Collocate Your Own Server for Maximum Control

Collocation hosting is an economical web solution for medium-sized and large businesses. What you do is look for a Collocation service provider near your place of business and forget the hassles of having to maintain your own secure web environment with dedicated lines. Rather than simply outsourcing your web presence to a remote provider, in this case you buy your own server hardware and install it at Collocation center, which is usually part of a data center. If you go the complete out-sourcing route, your provider can be anywhere, but with Collocation hosting pick a provider near you, so you can access the data center easily and cheaply to work on your servers.

Some Providers Have Multiple Centers

Some providers have multiple data centers across the United States, located in strategic geographic markets, so you can probably find a collocation web host near you.

What you get is a climate-controlled environment, 24-hour connectivity, uninterruptible power with a backup generator system, fire detection systems, building security, backup systems and your provider's IT support. The difference between complete out-sourcing is that you are responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of your servers.

It also may give you some services that a regular hosting package does not, such as VPN, bandwidth management per individual server, and access to firewall protection.

Variety of Cabinets and Cages

Server Collocation facilities provide a variety of collocation cabinets and cages that provide a secure environment for your servers. They provide a 24x7 network operating center team that manages the network to ensure high-quality service. Their networks provide scalability and reliability.

The customer pays according to the amount or rack space his servers take up, measured in rack units, with 1U = 1.75 inches. Tower units cost more to colocate and of course there are upgrades in bandwidth and other optional services to consider. You will also want to take out an insurance policy on your servers.

Typical Package

A typical Collocation server hosting package connects your servers to the Internet through a 100mb Ethernet connection. Normally you do not have to provide your own switch or hub when you connect your servers or network equipment. Your servers will be connected to the service provider's switches. Customers can choose to provide their own switches or firewalls if they want multi-tiered server environments.

Servers are transported to the provider by courier. If there is a problem with your server at the provider's Collocation facility, you can work on it yourself or have the provider fix the problem.

Continue to: Differences between Server collocation and Leased Servers