4G Failover questions
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With the recent hurricane that came through we've been talking about purchasing and installing a 4G LTE adapter for our firewall. We host a few sites on campus for our school that are dependent on a few static IPs we have from our current ISP.
- Would we have to purchase a block of static IPs from whatever carrier we use?
- If 1 is a yes all we would have to do is point that new additional IP address to our managed DNS?
Thanks ahead.
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Assuming most people connect via name, and not IP, you could use DDNS
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What's the need for static IPs?
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@Markferron said in 4G Failover questions:
Would we have to purchase a block of static IPs from whatever carrier we use?
Why any, let alone a block?
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@Markferron said in 4G Failover questions:
If 1 is a yes all we would have to do is point that new additional IP address to our managed DNS?
If you can use DNS, you don't need static.
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@Markferron said in 4G Failover questions:
With the recent hurricane that came through we've been talking about purchasing and installing a 4G LTE adapter for our firewall. We host a few sites on campus for our school that are dependent on a few static IPs we have from our current ISP.
- Would we have to purchase a block of static IPs from whatever carrier we use?
- If 1 is a yes all we would have to do is point that new additional IP address to our managed DNS?
Thanks ahead.
I think you should consider hosting the sites on a server in colocation instead. They will have have peering to multiple network and that takes care of failover automatically. They also have redundant UPS, cooling, security etc.
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@Pete-S said in 4G Failover questions:
@Markferron said in 4G Failover questions:
With the recent hurricane that came through we've been talking about purchasing and installing a 4G LTE adapter for our firewall. We host a few sites on campus for our school that are dependent on a few static IPs we have from our current ISP.
- Would we have to purchase a block of static IPs from whatever carrier we use?
- If 1 is a yes all we would have to do is point that new additional IP address to our managed DNS?
Thanks ahead.
I think you should consider hosting the sites on a server in colocation instead. They will have have peering to multiple network and that takes care of failover automatically. They also have redundant UPS, cooling, security etc.
I'd like to add that the cost is often low as well. Much lower than most people would imagine, considering what you get.
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In a situation like that you would need to at least purchase a single static IP address. In the event of a complete outage, you would then log in to your managed DNS provider and update the IP address by hand as needed.
If you use something like CloudFlare or GoDaddy, those changes usually propogate out in minutes instead of hours or days.
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We have a PepLink MAX BR1 Mini LTE at every one of our customer locations. We use DNS to handle any incoming traffic routing. We configure our firewalls to use it as a failover gateway. It's flawless. Slower than the main ISP, but flawless.
We had a municipal customer lose their internet Tuesday, and they failed over to LTE and were able to keep running just fine.
This, in fact, is how we got started with the whole Cellular failover thing. Many of our customers are municipalities, and they absolutely cannot be without internet access to the state's voter records on election days. We have since done this with any customer that needs failover internet and WiMax is not within reach.
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@Pete-S said in 4G Failover questions:
@Pete-S said in 4G Failover questions:
@Markferron said in 4G Failover questions:
With the recent hurricane that came through we've been talking about purchasing and installing a 4G LTE adapter for our firewall. We host a few sites on campus for our school that are dependent on a few static IPs we have from our current ISP.
- Would we have to purchase a block of static IPs from whatever carrier we use?
- If 1 is a yes all we would have to do is point that new additional IP address to our managed DNS?
Thanks ahead.
I think you should consider hosting the sites on a server in colocation instead. They will have have peering to multiple network and that takes care of failover automatically. They also have redundant UPS, cooling, security etc.
I'd like to add that the cost is often low as well. Much lower than most people would imagine, considering what you get.
It's often negative. Meaning the cost of the hosting is often less than the cost of not-hosting. So you essentially get paid to do it.
This is a dramatic example, but I like it because it's so obvious. In the early NTG days we had one server that we ran in house. It generated over $250 of costs to do so (static IP, commercial ISP line, and power consumption.) It wasn't dramatic, but $250 isn't zero, either.
Moving to colocation at the time didn't just give us less noise in our office, less heat being pumped into the office, less need for special HVAC and monitoring, 24x7 hands, much faster Internet, much more stable power and Internet... but the cost of the colo was $75 all inclusive. We saved hundreds of dollars and improved every aspect of the server! For all intents and purposes, we were paid to make the move!
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@scottalanmiller said in 4G Failover questions:
@Pete-S said in 4G Failover questions:
@Pete-S said in 4G Failover questions:
@Markferron said in 4G Failover questions:
With the recent hurricane that came through we've been talking about purchasing and installing a 4G LTE adapter for our firewall. We host a few sites on campus for our school that are dependent on a few static IPs we have from our current ISP.
- Would we have to purchase a block of static IPs from whatever carrier we use?
- If 1 is a yes all we would have to do is point that new additional IP address to our managed DNS?
Thanks ahead.
I think you should consider hosting the sites on a server in colocation instead. They will have have peering to multiple network and that takes care of failover automatically. They also have redundant UPS, cooling, security etc.
I'd like to add that the cost is often low as well. Much lower than most people would imagine, considering what you get.
It's often negative. Meaning the cost of the hosting is often less than the cost of not-hosting. So you essentially get paid to do it.
This is a dramatic example, but I like it because it's so obvious. In the early NTG days we had one server that we ran in house. It generated over $250 of costs to do so (static IP, commercial ISP line, and power consumption.) It wasn't dramatic, but $250 isn't zero, either.
Moving to colocation at the time didn't just give us less noise in our office, less heat being pumped into the office, less need for special HVAC and monitoring, 24x7 hands, much faster Internet, much more stable power and Internet... but the cost of the colo was $75 all inclusive. We saved hundreds of dollars and improved every aspect of the server! For all intents and purposes, we were paid to make the move!
holy crap - it cost you $250 a month to run it at home - WTH?
I noticed you included commercial ISP - assuming you need an ISP at home regardless, what was the cost difference between consumer and commercial? this is likely the bulk of your monthly expenses. -
@Dashrender said in 4G Failover questions:
@scottalanmiller said in 4G Failover questions:
@Pete-S said in 4G Failover questions:
@Pete-S said in 4G Failover questions:
@Markferron said in 4G Failover questions:
With the recent hurricane that came through we've been talking about purchasing and installing a 4G LTE adapter for our firewall. We host a few sites on campus for our school that are dependent on a few static IPs we have from our current ISP.
- Would we have to purchase a block of static IPs from whatever carrier we use?
- If 1 is a yes all we would have to do is point that new additional IP address to our managed DNS?
Thanks ahead.
I think you should consider hosting the sites on a server in colocation instead. They will have have peering to multiple network and that takes care of failover automatically. They also have redundant UPS, cooling, security etc.
I'd like to add that the cost is often low as well. Much lower than most people would imagine, considering what you get.
It's often negative. Meaning the cost of the hosting is often less than the cost of not-hosting. So you essentially get paid to do it.
This is a dramatic example, but I like it because it's so obvious. In the early NTG days we had one server that we ran in house. It generated over $250 of costs to do so (static IP, commercial ISP line, and power consumption.) It wasn't dramatic, but $250 isn't zero, either.
Moving to colocation at the time didn't just give us less noise in our office, less heat being pumped into the office, less need for special HVAC and monitoring, 24x7 hands, much faster Internet, much more stable power and Internet... but the cost of the colo was $75 all inclusive. We saved hundreds of dollars and improved every aspect of the server! For all intents and purposes, we were paid to make the move!
holy crap - it cost you $250 a month to run it at home - WTH?
I noticed you included commercial ISP - assuming you need an ISP at home regardless, what was the cost difference between consumer and commercial? this is likely the bulk of your monthly expenses.We are talking about companies, not homes - at least I was under that impression
In a real datacenter you have faster internet, redundant internet, redundant network infrastructure, proper cooling, redundant cooling, redundant UPS, redundant generators, people monitoring the infrastructure, remote hands, physical security.
The datacenter is a provider at scale. There is no way you can provide this level of service for one server or a couple of racks of servers at anywhere near that price.
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@Dashrender said in 4G Failover questions:
holy crap - it cost you $250 a month to run it at home - WTH?
How can it not? Ever priced out the power costs on a server? It's not cheap.
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@Dashrender said in 4G Failover questions:
I noticed you included commercial ISP - assuming you need an ISP at home regardless, what was the cost difference between consumer and commercial? this is likely the bulk of your monthly expenses.
At the time, non-commerical consumer lines were asymmetrical and so slow on the egress speed that only commercial was viable. Still true in much of America. Even people here in Dallas are often limited to 35Mb/s unless they go commercial.
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@scottalanmiller said in 4G Failover questions:
@Dashrender said in 4G Failover questions:
holy crap - it cost you $250 a month to run it at home - WTH?
How can it not? Ever priced out the power costs on a server? It's not cheap.
Yeah, power alone can make moving a server to a colo make a lot of sense.
Sadly, every place that offers 1u of colo space I've looked at has a max power draw of 120w and my current home lab box normally draws around 130w.
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@Pete-S said in 4G Failover questions:
@Dashrender said in 4G Failover questions:
@scottalanmiller said in 4G Failover questions:
@Pete-S said in 4G Failover questions:
@Pete-S said in 4G Failover questions:
@Markferron said in 4G Failover questions:
With the recent hurricane that came through we've been talking about purchasing and installing a 4G LTE adapter for our firewall. We host a few sites on campus for our school that are dependent on a few static IPs we have from our current ISP.
- Would we have to purchase a block of static IPs from whatever carrier we use?
- If 1 is a yes all we would have to do is point that new additional IP address to our managed DNS?
Thanks ahead.
I think you should consider hosting the sites on a server in colocation instead. They will have have peering to multiple network and that takes care of failover automatically. They also have redundant UPS, cooling, security etc.
I'd like to add that the cost is often low as well. Much lower than most people would imagine, considering what you get.
It's often negative. Meaning the cost of the hosting is often less than the cost of not-hosting. So you essentially get paid to do it.
This is a dramatic example, but I like it because it's so obvious. In the early NTG days we had one server that we ran in house. It generated over $250 of costs to do so (static IP, commercial ISP line, and power consumption.) It wasn't dramatic, but $250 isn't zero, either.
Moving to colocation at the time didn't just give us less noise in our office, less heat being pumped into the office, less need for special HVAC and monitoring, 24x7 hands, much faster Internet, much more stable power and Internet... but the cost of the colo was $75 all inclusive. We saved hundreds of dollars and improved every aspect of the server! For all intents and purposes, we were paid to make the move!
holy crap - it cost you $250 a month to run it at home - WTH?
I noticed you included commercial ISP - assuming you need an ISP at home regardless, what was the cost difference between consumer and commercial? this is likely the bulk of your monthly expenses.We are talking about companies, not homes - at least I was under that impression
In a real datacenter you have faster internet, redundant internet, redundant network infrastructure, proper cooling, redundant cooling, redundant UPS, redundant generators, people monitoring the infrastructure, remote hands, physical security.
The datacenter is a provider at scale. There is no way you can provide this level of service for one server or a couple of racks of servers at anywhere near that price.
You missed the entire point of Scott's post. Scott was hosting a single server at his house. He said he was paying $250/m to host it there. Then he said - he moved it to colocation and his monthly price dropped to $75 for significant better performance, etc. I was wondering how he had expenses (at home) of $250/m... then I tossed out a guess that his commercial ISP was the bulk of that expense... but it's not fair to say he went from spending $250 to $75 because it's very unlikely that he had two ISPs at home during that home hosting time, he very likely used the commercial ISP for home use as well. So his savings would be difference in costs between the Commercial and consumer ISP plus the other expenses for home hosting (added power consumption, added heating/cooling, etc.
That's all I was getting at.
So sure, while he still likely would up spending less, it's unlikely it was anywhere near the $250 (old spend) - $75 (new spend) = $175, because he'd still have to pay for home consumer ISP connection. Which granted is probably $100/m or less, so the real savings here is more like $75/m.. but could easily give or take that $50
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@scottalanmiller said in 4G Failover questions:
@Dashrender said in 4G Failover questions:
I noticed you included commercial ISP - assuming you need an ISP at home regardless, what was the cost difference between consumer and commercial? this is likely the bulk of your monthly expenses.
At the time, non-commerical consumer lines were asymmetrical and so slow on the egress speed that only commercial was viable. Still true in much of America. Even people here in Dallas are often limited to 35Mb/s unless they go commercial.
Absolutely... and this is why I assume you had commercial. I'm currently paying $250/m for 100/100, that's you're whole spend... so either you had a smaller pipe, or commercial is WAY cheaper there for you.
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@travisdh1 said in 4G Failover questions:
@scottalanmiller said in 4G Failover questions:
@Dashrender said in 4G Failover questions:
holy crap - it cost you $250 a month to run it at home - WTH?
How can it not? Ever priced out the power costs on a server? It's not cheap.
Yeah, power alone can make moving a server to a colo make a lot of sense.
Sadly, every place that offers 1u of colo space I've looked at has a max power draw of 120w and my current home lab box normally draws around 130w.
Time for a more efficient server?
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@Dashrender said in 4G Failover questions:
@travisdh1 said in 4G Failover questions:
@scottalanmiller said in 4G Failover questions:
@Dashrender said in 4G Failover questions:
holy crap - it cost you $250 a month to run it at home - WTH?
How can it not? Ever priced out the power costs on a server? It's not cheap.
Yeah, power alone can make moving a server to a colo make a lot of sense.
Sadly, every place that offers 1u of colo space I've looked at has a max power draw of 120w and my current home lab box normally draws around 130w.
Time for a more efficient server?
Maybe in another couple of years. It's a Dell PowerEdge R620, 2 Xeon E5-2660 8core 16 thread CPU, 24 4GB 1333MHz RAM modules, 4 Cruicial MX500 500GB drives, Broadcom 4port BCM5720 Gigabit ethernet adapter, and a single 750 watt power supply. It's currently only drawing 112 Watts, so who knows, maybe I could "get away" with it.
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@travisdh1 said in 4G Failover questions:
@Dashrender said in 4G Failover questions:
@travisdh1 said in 4G Failover questions:
@scottalanmiller said in 4G Failover questions:
@Dashrender said in 4G Failover questions:
holy crap - it cost you $250 a month to run it at home - WTH?
How can it not? Ever priced out the power costs on a server? It's not cheap.
Yeah, power alone can make moving a server to a colo make a lot of sense.
Sadly, every place that offers 1u of colo space I've looked at has a max power draw of 120w and my current home lab box normally draws around 130w.
Time for a more efficient server?
Maybe in another couple of years. It's a Dell PowerEdge R620, 2 Xeon E5-2660 8core 16 thread CPU, 24 4GB 1333MHz RAM modules, 4 Cruicial MX500 500GB drives, Broadcom 4port BCM5720 Gigabit ethernet adapter, and a single 750 watt power supply. It's currently only drawing 112 Watts, so who knows, maybe I could "get away" with it.
I wonder if ditching those I assume spinning drives would help?
