You can colocate a single server at IDACORE Boise starting today, billed at $300/kW/month for actual power draw — not a flat per-U fee. A 200W test server runs $60/month. This lets you validate hardware, latency, and workload behavior in production before committing to a full cabinet.
Why Test in a Rack Unit Instead of Buying a Cabinet Up Front?
Most colocation providers want you to commit to a quarter cabinet minimum, sometimes a half or full cabinet, before you've proven anything. That's backwards for anyone running a pilot. You don't know your real power draw, your real cooling needs, or whether your application even behaves the way you expect outside a cloud VPC until it's running on real hardware, on a real network, with real latency to real users.
IDACORE Boise has no rack space minimum. You can colocate 1U. We'll bill you for the power that server actually pulls — nothing more. If your test box draws 150W, you're paying $45/month. If it spikes to 400W under load, you're paying $120/month that month. There's no mystery and no flat fee padding the bill for space you're not using.
This matters most when you're validating something specific: a new database engine under real traffic, a GPU inference box before scaling to a cluster, a network appliance that needs sub-5ms latency to Treasure Valley customers before you commit budget to redundant pairs. Boise gives you that latency profile today — the facility sits in Idaho with direct access to 7 on-net carriers (Zayo, Lumen/Level 3, Cogent, CenturyLink, Syringa, Cable One, Hurricane Electric), so your pilot runs on the same network path your production deployment eventually will.
What Does a Realistic Pilot Look Like?
Say you're testing a new caching layer before deciding whether to migrate off AWS. You rack one 1U server, 180W draw, running Redis with a replicated dataset pulled from production. That's $54/month in power. You run it for 60 days, watch latency and failover behavior, and compare it against what you're paying in EC2 instance-hours plus EBS plus data transfer.
Here's the pricing comparison that actually matters for a pilot phase:
| Approach | Monthly Cost | Commitment | Term |
|---|---|---|---|
| IDACORE Boise, 1U, 180W | $54/month (power only) | None | 12 months, but power-only billing means no idle waste |
| Typical colo competitor, 1U | $150–$300/month flat | Quarter cabinet minimum | 36 months |
| AWS equivalent EC2 instance | Varies, often $150–$400/month with egress | None | None, but unpredictable |
IDACORE's advantage in the pilot phase isn't just the sub-cabinet access — it's that you're not paying for space you don't need while you figure out what you actually need. A flat per-U rate charges you the same whether your box draws 50W or 500W. Power billing doesn't.
What Happens When the Pilot Succeeds?
This is where the rack-unit model earns its keep. If your pilot works and you need to scale to 10, 20, or 40U of equipment, you don't start over. You're already on-net at IDACORE Boise, already compliant if you needed SOC 2 Type II or HIPAA-ready infrastructure, already peered with the carriers your traffic uses. You just add power draw. A customer who starts at 200W and scales to 4kW across a half cabinet sees their bill move from $60/month to $1,200/month in a straight line — no renegotiation, no new contract class, no "sorry, you need to upgrade to our cabinet tier now."
Boise's facility specs back this scaling path: 1.4MW total capacity, N+1 UPS and cooling, 34,000 square feet. There's room to grow inside the same facility, under the same contract terms, without a forklift migration to a different site.
How Does Power Billing Actually Work for a Single Server?
Here's the math IDACORE uses, and it's the same formula whether you're running 1U or a full cabinet: kW draw × $300 = monthly colocation cost. A server pulling 0.2kW (200W) costs $60/month. A server pulling 0.5kW (500W) costs $150/month. There's no base fee for the rack unit itself — you're billed for electricity consumed, which is also how your power bill works at home.
This is a different model from most colocation providers, who quote per-U or per-cabinet flat rates regardless of what you're actually drawing. That model make sense for them: predictable revenue, no need to meter individual circuits. It doesn't make sense for you if you're testing low-power hardware and getting billed like you're running a 400W compute node.
Why Does This Matter More During a Pilot Than at Scale?
Because during a pilot, your power draw is unpredictable by definition. You don't know if your test workload will idle at 80W or spike to 350W under load testing. A flat per-U fee doesn't care — you pay the same number either way. Power billing means your invoice reflects what you actually ran, which gives you real cost data to take into your full-deployment planning, not a guess based on a flat rate that never matched your actual consumption.
What Contract Terms Apply to a Single Rack Unit?
IDACORE Boise runs standard 12-month terms — on a single server, not just full cabinets. Compare that to the 36-month terms common among enterprise colocation providers, and a 1U pilot becomes a genuinely low-commitment way to test infrastructure. You're not locked into three years to try one server.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I colocate a single server at IDACORE Boise without a full cabinet?
Yes. IDACORE Boise has a 1U minimum with no rack space commitment required. You're billed $300/kW/month based on actual power draw — a 200W server costs $60/month. There's no flat per-U fee and no quarter- or half-cabinet minimum.
How is per-U colocation billed if there's no per-U rate?
IDACORE bills on power consumption, not rack space. The formula is kW draw × $300/month. A single 1U server drawing 300W costs $90/month regardless of how much physical space it occupies. This differs from competitors who charge a flat monthly fee per U or per cabinet.
What contract length applies to a single rack unit at IDACORE Boise?
IDACORE Boise uses standard 12-month terms for colocation, including single rack unit deployments. Many enterprise colocation providers require 36-month minimum terms even for small footprints, making a 1U pilot at IDACORE comparatively low-risk.
What network carriers are available for a pilot deployment in Boise?
IDACORE Boise is on-net with 7 carriers: Zayo, Lumen/Level 3, Cogent, CenturyLink, Syringa, Cable One, and Hurricane Electric. Pilot deployments run on the same network paths as full production deployments, including sub-5ms latency to Treasure Valley businesses.
What happens to my pricing if I scale from a pilot to a full cabinet?
Your per-kW rate stays the same at $300/kW/month whether you're running 1U or a full cabinet. There's no new contract tier or pricing renegotiation — your bill scales linearly with power draw as you add equipment within the same 1.4MW, N+1 facility.
Ready to test your hardware in a real rack before committing to a full cabinet? Talk to our team about a 1U pilot deployment at IDACORE Boise and get power-billed colocation running on a 12-month term, not three years.
