Colocation Data Center: What you need to know
The decision to move to a colocation data center must be considered in the context of operational reliability, security, and of course, cost. More companies are discovering that colocation solves many of their problems without managing their own data center. Businesses may use colocation services because they don’t have the necessary resources to maintain their own data center. So, to take advantage of all the benefits without having a data center, they opt for using a colocation data center.
What is a Colocation Data Center?
A colocation data center is a shared data center facility that provides managed space for placing privately owned servers and networking equipment. It’s one of the popular data center models — with the other two being on-premises data centers and cloud data centers.
Colocation data centers are multitenant. The space is shared with other organizations that also house their systems with the same provider. You can typically rent colo space by rack, cabinet, cage, or room.
In a colocation agreement, the customer brings all the necessary hardware or agrees to lease it from the provider. The provider, in turn, ensures optimum operating conditions for the company’s data center — sufficient physical space, undisrupted power supply, proper cooling levels, high-throughput bandwidth, and physical security.
Colocation services providers also establish seamless connectivity between their facility and your operational site(s). This is called interconnection.
Different types of Colocation Data Center
Two of the widely used terms to define the types of the colocation data center are wholesale and retail.
- Retail
A retail colocation allows various data center holders to co-locate their material in the same facility and take advantage of extra services within those buildings, such as managed IT.
If your business does not require considerable amounts of space or power and does not have IT staff to maintain server space, retail colocation might be the best option for your business.
Today, many “retail” colocation providers can help giant footprints while also providing managed services, on-site personnel, and carrier and cloud connectivity. In other words, the line between retail and wholesale is much blurrier.
- Wholesale
Wholesale facilities are where businesses with large footprint requirements rent space and power, bringing everything else with them: IT staff, hardware, IP carriers, cloud connectivity – the works.
Typically involves leasing larger amounts of space and power. And by power, we are talking about vast amounts of power here. This also enables companies to determine how the area is created and manufactured. The responsibility to operate and support a wholesale data center can be the responsibility of the data center provider or the end user.
Some benefits
Companies and individuals can enjoy many great benefits from using the services of a colocation data center. Here are some of the advantages when deciding if this type of service is a good option.
- Effortless Scalability – You can quickly have new servers or other equipment added to the facility when your business grows. It could be much more complicated to expand when you have your gear in a small local data center or server closet.
- Outstanding Reliability – Colocation data centers are built with the most crucial specs for redundancy. This includes multiple network connections through multiple telcos, excellent physical security, backup power generators, cleaning, and much more.
- Lower Payments – When comparing the costs of a colocation data center with building your facility, it is an obvious choice. Unless your equipment requires a considerable amount of room, the costs will be far lower when using a colocation option.
- Predictable Costs – The costs connected with a colocation data center will be predictable. Typically, you will sign contracts that last one or more years, so you know exactly how to budget for your IT demands.
- Anywhere Any Time – You can choose the location of your data center so that it is near your users.
- Less IT Staff – You don’t need to worry about installing equipment, managing power, running cables, or any number of other technical processes. In many cases, the colocation data center will even replace components or perform other tasks as needed. This means you don’t need to have a large IT staff employed to handle this work.
What’s next for Colocation Data Center?
The biggest push in the industry comes from cloud service providers who use colo as a way to meet their hefty equipment storage needs. At the same time, the industry has been and will continue to remain fluid as laws change with regard to cloud storage requirements.
While soaring demand from cloud service providers has made the need for colocation data center increase, new technology offers rack storage density options that allow colo facilities to mitigate the demand for hardware space.