For businesses and individuals, server colocation is an appealing alternative to a dedicated server. It offers all the features you’d normally get with a dedicated hosting plan while providing you with complete ownership and control of a server. However, to maintain the requirements that a server demands can be costly and time-consuming for the average company. With colocation, you will be given a rack in a data centre that should meet all the power, internet and environmental requirements for the server that your company would otherwise need to provide for.

Not only does it save time and resources to colocate your server, there is also some savings to be found in bandwidth. Since your server is stored alongside other servers at a data centre, the bandwidth is shared between them all and is paid by the colocation provider. This helps avoid bandwidth expenses that you would have had to pay for if you hosted your own server, especially for websites that are high in traffic. The data centers also include air conditioning, filtering systems, and some fire preventions that help ensure the servers are working at optimal quality.  There’s a rental fee for the rack that goes toward all these benefits but because others are paying the fee as well, it usually comes out at a volume discount for the customers.

It’s important to look for colocation centers that offer security and protection against natural disasters. For example, if your business is time-sensitive and the server needs to be up for it to function then you’ll need to ensure that protections (such as a backup-power generator, power filter, etc) are there to keep the server running. Most colocation providers offer a high level of security by actively monitoring for potential threats 24/7 and in some cases they provide surveillance cameras to make sure your server is not physically hampered with. If anything should happen to your data, the company will be held responsible for both the server and the data that resides in it.

That level of security would be difficult to achieve on your own or through some dedicated hosting plan. And in case there happens to be any technical difficulties, there should be some full-time technical support that will assist you through finding a solution. However, there is rarely if ever any problems because the facilities are often of the highest quality and lack any restrictions so as to work with full efficiency. This is accomplished by giving each customer their own bandwidth, power and allowing the server to use its own RAM and CPU without it being shard with anyone else.

There are plenty of flexible options that you might consider when deciding to colocate your server. Some will offer to manage your server with upgrades or to change some of the settings to better suite your company’s needs. For those who lack high web traffic or do not have the sufficient funds to own a server then colocation is not needed and in fact would be more expensive. However, if you do have high web traffic then this could pose a problem for shared hosting plans but server colocation resolves this problem at an affordable price.

For more information about server co-location feel free to contact us.