With the growth of E-commerce business and On-line communication in general (ie. Youtube, linkedin, etc.) ensuring that an organization infrastructure remains on-line is essential for these new and emerging enterprises.
Server Colocation is the term used to define when an body places their server foundation into a data center.
If an organization decides to colocate into a data center facility they are renting real estate for their systems. Building out their own data center in many cases is not cost feasible
for most enterprises. It is very costly to build out high availabity server space. Redundantsystems for power, networks, mechanical and environmental are essential - in many cases building a very small data center can cost an organization one million dollars plus to build a basic facility. businesses tend to look outside of their own businesses to colocate their servers within a pre-built colocation facility.
colocation offerings from data center providers vary in solution sets. the most basic offerings provide space, power and cooling. Some organization operate in a carrier neutral environment in which they do not offer network access or bandwidth to the customers. In these cases colocation clients must provide their own network feeds. other providers provide elabortate networks which customers can utilize. these often are called BGP or multi-homed networks. A multi-homed network refers to the fact that a tenant is utilzing a fully redundant network platform which is made up of several network providers. Therefore if one feed were to go down, the others would take over. From an end user perspective they would not see any service disruption in the event of a failure. enterprises in the SMB market go with multi-homed networks.
Pricing for colocation ranges from $50 / mo. for a single server colocation offering to ten's of thousands per month for a private suite solution. Larger organizations typically utilize private cage environments as it provides an isolated fenced in (caged) environment for their infrastructure. private suites typically are secured with bio-metric or card access systems and systems log entry and exit of the cage. Cage's also allow enterprises to be more flexible with their environment. For example, a suite will permit the use of non-racked infrastructure within the space. this is not the case for traditional colocation environments which require all equipment be racked within computer cabinets or racks - a cage environment provides a more flexible environment without the sole rack
restrictiions.
colocation providers offering server hosting offers various add-on services if the customers require them. the most basic level of service is what the industry refers to is; Remote Hands. This is a basic service in which a data center technician can provide basic services to the customer owned equipment. Examples of such services include; rebooting equipment, visual inspection and simple tape / dvd swaps, etc. More sophisticated services exist which are known as Managed Services in which a colocation provider will provide higher end more technically
advanced services such as firewall management, operating system patching, etc. These add-on services are scalable and often customizable to meet the exact customer needs required by a customer.
Server Colocation as you can see is becomming more popular for organizations looking to place their equipment in a secure and high-availability environment. server colocation is a must for any type of on-line commerce business - that is what server colocation is all about. deciding to construct ones own data center environment within is often not the best scenario for many organizatons as it is cost probhitted to setup and maintain. The cost of server colocation varies quite a bit based on the level of services required as well as the additional add-on services an organization needs such as Remote Hands or Managed Services.
Whatever the solution an enterprise needs for their server hosting - there are data center providers out there that can provide you a customized server colocation solution to fit your requirements and
budgets. The best part of using a server colocation provider is that your environment is scalable. colocation is an elastic price model which is key for many.dig deep when analyzing a colo provider - speak to their other clients.
Author Resource:-
Tony Salvati is an IT professional which has been involved in the IT industry for over 20 years. He currently works with organizations seeking Colo services. He currently oversees marketing of a Colocation facility.
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