alt Hacker NewsAny recommendations on inexpensive colo for personal projects/servers? A few years ago ran across a few links for places to host a box and I didn't save them, and have regretted it.
ISTR one was basically just industrial office space that was running a lower-tier colo, and another was some guys in a metro area that got a rack in a data center and were spreading the cost around with other like-minded folks. At my work I have machines in an Iron Mountain facility, but for personal projects I don't need anything like that, but I'd like something that's more capable than AWS that I'm paying $80/mo for a couple VMs.
EC2 is pricey if it's all you're getting from AWS. If you have wierd requirements, colo may be a good option. Otherwise, just get a VPS or 3 and be done with it. You'll get a virtual KVM that lets you boot it off an ISO and set it up the way you want.
Vultr, DigitalOcean, Linode, ... are long established VPS players.
I'm cheap and buy VPSes off deals on lowendtalk.com. e.g. my backups are on a VPS with 3TB disk, 2GB RAM, 1 vCPU, USD7/mo. I suspect your USD80/mo budget would stretch to something amazing, by comparison.