Softlayer hosting for GitLab.com
I think Softlayer is a good option to solve #7 (closed), they offer quick provisioning of metal servers, awesome scale and have a good reputation.
My note from the conversation with them:
quanta stor http://www.macnews.com/2011/10/20/softlayer-launches-quantastore-storage-servers QuantaStor Mass Storage Servers pricing starts at US$1,039/month for up to 12 drives and $1,139/month for up to 24 drives. Visit softlayer.com/dedicated/specialty-mass-storage/ to order.
http://www.softlayer.com/quantastor
limited by disk hardware
100 IOPS per disk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOPS
so with 2 disks it is 200 IOPS :(
36 drives, 6TB each, 216TB total
also have ones with 12 drives
https://store.softlayer.com/configure
https://www.softlayer.com/Store/configureOrder/263/49585
Configure your Dual E5-2600 Series (36 Drives) (Monthly) $660
Host in Dallas, need to submit a ticket to judge capacity, pick the last one 07 (for some)
change disk with assign disk
2-4 hours typical to provision bare metal, hourly servers faster
need secundary server
backups? => to other servers
sponsorship? => sign up, approve quickly, $10k per month for 12 months
mixed storage? => quanta can maybe do it
Compared to others they have many datacenters, a global network, and great uplinks
http://www.softlayer.com/backup http://www.r1soft.com/
only pay upfront for the month
softlayer grew from 14 to 40 datacenters
softlayer build the whole datacenter to be incredebly automated, included the provisioning
all their datacenters are the same