Lost City - A year has passed, still no sign of KVM support in Tokyo

I would suspect “WHY” is because there is literally no room left in the Tokyo datacentre for new hosts. KVM Linodes require entirely new hosts, and they'll need to start with enough of them available to handle the initial flood of converted guests. If they had spare room in Tokyo for an array of KVM hosts there wouldn't be the current shortage of openings for Tokyo Linodes, and thus KVM in Tokyo will wait until they open up a new datacentre.

@Celti:

I would suspect “WHY” is because there is literally no room left in the Tokyo datacentre for new hosts. KVM Linodes require entirely new hosts, and they'll need to start with enough of them available to handle the initial flood of converted guests. If they had spare room in Tokyo for an array of KVM hosts there wouldn't be the current shortage of openings for Tokyo Linodes, and thus KVM in Tokyo will wait until they open up a new datacentre.

Thanks. But we'e heard that for a whole year. I doubt if there is an expansion in scheduled.

@cnrat:

Thanks. But we'e heard that for a whole year. I doubt if there is an expansion in scheduled.

You doubt that Linode is planning to expand in their most hotly-demanded (and therefore highly profitable) region?

I certainly don't think Linode fails to grasp the economics of that situation — but I do think that Tokyo is so densely populated already that it's hard to find space for the capacity they need, for a price they can afford. Expansion in Tokyo is inevitable, it's just not quick.

Linode has a bunch of special requirements that are not easy to meet in the Asia/Pacific region in general.

Traffic is pretty expensive over there, but Linode doesn't charge extra for traffic in some datacenters (or reduce the allowance) like some competitors do. So they need to find a datacenter that can provide 40 Gbits of bandwidth, a large number of IPs, and a lot of rack space with higher-than-average power density, all at a cost that is comparable to their other datacenters. If a location becomes too expensive to maintain, it doesn't matter whether their customers demand it hotly or not. Linode didn't become a multi-million-dollar company by pursuing thin profit margins.

But most people who want a Linode in the Asia/Pacific region probably don't care exactly where the datacenter is located, as long as it is stable and reasonably close to the big markets. If there's no room for expansion in Tokyo, perhaps other nearby cities might do. Anybody want Hong Kong, Taipei, or Seoul?

Tokyo is the main hub for big parts of Japan AFAIK, but it isn't impossible that there is capacity somewhere else in Japan. It may not be necessary to move out of Japan. As for myself I would prefer Japan because the bottleneck (for serving Japan) would be anything that has to go across the ocean.

@hybinet:

But most people who want a Linode in the Asia/Pacific region probably don't care exactly where the datacenter is located, as long as it is stable and reasonably close to the big markets. If there's no room for expansion in Tokyo, perhaps other nearby cities might do. Anybody want Hong Kong, Taipei, or Seoul?

Well there's always room for a Linode location here in Sydney ;-)

I would love to migrate my VM over to the Singapore DC but the latency to Singapore is 50ms worse than to Tokyo via IPv4 and IPv6, even though geographically it's 1500km closer (this is via iiNet/Internode).

@reuben.farrelly:

Well there's always room for a Linode location here in Sydney ;-)
Sydney might work if Linode is willing to strike a zero off of their 40Gbps bandwidth, as well as another zero off of everyone's transfer quota. :mrgreen: