MegaBigPower.com - Managed Hosted Mining

[buzzdave]

I'm measuring market interest in my hosted computing service.  By building a data center where power is the cheapest in the nation, I can house your hardware and run it for cheaper.  This translates to bottom line profits for you and can extend the viability of your current hardware for as long as possible.

I intend to provide 24x7 secured, insured managed hosting for a lower monthly cost than your base power costs.  Depending on the size of your rig, prices will target a baseline power cost to you of between 9.6c kW/H and 14.4c kW/H.  These are estimates - I haven't nailed down all my costs yet.

I'm gathering customer interest here - this is not a presale.  I am looking to take on a few larger "anchor" customers with FPGA rigs in the next two weeks, along with getting a sense of how many ASIC miners (any manufacturer is ok) would want to take advantage of this service in the future.

Just go to my site and sign up, which will give me an idea of how many people are interested.  It will also put you on my mailing list and send you an initial informational email.  I will not spam you or sell your emails, etc.

If you have an immediate interest for FPGA hosting, you can reply to the email with your rig size, power usage and other details.  I'll get back with you immediately to work on the actual monthly price. 

Thanks for your consideration,
buzzdave
megabigpower.com

[lukasbradley]

I am extremely interested.

Will email you my current setup.

[repentance]

Do your prices factor in insurance?

Edit.  I missed that you mentioned insurance.  Can you be more specific about the extent of insurance coverage?

[crazyates]

Depending on the size of your rig, prices will target a baseline power cost to you of between 9.6c kW/H and 14.4c kW/H.  These are estimates - I haven't nailed down all my costs yet.

Thanks for your consideration,
buzzdave
megabigpower.com

9.6-14.4c per kW/H? That's right in the range that most of us are paying for residential electricity.

Do your prices factor in insurance?

I'd also be interested in this. Can you give more details about what your hosting service would look like? Speaking of services, wouldn't this thread be better off in HERE?

[klondike_bar]

a baseline power cost to you of between 9.6c kW/H and 14.4c kW/H. 

I pay between 8.3 - 9.6 cents per kWh in my home, sounds like you need to find a cheaper location for your data center

[buzzdave]

My service may not appeal to many miners located in the US, but having the miners managed at the same baseline power price could make some sense.  In Europe, its a different story.

Besides, I'm looking for rigs that don't really fit in your average home/apartment scenario.

Mods: I thought this thread would have more relevance here, but feel free to move it to the services category if you feel that's better placed.

[bcpokey]

My service may not appeal to many miners located in the US, but having the miners managed at the same baseline power price could make some sense.  In Europe, its a different story.

Besides, I'm looking for rigs that don't really fit in your average home/apartment scenario.

Mods: I thought this thread would have more relevance here, but feel free to move it to the services category if you feel that's better placed.

CA, at > 10% of the US population, has residential prices that meet or exceed europe as well. It's all well and good that some have reasonable power rates, but not all do. With that said however...

By putting a hosted collocation center where power costs approach zero (less than 3 cents per kW/H) your computing power costs drop significantly.
Please sign up and indicate your level of interest. We plan to have mega big power to resell, but ultimately space is limited.

-From MegaBigPower.com

Is it that your costs are ~3¢/kWh (diff than kW/h I remind), and the difference will make up the cost of hosting for the consumer? Or is this just a difference between expectations that aren't reflected in an update?

I for one would happily drop the requirements of maintenance, noise, heat, and effort to avoid CA power costs, however:

1) Require specifics on costs to business owner, to know where the pass-throughs are to consumer.
2) Require specifics on costs to consumer (levied by business)
3) Some form of legally binding document needs at least drafting, to ensure harsh penalties on those who might ponder absconding with expensive machinery.

Those I feel are the bare necessities for anyone who wishes to offer housing of equipment for mining. Some might feel that is too onerous and busiens should be run more on a smile and a handshake, but I can't imagine leaving tens of thousands of dollars with a perfect stranger thousands of miles away from me under those conditions, and if it were cash I can't imagine anyone on these forums considering it for even a second.

[Bogart]

How are the service and its facilities protected against:

 * Overheating (cooling system failure)
 * Power failure
 * Power surges or other electrical mishaps
 * Internet connectivity failure
 * DDoS
 * Physical theft of hardware
 * Penetration and theft of BTC by h4x0rz
 * Fire
 * Earthquake
 * Lightning strike
 * Flooding

[repentance]

How are the service and its facilities protected against:

 * Power failure
 * Internet connectivity failure
 * DDoS
 * Theft
 * Fire
 * Earthquake
 * Lightning strike

I'm also curious about how hardware failure is going to be handled - because sure as shit sooner or later someone's hardware is going to have a problem.  Is it going to be shipped back to the owner at that point?  Is Dave going to try to fix it?  Individual owners are going to have different configurations and I'm curious about the trouble-shooting process when they don't have physical access to their machines.

I can't see it being financially worthwhile to install inert gas or misting systems to minimise loss in the event of fire, so I'm guessing that you're depending on insurance to compensate for loss.  Presumably that insurance would cover replacement cost of the hardware only.

[Bogart]

I can't see it being financially worthwhile to install inert gas or misting systems to minimise loss in the event of fire

I've got a big bottle of Halon I need to get rid of...

[buzzdave]

My service may not appeal to many miners located in the US, but having the miners managed at the same baseline power price could make some sense.  In Europe, its a different story.

Besides, I'm looking for rigs that don't really fit in your average home/apartment scenario.

Mods: I thought this thread would have more relevance here, but feel free to move it to the services category if you feel that's better placed.

CA, at > 10% of the US population, has residential prices that meet or exceed europe as well. It's all well and good that some have reasonable power rates, but not all do. With that said however...

By putting a hosted collocation center where power costs approach zero (less than 3 cents per kW/H) your computing power costs drop significantly.
Please sign up and indicate your level of interest. We plan to have mega big power to resell, but ultimately space is limited.

-From MegaBigPower.com

Is it that your costs are ~3¢/kWh (diff than kW/h I remind), and the difference will make up the cost of hosting for the consumer? Or is this just a difference between expectations that aren't reflected in an update?

I for one would happily drop the requirements of maintenance, noise, heat, and effort to avoid CA power costs, however:

1) Require specifics on costs to business owner, to know where the pass-throughs are to consumer.
2) Require specifics on costs to consumer (levied by business)
3) Some form of legally binding document needs at least drafting, to ensure harsh penalties on those who might ponder absconding with expensive machinery.

Those I feel are the bare necessities for anyone who wishes to offer housing of equipment for mining. Some might feel that is too onerous and busiens should be run more on a smile and a handshake, but I can't imagine leaving tens of thousands of dollars with a perfect stranger thousands of miles away from me under those conditions, and if it were cash I can't imagine anyone on these forums considering it for even a second.

Since I haven't locked down my costs, I'm putting up an estimate for the service.  Hopefully I'm setting expectations higher than what my prices will be in reality.  The website allows you to indicate your interest in order to give me a better idea of what will work for you guys and that the business will be viable at startup.  My insurance costs are not determined yet, but I want to insure for:
 * Power failure
 * Internet connectivity failure
 * Theft
 * Fire
 * Flood
 * Earthquake
 * Lightning strike
 * Lost revenue due to above.

I checked into Prolexic (same DDOS mitigation as MtGox).  Its quite expensive.  Its been suggested that I don't need anti-DDOS, but I need to validate that idea.  I'll have redundant internet feeds to be sure.

Of course I will get a legal document drafted that constitutes a contract for QoS and hardware ownership for all customers.

My intention is to run this like a high quality colo - sooner or later the business will be legitimate enough for customers to just trust that its not just some individual with bad intentions.

[buzzdave]

How are the service and its facilities protected against:

 * Power failure
 * Internet connectivity failure
 * DDoS
 * Theft
 * Fire
 * Earthquake
 * Lightning strike

I'm also curious about how hardware failure is going to be handled - because sure as shit sooner or later someone's hardware is going to have a problem.  Is it going to be shipped back to the owner at that point?  Is Dave going to try to fix it?  Individual owners are going to have different configurations and I'm curious about the trouble-shooting process when they don't have physical access to their machines.
...

I'm willing to work this out with the customer.  The owner/operator of the rig is going to know best about what kinds of problems can occur.  Fan replacement/heatsink re-mounting seems like a possible common activity.  This kind of thing can be identified as an extra charge.

[PuertoLibre]

Depending on the size of your rig, prices will target a baseline power cost to you of between 9.6c kW/H and 14.4c kW/H.  These are estimates - I haven't nailed down all my costs yet.

Thanks for your consideration,
buzzdave
megabigpower.com

9.6-14.4c per kW/H? That's right in the range that most of us are paying for residential electricity.

Do your prices factor in insurance?

I'd also be interested in this. Can you give more details about what your hosting service would look like? Speaking of services, wouldn't this thread be better off in HERE?

Thats what I thought as well....

Data centers pay the wholesale rate at around 4.5 to 2.5 cents per KW/h.

[Gomeler]

Curious what you plan on using for the facility. Are you going to negotiate for seriously discounted colo rates or repurpose a non-datacenter structure and kit it out to host from?

There's a ton of stuff needed to house, cool, secure, and manage racks of gear and it isn't cheap. I understand that you are just putting out a feeler for demand but I wonder if you have a plan yet or will formulate that plan if demand is high enough.

[smracer]

You are going to need to pump A/C up from the floor.  You are going to use as much power for the A/C as you do for the machines.  No one is going to send you their FPGA's and ASIC's to you if they are just going to throttle all day in a hot warehouse.

[repentance]

You are going to need to pump A/C up from the floor.  You are going to use as much power for the A/C as you do for the machines.  No one is going to send you their FPGA's and ASIC's to you if they are just going to throttle all day in a hot warehouse.

He mentioned extending hardware life as one of the selling points so my guess is that he's intending to provide an optimum environment in terms of cooling, being dust-free, etc.  What that will end up costing is an interesting question.  Physical security is another interesting question.  I presume it would be at a significantly lower level than that used by financial services data centres, but obviously vandalism would cause a significant aggregate loss of revenue to miners even if each individual miner didn't lose much.

[buzzdave]

I don't plan to be in an already existing data center or colo facility.  My wholesale power rates should be in the 2.5c range.  I will re-purpose an existing facility and have already been in talks with the building owner to insure that I can achieve my target service capacity and cooling requirement (local power transformer needs to support the ampacity increase I need).  The space is ready to build out to my specs - it will be a newly built room, anti-static tile floor, etc.

Facility is cardkey access, armored locks.  My space does have a roll up door and I need to check that it is heavy duty.   Security with monitoring 24 x 7.  I understand there will be a million bucks worth of other people's hardware in there and that their uninterrupted revenue generation is my top priority - including optimizing performance.

This isn't going to be some ghetto setup - rates reflect the necessary markup I expect is needed to handle operating costs.  I'm already working to get investment for a build suitable to take on a large number of ASIC devices.  Initial offering for FPGA's is just to get my feet wet.

I'm surprised nobody has noticed that I'm not suggesting a setup fee or PSU fees.  That's an excellent value considering you won't have to buy them for your new gear.

[smracer]

I already own a 12000 sqft warehouse with 60 Tons of cooling and it would still take me 100K to pull something like this off.  I don't see how you can possibly make your money back.

[mezzomix]

My service may not appeal to many miners located in the US, but having the miners managed at the same baseline power price could make some sense.  In Europe, its a different story.

In Europe power is expensive for private/small customers. Large customers get prices that are between 4-8 cent / kWh. Another point is, having my mining hardware under third party control is like a deposit of my bitcoins at a bitcoin bank.

[buzzdave]

I already own a 12000 sqft warehouse with 60 Tons of cooling and it would still take me 100K to pull something like this off.  I don't see how you can possibly make your money back.

Sounds like you know what you are talking about - please elaborate, I'd love to validate my numbers.