Fifty-plus EC2 compute nodes were the starting point.
Peek was running in Amazon, but I was pricing the first physical footprint for the company. The initial plan was a half cabinet with two VMware hosts and a pair of firewalls, switches, and routers.
The form asked for an estimated start date. I wrote “Immediately.”
I asked the vendor for a quote.
I wanted to know how the data center handled bandwidth, power, contract terms, and growth. Ten megabits per second could be enough to begin, but only if the service could expand without turning every change into a negotiation. I asked what it would take to move from half a cabinet to a full one and then to several cabinets.
The vendor asked how large I expected Peek to become.
“Sky is the limit on growth,” I wrote.
The estimate was enthusiastic. The form described a small physical base for routing, security, virtualization, and connections back to the services running in Amazon.
My rough horizon was twelve months. We could start with a little equipment and move more of the operation off EC2 as the requirements became clear. I could imagine the half cabinet eventually becoming a 300-to-500-square-foot cage.
I asked about power, network access, remote hands, contract terms, and the cost of adding the next rack.
The quote would give us numbers. It was not approval to build anything.
I had given notice at Yodle the day before and had not officially started at Peek. The data center planning was already underway.