When talking about computer and the internet, it is extremely right for one to sat that colocation involves the placement of a third party in a computing center. In other words, this is a service which is usually granted to small businesses which need a large IT department, but obviously without bothering about the costs or with minimal ones. You will notice that the large companies will even have IT departments and people to manage their sites but individuals and small businesses do not. Other than simple hosting, you can also opt to run your own web servers off am internet connection which is dedicated.
Plainly put, colocation enables you to share someone else’s bandwidth as your own, and this you will achieve by simply placing your server machine into someone else’s rack. A perfect example can be given of Michigan colocation, where this service costs a little more than web hosting but less than a bandwidth of the same capacity. Soon after you have a machine put up, you will then be required to both physically take it to the provider of the services and then install it in their rack. Otherwise, you could opt to rent your own server machine from the services provider.
The greatest benefit for colocation is the fact that it costs quite less compared to bandwidth. For instance a low cost limited bandwidth will cost around one hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars. But note that wit the same price or even less, a server can be placed in a colocation facility which provides higher bandwidth speeds, and some form of redundancy for the network connections. This happens to be the main reason why Michigan colocation happens to be quite pronounced.
Another of the benefits of these services is that they have greater outage protection. When you for instance happen to experience a heavy storm, which will even lead to the loss of electricity, and then opt for backup generators to try and keep the internet running, you will realize that they will not function as well. But with a colocation provider, you will even be required to pay for power generators and some backup power, simply because they will keep your services running.
But that which is so good has its fair share of demerits as well, one of them being the fact that prices keep fluctuating. Since one of the main determinants of the bill to pay is usually based on the amount of data that you are downloading, you are bound o pay more soon after you use the internet more, downloading huge amounts of data. Another of the demerits is that the service can prove to be more expensive than web hosting, considering that you have to maintain and manage your servers by yourself. This means that should the server need some upgrading, you are the one to buy the required software and install it.