[ale] Data center space?

[Michael B. Trausch]

I am spending about $50 a month on virtual private servers, for no
reason other than they have IP address space that is redundantly
provided for by a data center.  I can reasonably forsee paying more in
the future as I need more systems.

I'm wondering, at what point does it become more worth it to just put my
own real systems in a data center and manage them myself?  I don't mind
managing things myself; my plans would essentially be to have a big
friggin' storage unit and then run multiple systems off of it.  I
realize that I would be spending a bit more in terms of the hardware,
and that doesn't really bother me either.  My real question is to
someone that has done all this already, should I be doing it yet?  Or
should I wait until I'm paying more than I am now?  And why does it seem
that all the data centers are very hush-hush about what they charge?  I
can't seem to find rates for the life of me.

	--- Mike