RapidSwitch price increase on power usage?

HM2K · 20th February 2008

I have recently received this email from RapidSwitch, I wanted to know if anyone else had received this, and what your thoughts were...

Quote:

Dear Sirs,

We are writing to you regarding your colocation package with RapidSwitch. We have experienced a significant increase in our electricity costs over the past six months, as a result of world energy prices. These increases have been absorbed by us up until now, but we now have to pass them on to our clients.

Unfortunately, we are increasing the pricing on your package a small amount, by £1 per month per 0.1 amps, effective from 1st April 2008. This brings a standard £29 colocation package up to £34, and a 2U package goes up from £59 to £69. If you purchase extra power on top of the standard packages, there will be an increase in this too.

A summary of the price increase is as follows:
Server: IS-1xxx
Old price: £ 39.00
New price: £ 50.00

This price increase will be effective for service fees from 1st April 2008. Please take this email as 30 days notice of the price increased, as required by our terms and conditions. If you do not wish to continue with service at the new pricing levels, you can give us 30 days notice to cancel the service.

We will continue to keep a close eye on energy prices, and are comitted to providing excellent value for our clients. If you have any questions about this please reply to this ticket and we'll be happy to answer any queries.

The RapidSwitch Team

Does this seem reasonable to you?

andyb28 · 20th February 2008

THIS USER HAS BEEN GAGGED BY THE FORUM HOSTS FOR SPAM OR BREAKING THE RULES...
User will be ungaged in around 78 hours from this post.

aXeR · 20th February 2008

More than reasonable if you ask me, RS aren't fibbing when they say power costs have risen!

adamsmith · 20th February 2008

It's still extremely cheap and far cheaper than we would ever consider doing it for.

They're probably the cheapest reputable/established co-lo provider in the country.

I wouldn't complain too much if I were you

.

suhailc · 20th February 2008

IMHO not reasonable when they offer their own servers @ £39/month which includes 10TB of traffic - why have their own server prices not gone up and actually have been going down?

Poundhost are also raising colo/rackspace prices by similar figures. Looks like BlueSquare are squeezing these guys and they in turn are squeezing end clients. Sure energy prices are increasing, but ironically so is their profitability - sounds strikingly familiar with recent BP announcements of massive profits even though petrol prices are the highest ever. But when customers complain about having to pay more, of course lay everything onto the energy prices.

Bluesquare is going the Redbus route and prices will probably continue to rise.

Provida · 20th February 2008

Totally reasonable IMHO.

We operate our own datacentre in Telford and we're the largest user of electricity on our industrial estate. Our prices haven't risen to the same extent that London prices have, yet we've still been hit by a 19% increase.

HM2K · 20th February 2008

This is all very well, until you find out how amp usage is calculated...

Quote:

The power usage will be measured according to the peak usage at boot by our engineers upon receipt of the server. Additional power is charged at £4 per month per 0.1 Amps. Your server is using 0.4 Amps of power more than the included value on our package. Please let us know if there is anything else we can help you with.

I always assumed amperage was calculated based on a monthly average usage not peak usage...

Cranky · 20th February 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by HM2K

I always assumed amperage was calculated based on a monthly average usage not peak usage...

Depends on your contract with your provider. We're currently billed for sustained usage with all our providers, i.e. average usage.

The price increases seem fair to me.

edb49 · 20th February 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by HM2K

This is all very well, until you find out how amp usage is calculated...

I always assumed amperage was calculated based on a monthly average usage not peak usage...

HM2K - I'm sorry but I think you've been given the wrong information. If you raise a ticket one of our staff will be more than happy to explain how power is measured.

Karl · 20th February 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by suhailc

- sounds strikingly familiar with recent BP announcements of massive profits even though petrol prices are the highest ever. But when customers complain about having to pay more, of course lay everything onto the energy prices.

Off topic, but BP only get about 6-8p a litre of the forecourt price from memory, and that's only because they drill for it, refine it, ship it, and sell it on their own forecourts - they get less if they don't do all those steps.

nitrohosting · 20th February 2008

They still make the profit but it's at an earlier stage. The part of BP which actually puts the oil in the barrels sells it on to other parts of BP at the market rates, not at cost, so the majority of the profit is made before it gets near the forecourts.

Larry David · 20th February 2008

.1A at 240V = 24W.

24W * 24hrs * 31 days = 17.856KW

The £1 extra for each .1A equates to an increase of 5.6p per KW/hr

The question is: have data centre raw electricity costs increased by 5.6p per Kw/hr since the service was first used?

If yes then it's a good deal. If no then it's not a good deal.

edb49 · 20th February 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by nitrohosting

They still make the profit but it's at an earlier stage. The part of BP which actually puts the oil in the barrels sells it on to other parts of BP at the market rates, not at cost, so the majority of the profit is made before it gets near the forecourts.

Bang on the money there (boom boom tsch)

BP won't sell it below market rates to their own operations, otherwise they'd be cross-subsidising. Internal market makes sense.

Karl · 20th February 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by nitrohosting

They still make the profit but it's at an earlier stage. The part of BP which actually puts the oil in the barrels sells it on to other parts of BP at the market rates, not at cost, so the majority of the profit is made before it gets near the forecourts.

Yup, but as a group of companies, they only make so much on petrol because they carry out the whole operation (to an extent, there aren't all that many BP forecourts).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Larry David

.1A at 240V = 24W.

24W * 24hrs * 31 days = 17.856KW

The £1 extra for each .1A equates to an increase of 5.6p per KW/hr

The question is: have data centre raw electricity costs increased by 5.6p per Kw/hr since the service was first used?

If yes then it's a good deal. If no then it's not a good deal.

That's overly simplistic, as the cost of power, isn't just related to the raw cost to the energy provider. You're also forgetting that the 0.1A you're being charged for, needs more power to remove the heat generated by it as well (The general rule of thumb was 1A needs another 1A to provide ancilaries and cooling, but I'm not up to date on the state of the art when it comes to UPS losses, air-con efficiencies etc.). If we stick to the 1A requires 1A more, then that actually equates to a rise of 2.8p per kWh.

HM2K · 20th February 2008

Thanks for the math Larry David.

Karl, i'm not sure but i'd be assuming that the cost of ventilation would be covered in the overall cost, not the additional amp cost. Yet nothing amazes me any more.

Anyway, I'm told that the amps are in fact NOT calculated according to the above, they are in fact calculated as follows:

Quote:

"The power usage will be measured according to the peak usage at boot by our engineers upon receipt of the server. We then get this peak figure, take 90% of it, and round down to the nearest 0.1 amps. Additional power is charged at £4 per month per 0.1 Amps."

I'd be interested to know if this is standard practice to produce an amp usage figure.