Are There Any Plans In Opening Data Center In Pacific Northwest

Hi Mark! There's nothing I can announce at the moment, but we do keep track of interest for specific features including new data centers. I've added your request to our tracker so we can keep it in mind when selecting new locations.

@maallyn --

+5 for this

-- sw

Mjones: I just thought of something. Looking carefully at the product offerings at the Vultr Seattle locations seems to give me a clue that the facility must be very small. They don't offer dedicated cloud nor bare metal in Seattle. I notice that you folks seems to offer all of these options at all of your data centers.

I am wondering if Vultr has only a 'closet' size data center (maybe one or two racks) and they are limited to only hosting VPS on very few physical servers.

I took one look at your Fremont data center on Google maps and notice that it is an entire building, not just a closet. I also took a peek at the Dallas data center on Google maps and I notice the same.

If all of your data centers are entire buildings where you can offer all of your types of products, perhaps would it be a challenge of you to do the same in Seattle if there is not much data center space available?

@maallyn --

Just like Fremont refers to Bay Area, Tacoma, Renton, Bremerton or Everett could refer to Seattle. Frankly, if Linode was to open a PNW data center, I would prefer it to be halfway between Portland and Seattle (which would put it at Olympia).

Because of Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon, the Silicon Forest area west of Portland (featuring a major Intel installation in Hillsboro), and the major universities (Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, WSU-Vancouver and British Columbia), there is high-speed internet all over western Oregon/Washington. The PNW is also awash in (relatively inexpensive) hydro-electric power as well. A data center near Olympia would provide good service to the Vancouver/Victoria metro area as well.

There are already about a dozen co-location data centers in Portland Metro and the Silicon Forest already. There are about a half-dozen between Puyallup and Seattle. I could live with Puyallup…

-- sw

Oh, yes. I used to work for Intel in Hillsboro. At the Jones Farm campus, next to the Hillsboro Airport. I then became an escaped mental patient from that insane asylum back in April of 2016. And yes, they had just finished making a huge new data center on the northwest corner of the Jones Farm campus.

I don't know if they are making it available to anyone else, though, or are they filling it up with their own computers . . .

Maybe you'r right; half way between Seattle and Portland. Out of a major city to keep the rents down. Olympia/Lacey would be cheaper than downtown Seattle or Downtown Portland and Linode would get more elbow room than just a closet in a downtown building.

As far as I know, Digital Ocean nor Amazon have anything available in Washington State. Microsoft does have something, but I believe it's in eastern Washington. I don't know about Google.

Mark

@maallyn --

I don't know the parameters of your setup but Vultr is not the only provider of VPS hosting services in Seattle. Here's a list (Linux only, all price ranges):

http://comfortvps.com/Search.html?locations%5B%5D=ID_2&os_type=1&virtualization=&ram=&disk=&monthly_price=

ColoCrossing has a big data center in Tukwila:

https://www.datacenters.com/colocrossing-sea1-seattle

Given your location in Bellingham, though, I would probably look at Vancouver, BC than at Seattle though. The $ <-> C$ exchange rate is in your favor…and anyplace in BC is going to be experienced in dealing with American customers:

https://www.canadianwebhosting.com/vps
https://www.canadianwebhosting.com/company/datacentres

C$ 40/mo is $US 30.29/mo (today's exchange rate). Besides, it gives you an excuse to go to Vancouver…

For those of you who don't have the good fortune of living on the Pacific Rim, Vancouver, British Columbia is a premier destination in the Pacific Northwest (much cleaner and much more friendly than SF, IMHO…better Chinese food too!). It's one of the most beautiful cities in the world! Unfortunately, because of COVID, the entry into Canada is currently closed to Americans. Maybe after the election…

-- sw

Thanks! Appreciate the help! As you indicate, the border is closed. Do you know if that would impact my ability to do business with Canada Web Hosting as a non Canadian?

@maallyn --

You write:

Do you know if that would impact my ability to do business with Canada Web Hosting as a non Canadian?

Probably not…unless you want to pay your bill in person (which I can't imagine you would want to do).

What you do need to worry about, though, is the vigorish on the exchange rate. You need to pay with a mechanism that will minimize the impact to you (the banks involved are going to want to maximize the benefit to them…to your detriment).

You also need to determine a priori that a particular organization will do business with you in the first place. I don't think there would be any tax/tariff impacts but, if Justin Trudeau pisses off Trump somehow, that could change in the time it takes to compose a tweet.

-- sw

SW: I am a bit confused at your last statement. Perhaps I can give you some context.

First of all this is a hobby. I would be providing a server for an application called Jamulus, which is a lightweight client/server setup for performing near real time music jamming and rehearsing.

The object with Jamulus is to achieve as low latency as possible; ie; when I clap into the microphone, I want to hear the clap in my headphone as soon as possible (well within 1/10th of a second). The lower the latency, the better it is for musicians to stay in tempo.

My objected is to set up a server with as low latency as possible to the Bellingham, Washington area. We are about 90 miles north of Seattle, but about 50 miles southeast of Vancouver.

I would offer this to some choirs and choral groups in the Bellingham area.

Currently, I have a droplet in the Vultr data center in Seattle; my ping time flutters between 10 to 15 milliseconds. If I set up a server in Vancouver, I might be able to do better in Ping.

All of this is hobby/non profit, so I am hoping that I don't have to worry about this priori that you refer to, whatever that means. And I was thinking of paying for it with my U.S. based credit union Visa card.

Or is that a big boo-boo to consider doing that in terms of tarriff or vigorish or exchange rate????

@maallyn --

You write:

All of this is hobby/non profit, so I am hoping that I don't have to worry about this priori that you refer to, whatever that means.

A priori is a statistics/math term…Latin for "before the fact". The vigorish (usually shortened to the vig) is a bookmaking/numbers-running term for a fee charged to you for handling your bet and/or your winnings/losses by the bookie/runner (i.e., the privilege of doing business with them). In a legal casino, it's represented by the ever-present odds advantage to the house on any game/bet. Transaction fees or foreign ATM fees are legal vig for financial institutions.

And I was thinking of paying for it with my U.S. based credit union Visa card.

OK, that's fine. Both the CU and the financial institution on the Canadian side are going to charge you a fee (the vig) for handling the currency exchange (usually a small percentage of the value of the exchange). They're ever-present and built in to the transaction.

These fees have to be disclosed so you can find out what they are. You can't escape the vig on currency exchange so you have to consider it to be a cost that you have to pay. However, you can minimize it by doing your homework. Ask both the CU (on your side) and hosting provider (on the Canadian side) what they charge for currency exchange and add that to the monthly cost.

If you can get a better deal by, say, using your AMEX instead of your CU Visa, that lowers your costs…and that's what you should do.

Or is that a big boo-boo to consider doing that in terms of tariff or vigorish or exchange rate????

If you charge a Canadian subscriber a fee for your service, that fee is a foreign-exchange transaction and subject to US tax (a "tariff" is an "import tax" -- charged on both goods and services). Similarly, the fee a Canadian host would charge you for their hosting service is also a foreign-exchange transaction possibly subject to Canadian tax/tariffs.

It all sounds very complicated but reputable businesses on both sides are going to know how to handle this so that you don't have to. Just ask about it, that's all (i.e., find out a priori). You said you did this for a hobby… You don't want your quest for lower network latency to negatively impact your tax return next April. I don't know about you but having to pay big taxes on something I did for fun would considerably lessen the amount of enjoyment I derived from my hobby.

-- sw

P.S. ICMP echo (ping) is not a very good measure of network latency. I understand why you use it…it's convenient and easy…I do it too. If latency is a big issue with you, traceroute(1) is a much better tool. See:

https://www.dnsstuff.com/network-latency

n.b., this is written for the M$-Window$ crowd so traceroute is M$-Window$-ized to tracert.

See:

https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/akamai-turns-linode-up-past-11/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email-newsletter-september-22_in_the_node

Under the second heading Adding new data centers, Seattle is mentioned (sometime in 2023?).

-- sw

Thank you. This is good news.

Seattle is now available through Project Green Light.

https://www.linode.com/community/questions/19275/any-plans-for-a-datacenter-in-seattle-wa#answer-84129