A colocation (colo) is indeed a data center facility in which the business can also rent required space for the servers
as well as other computing hardware.
What is Colocation?
Colocation is considered to be the practice of housing the privately-owned servers as well as the networking
equipment in a third party based data centre. Instead of keeping servers in-house, in offices or at a private data
centre, companies can also choose to ‘co-locate’ their equipment by renting the space in a colocation centre.
Therefore, unlike other sorts of hosting, the customers can also rent space on a server that is owned by the hosting
provider, the help of colocation so that the customer already owns the server and rents that require physical space in
order to house it within a data centre.
What are the main aspects of colocation?
- A colo does provide the building, power, cooling, bandwidth as well as physical security.
- The customer does provide the servers cum storage. Space in the present availability facility is often leased out by
- the rack, cabinet, cage or even a room.
- Many colos have been able to extend their offerings to be able to include and manage the services that do support
- the customers’ business initiatives.
- Housing of hardware in a colocation centre does give much access to higher levels of bandwidth than would be
- rather achievable in a normal office server room and also at a much lower cost.
- Colocation providers consist of staff on hand 24/7 in order to deal with any problems.
- Customers can also choose colocation services on account of their higher levels of physical security that are made
- available in comparison with the in-house hosting
- Colocation does allow users to take full advantage of data centre infrastructure and also maintain control over the upkeep, maintenance as well as the configuration of their servers.
- It is cost effective.
Reasons for choosing a colocation?
- Capital expenditures (CAPEX)) associated with building, maintaining and updating a large computing facility.
- Earlier, colos were used for private enterprises for the purpose of disaster recovery.
- Colos are especially popular with the cloud services.
Negative aspects of colocation:
- Distance can get translated into increased travel costs when equipment needs to be touched manually.
- Colo customers do at times find themselves into long-term contracts that may prevent them from re-negotiating the rates when prices do fall.
- Organizations need to closely examine their respective colo’s service level agreements (SLAs)) so as not to be caught by surprise by any hidden charges.
Conclusion
A colocation provider does provide space in the data centre in which the customers are able to install their
respective equipment. One has to provide the power, bandwidth, IP address and cooling systems that the customer
will do require in order to successfully deploy one’s server. Space is actually rented out in relation to ‘racks’ and
‘cabinets’. A rack is, of course, a standardized frame for mounting the equipment and hardware and is usually
horizontal.
