One of the (many) cool things about chia is that you can host off whatever machine you have, and the easiest way to start is very simple
However, you eventually get to a point where you kinda maybe don’t want that many computers and drives in your house 
any more 
… this topic is for people considering colocating rackable servers, comparing pricing and so on.
I live in Australia. The selection of used/refurb server equipment is very lacking.
I managed to grab a used Promise Vtrak JX30 J630s for A$500 shipped. It’s a 16 bay 3.5" storage enclosure, that can support SATA drives without any adapters needed.
I know, maybe it’s a bit much, but keep in mind this is Australia. I literally could not find ANY other >12 bay storage enclosures that support SATA, on sale, on the resale market in Australia lol.
Now, time to fill it with shucked WD 18TB HDDs 
Any recommendations are welcome. I still need more HDD space. I’m looking to do 1PB total. (currently 512TB HDD capacity and ordered).
My current goals are to use equipment that I don’t mind being in the closet of my guest room, that won’t drive my wife nuts, and don’t break the bank too much. I’m probably about $2500 invested at this point, so I’m waiting to fill capacity I have and also to see what coin pricing looks like in May (especially with how bullish the whole crypto market is anyways right now, should be interesting).
@codinghorror what’s your current storage capacity you’re running at home?
man, this makes me feel like my 30TB is pointless, lol. I can’t imagine renting out DC space. Now only if I could bum off work, lol. I do believe they would not take kindly to me racking up my own stuff…
Not yet, so far I have 20 drives connected to unused pc.
“connect as many drives as possible to a PC” is a completely valid strategy and a good one! You can get PCI cards like this one that let you connect 16 drives … not at high speed, but for farming we don’t need high speed!
Also, pushing the limits of number of USB connected devices is also a valid strategy.
The reason I am experimenting with datacenter is we have one real close by, a local shop. And a friend of mine has agreed to help me out with it in exchange for half the chia generated there once we rack stuff. Hard drives are cool and all but I don’t want a house full of 'em… 
Yeah , the advantage of this it’s easy to setup although bit messy + easier to sell external USB drives.
Howdy! We’re thinking of offering chia-related services at one of our colocation facilities, but haven’t yet calculated a price point that would be feasible for both our clients and ourselves. We have no problem keeping massive numbers of hard drives online and cooled for farming. For colocating a plotting server however, there’s extra power overhead and also the (more frequent) burden of swapping out NVMe drives…
Options for farming could be:
Appreciate any thoughts on it! As always.
Oh awesome! I can vouch for @endoffice! I colocate several mini-pcs with them for a few years now! 
How much for 20U (or half-rack) on a 100mbps? And where are you located?
Greetings @JustinLloyd, the cost of colo is highly dependent on power, and special considerations for Chia include things like whether drives are syncing with a pool all at once. The efficiency of equipment being deployed is key as well of course.
Please message us directly so we can explore it further. (sales [at] endoffice [dot com]) Thanks!
I know @codinghorror is or has already…
I just signed a contract today for a full cabinet in a beautiful data center about 10 minutes away from my house. I don’t have any rack-mount gear, but I ordered some shelves and I’m going to move my 2 towers and 5 NAS and 3 NUC setup, fronted by a fortinet firewall box.
I should have a decent amount of room left, so I can grow things later, but this is very exciting to get all of this stuff out of my house and off my electric bill.
Nice, hopefully you got a good monthly rate. I’m also supporting a local business, and man, it is nice to have all this stuff at a proper server area…
Colocation can be a good idea, specially if you will receive a great deal.
I know that in the USA, Joes.Datacenter were very cheap for colo a few years ago.
may I ask where you got it, mate? I am in aus as well, just bought my Xeon server off ebay last week and will be needing more storage very very soon