buisness idea- Hosting Pi's

[Cake]

Sometimes I dream about money making ideas, this dream came back to my brain recently after forgetting about it a year earlier and, well others are already doing this, so I am just posting to see if anybody else has any views on it.

My idea which I have noticed 5 other companies offering this (google search) is to host other peoples raspi or similar devices in a small data center/room. I think the demand is there because when you rent a vps on a blade, at a big hosting place- how secure is that really? kvm ... What I mean is do you trust the admin panel at the hosting company isn't already compromised? Or a admin has a quick peak to your email or imaging your disk. Or down the rabbit hole even farther....

If you sent your own raspi or bannanapi device to a data center (after you have set it up at your leisure) to be plugged into a cabinet it would be a lot more secure. To secure it you could super glue the sd card in, epoxy the usb ports, or put it in some kind of plastic case with all that stuff blocked.

If you think about how much it would cost you on these two choices: A) Business package from your ISP (aka: static public ip address, guaranteed uptime, low latency) to host it in your home or buisness or B) A data center with 24/7 battery backup, static ip, a couple backbones, etc.

I will guess business package from your ISP start at a minimum of a $100/month, and I see in a search this morning one place will host your pi for around $36 a year.

This could be the future for the thrifty group looking to get for example their own web or email server hosted on their own hardware being how some are really paranoid about there privacy now. (me included)

Thoughts anyone?

 

[sfx2000]

If this is any help (send them a Mac Mini, and they pretty much do the same thing)...
https://macminicolo.net
It is a viable business..

 

[System Error Message]

It is a viable business for hosting peoples hardware but i've never seen one that offers good pricing compared to renting a server.

Rasberry pi are normally used in messing around, prototyping, terminals so it is unlikely for someone to get theirs hosted but it doesnt mean you cant host them. Why stop at rasberry pi? There are many small computer boards around. As long as cooling is good (you could sell them good cooling solutions too) and some way to put them in a space efficient way and with good 5V power source and good internet deals that could work.

 

[sfx2000]

It would be more expensive to do a PiCoLo - as it comes down to space used in a rack - power/cabling generally isn't a big deal, but rack density is...

Most good hosting providers out there - Linode, ThePlanet, DigitalOcean (and there are others) are generally a very good deal, considering what you get, and they're very paranoid about security, esp with the Webconsole and underlying host OS and hypervisors...

 

[Cake]

If this is any help (send them a Mac Mini, and they pretty much do the same thing)...
https://macminicolo.net
It is a viable business..

Never heard of a macmini before, thanx.
Yes I know Pi's are for mainly messing around with, but with the low power consumption, low cost of the board (raspi B), and hosting at $30-35 a year its hard to beat. One place also says BananaPi's are ok too (think Banana Pi m3 -octa core) if you wanted to saturate the 100MB link or gigabit if hosting place offered it.