What it is: Colocation
is the practise of hosting servers, storage, firewalls and other internet
related hardware from multiple customers in a single Data Centre. While using
colocation services at a datacenter are becoming more common every day, many
businesses still choose to host their services in-house. Collocation offers you business
continuity, scalability and performance a fraction of the cost that it would
take to achieve anything close in your own micro Data Centre.
Reasons to use Colocation services:
·
The
biggest advantage of colocation is the cost for bandwidth.
·
Colocation
facilities have better outage protection.
· Colocation
facilities are built to specific specifications and standards to meet the needs
of today’s high-tech hardware.
·
Datacenters
are built with redundancy in mind. This means that most centers have N+ 1
redundancy built into the key infrastructure like power, cooling, bandwidth,
and networking. At many standard office locations it may not even be possible
to implement this type of redundancy, and when it is the costs can be extremely
high.
- Faster, more reliable and cheaper bandwidth
- Real time monitoring 24/7 by engineers
- Mitigation of DDoS attacks and other network issues
- Better efficiency in cooling and power – better for the environment
- Diverse power, backup UPS systems and diesel generators
- More secure (CCTV, man traps security doors, access ID’s)
- Advanced fire detection and control that doesn’t damage servers if it’s triggered
- Operational (OPEX) cost rather than all up front (CAPEX)
- No need to turn servers off an move them if your business moves
