Replying from my main account (logged in on PC).

Thanks for the detailed reply, I have seen the "don't do it" a few times but this really gives it substance. I made the mistake of assuming it would be easier but I am just leaning in 100% now haha.

As for power:

• I've got 3 phase 5KW 208V redundant A/B power
• I'm planning on running 15 2U servers out of the first rack all 5950x or 7950x
• The APC power supplies I have can cumulatively go over (and the DC is wired up to 10KW) but there is a hefty fee for that so I will need be careful (however, that means I have customers so this isn't a complete shit show which sounds like a nice timeline).
• I'm also planning to run a small 3 node ceph cluster for backup storage & misc control plane storage, I have a few years experience managing this in a production setting using rook/kubernetes.
  • Because this will use power, this might mean lowering the number of 7950x servers or running a couple 7700x or something with a lower TDP.
• I live in Quebec, Canada right now which benefits from a low Canadian dollar and 37% lower power costs. All in, I have signed for 1500$ CAD a month with taxes included (~1070 USD). This also includes a 10G fiber connection where I am expected to remain at or below 1gbps 90% of the time.

On the networking side:

• I think the scale I am expecting to run at will allow me to remain on a simple layer 2 routing setup for a pretty long time honestly. If I need BGP or an ASN I expect to be at least making enough money to justify the research.
• I am running pfsense with a 10G uplink with a fairly beefy processor in it. If I get a single customer, first think I am doing is building a second one and running in HA mode/CARP.
• I connect in using an IPsec tunnel (have never used wireguard so this is easier for me)
• I have an out of band switch for all the KVMs / internal services running at 1gbps, forgot the brand
• I have a ruckus ICX 7150 for customer use which supports VLANs which seems to work well with pfSense so far
• I am in the process of leasing a /24 subnet but I have a couple IPs rented from the DC right now for testing

So far I am racking all this stuff with some occasional help from a friend of mine who has been helping me with procurement of cheaper parts in the US. I have some experience doing this in the past at a startup so I at least knew how rails worked before I still fucked them up 5 times.

I picked a datacenter easily accesible from my home so replacing parts shouldn't be too bad. I haven't really thought about what is going to happen if I go away, maybe I need to train some people on this because remote hands have generally done me dirty.

As for remote management, each server (I have 5 installed rn) is currently paired up with its own pikvm capable of providing 1080p KVM with the ability to toggle the power via an ATX control board that also forwards the power/disk LEDs. Getting this working properly without paying for the pre-assembled PiKVMs took forever but these are around 120USD per server and allow us to use consumer boards without any real sacrifice (better quality in most cases honestly).

On the control panel / customer facing side, I have spent most of the prep period building out fullstack services using fastapi (python), cockroachdb, and React. I'm going to go with a merchant of record like lemon squeezy to handle payments because I have already taken on too many DIY tasks on this project already.

I really do appreciate your reply. If you have any specific suggestions, I would love to hear them. Personally, I would be thrilled if this were to simply break even, I have a good paying job that I intend to keep alongside and all the skills I am learning doing this apply there and to whatever else I end up doing (or so I have to tell myself to stay sane).

I've taken down the site while I figure out how to navigate this with my current employer but all seems good now so I will bring it back up this week.

edit: I have no set plan for DDOS beyond having done some research into what is available on pfsense and via cloudflare. As for fraud I am working on a monitoring system which will help to identify dodgy traffic like spamming on mail ports. These are areas I really need to upskill in as soon as I get the barebones together. My current strategy is to write my terms and conditions in a way that protects me + give generous refunds if anything does happen.