A resource which plots backbone servers and major datacenters on a geographical map would be especially helpful. The only two half-decent (emphasis on 'half') resources we've found so far are:
http://www.colotraq.com http://www.datacentermap.com
It would be nice if there was a Google Maps mashup or something better than DataCenterMap, but apparently that is (was?) considered a part of our nation's obscurity plan: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23689-2003Jul7
Several of us who are involved with the business are going to be moving, and it would be nice to know what kind of facilities will be nearby. The reason we're not looking at CA or east coast is purely preference, though I should note that Oregon/Washington are fair game.
For the record, we've been running on dedicated servers for almost 10 years now, and since we finally got around to making a business out of it we're looking at our upgrade options.
On the topic of hosting, you don't say why you're not satisfied with the coasts, so I can't qualify my suggestions. Here are some unordered thoughts, perhaps they will send you the right direction:
1) Without doing a detailed analysis, I'd guess that Dallas is probably the best location to host a server outside of the Pacific/Eastern timezones. There are some very large colo centers (the infomart, http://www.infomartusa.com/ comes to mind) that resell space to large carriers/providers. Many providers peer with each other in these spaces, which is the internet equivalent of being at an intersection. Even if you don't colo at one of these centers ($$$) you're bound to reap the benefits from this, as your traffic will likely end up backhauled to a place like this anyway.
2) If you're talking about a decent amount of capacity (more than a couple rack-U or more than about a T1 of bandwidth) call a couple carriers and ask for maps. Sales often has maps / diagrams that are a little more detailed than the stuff you can find on carrier sites, and they'll generally be happy to give you some suggestions for spaces in the area that are served by their products (i.e. where they terminate).
3) Unless you're solving for a specific problem the variability of individual colo providers generally outweighs the differences in locations. That is to say, you'd be better served by a well run provider in your home city than a bunch of imbeciles 5ms from a PAIX peering point. Don't over-think the physical facility/location aspects.
Excellent advice! And, incidentally, Dallas was one of the places I was looking at, so it's good to hear that it's well-connected.
There is also ThePlanet in Dallas/Houston There is the DC in St. Louis that slicehost is in, I'm sure you could colo there, no idea the name.
There's ALOT of datacenters out there and most of them will deal on the cabinet level and up.
www.webhostingtalk.com is the best place for this stuff though.
http://gnax.com http://gnax.com/network.php#gold http://netdepot.com (send an e-mail and ask about colo as this is the dedicated renting site they run)
Also, if you're looking for more info check out the Colo forum on Web Hosting Talk:
nFrame is owned by Continental Broadband, who also owns Expedient data centers (Boston, Pittsburgh, Cleveland), as well as DCs in Chicago, and a few others. http://continentalbroadband.com
We're expecting pretty linear growth, so scaling isn't a huge deal. Up until now we would regularly switch to a better server, stay there until we outgrew it, and then jump again. It's kept us relatively lean/current and our costs have stayed low as the cost/quality of hosting has changed (and we've gotten better at sniffing out good hosts).
Places like linode and slicehost would have been decent options in the past, but we serve 1-2 TB of data each month, so we like to have lots of bandwidth available. And while many dedicated servers offer that, our server admin is pretty picky about the hardware, so she'd like to be able to manage it on her own.
Out of curiosity, how easy is it to 'hook up' two separate Xen instances, assuming Xen is what slicehost and Linode run on? I'm not a server guy, but I actually share a slicehost plan (separate from this particular venture) with one of our fellow News.YC hackers, so I'm familiar with how excellent the company/service is. If they're really that easy to connect/scale then it might be worth the extra cost...
It is definitely possible to create a VPS-based system to replace your dedicated servers. In fact, that is the direction a lot of people are going, because it's relatively cheap to spin up a new VPS to scale horizontally, as opposed to purchasing a new server. Without knowing what your needs are in more detail, I couldn't say with any confidence whether Slicehost or Linode would work for you, or something else.
Do note that many traditional datacenters are starting to offer some sort of "cloud" solution, or at least some solution involving virtual machines that they have made sure involves the word "cloud", for the buzz factor. So, you could find a reliable colo facility, and work with them to migrate to a VPS-like solution.
http://bluelock.com/solutions/hosting/sharedhosting.html
They are in Indianapolis and Salt Lake City.
Cheers
Resells level3 space on the cheap. Had great experiences with them in Boston, but they have data centers all over.
