basic user.

After the form is filled out and emailed to you -- and the payment sent is when you'd order the parts/process it.

After a couple of days, you receive the parts, build the machine? Now what? You'd refer back the form. What did you put under the "How to mine" section. Oh, he left most of it blank/default options! Great! Simple, you do a stable/fast/easy overclock, and set it up for the pool of your choice. He should of filled out at least the bitcoin address field for you. You setup the machine to mine on your own pool/a public pool, and send him the profits his machine makes, every week.
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A very tech savy user is maxing out his house -- all the computers are causing him to pop circuits left and right. He needs another location for his bitcoin miners. The tech savy user would fill out the exact same form as the non-tech savy user. Instead of sending money for a rig to be built, then he sends the rig to your shipping address, and emails you the form/tracking number.
A couple days later, you get the machine. On the form in the "How to mine" section, he filled out the software is already installed, the username/password is listed there and the shell script files are ready to be ran. You would double check it -- making sure no external processes are running. Remember, your firewall may not catch everything. Even though each user is on it's their own vlan, and ACLs are setup at the routing level, you double check everything. It passes your check.
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A some what savy user that has a small apartment and doesn't want the heat to kill him. He fills out the exact same form the other users filled out. He had a small mining rig which was shipped to you as well. This time, on the form he paid for the extensive overclocking feature. In this feature, you test each card, and push them to their limits. On the form, he filled out basic information -- as in mine at "pool", but he didn't give the commands. Obviously, he wants the best performance he can get. You'd do some research and enter the best commands you could for the miner.
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Anyways, that is how I'd handle it tbh. Hopefully I helped a bit. I'm honestly not connected enough to really find any investors into me setting up a bitrack service (even though, I have cheap electricity in my location and tons of commercial lots for lease/sale).
[Just a little advertising here -- if you are an investor interested in my services/location -- toss me a PM, we can discuss further options there]

Thanks for reading,

~bluefirecorp

pfSense is a firewall/router/cache/dns all in one.

I don't know if I like being restricted from directly accessing my machine. I spoke with a linux network guy I know last night and he seemed to indicate it would be cake to setup vlans and vpn.  I urged him to join the forum here and jump into this discussion, I dangled some hardware discounts to lure him in.

He's currently not working and would probably make a great admin/tech for this kind of operation.

@SgtSpike where are you located? 

Here in Colorado you'd only need to cool ~12 hours day for 3 months a year.  My initial idea for something like this was North Dakota.

Last night I heard a story on BBC about Iceland making more power than they can use trying to attract businesses like smelters and other electricity hogs to take advantage of all their geothermal.  We have any forum members from Iceland that wants to cash in on their cheap, cheap kWh's?

I realize this, but it would be incredibly expensive to do more than 10 or 12 ports on a pfsense box.  Probably a lot more expensive than buying a 24-port router suited for the purpose in the first place.
That's good to hear that it would be cake for someone!  I would definitely appreciate input from someone who has set up such a configuration in the past.  Again though, I don't want to go with a pfSense box (unless pfSense can be used on a 24 or 48-port router), just because of how expensive it would be to set up one with more than 10 or 12 ports.  It would run into the thousands for a 24-port box.  May as well buy an enterprise router at that point.

I'm located in Eugene, Oregon, and the facility would be as well.  It's a very moderate climate, being on the west coast and so close to the ocean.  We see 100 degrees once or twice a year, if that.  Mostly, during the summer, it's around 80 or 85.

Iceland would be pretty epic.  I have a feeling my wife wouldn't approve a move to there.  :)

I'm quite sure the pfsense box only needs 2 NICs and then you put that on a 40-port switch.

Oh really?  I misunderstood how it worked then.  Someone earlier on in the thread said you needed a port on the pfSense box for each individual VLAN.

EDIT:  Would it require a managed switch?
EDIT2:  Some quick research shows that it would require a smart switch at a minimum.  This is all starting to make a lot more sense to me now.  Connect pfSense box to smart switch in order to have control over each port on the switch, and what it can and cannot do.

I think I'm done with questions about networking then.  Will continue to do more research on my own now that I know the basics of a VLAN setup.

So back to the poll!

nvm I'm not buying rack space from a guy who doesn't know what a switch is.

That was me, I wasn't sure and think I said that.  

That's the only way I know how to do that.  You'd need the managed switch to vlan outside the pfsense box.

Where did I say I didn't know what a switch is?

Sounds good.  A managed switch is a heck of a lot cheaper than 4-port NICs.

The heat here IS pretty atrocious during the summer, though it's not so terrible to keep a data center cool so long as you're not foolish enough to have giant southern-exposure windows or something (like my apartment complex, the morons). I pay 11.28 cents per kW/h flat rate (unlike the crappy tiered pricing I had in CA) so electric costs are reasonable enough.

pfSense is the firewall/router [in/out], you would still need to setup a switch to attach all the computers.

I was talking about using a dedicated router in place of a pfSense box, not realizing that pfSense can utilize a managed switch.  I've always used unmanaged switches in the past, so I didn't realize the capabilities of a managed switch.

Now that I understand what pfSense and a managed switch would be able to do, I would go with:
Internet <> pfSense box <> Managed switch <> Unmanaged switches for renters with more than one computer

Now you've got the idea. :)
If you have any questions about pfSense, let me know.
I've got one running at my house and one at my moms, as well as access to 2x pfSense box'es of the GSP I work for. :)

Thanks, I may take you up on the offer.  I'm more of a programmer than a networker, and have only managed small networks in the past (< 256 computers) with nothing more complicated than an external VPN.  Definitely have a lot to learn in that area.

(back on the main subject): Yes, if prices to rent a server were $50/mo...instead of paying $X/mo per Mhash/s, you can have a bunch of people pay $50/mo and get a machine running 2.4Ghash/s and give them their money back (weighted per person on how much they invested) + interest.
Sounds more like the GBLSE, but faster and over-time could make more money.

I think you're misunderstanding the proposed purpose of the facility.  It would simply be to house mining rigs that are already built/owned by other people.  It would be a place for people to put their mining rigs if they have high electrical costs in their area, or if they are tired of the heat, or if their landlord won't allow it anymore, or any other number of reasons.

I wouldn't be managing the mining operations themselves - that would be entirely up to the users.  The most I would do is unpackage their rigs, place the video cards in the appropriately labelled slots, turn it on, and perform hard resets upon request.  And, if they can't access their rig remotely, I would probably help troubleshoot that as well.  The rest is up to the owner of the rig.