When Should You Consider Colocation Services?
Building out a data center on site for your endeavors may not get approval from the higher ups within your organization for a plethora of reasons. Perhaps you physically have run out of space or you need to rapidly add servers into your domain without having to build out racks or other data center equipment. If any of these situations apply to you, you may be interested in collocating your server into a data center near you.
The Pros of Collocating Your Servers
There are several different methods and plans available to those would like to collocate their servers. If you find yourself in a position where you must begin collocating servers within your organization, it is important to remember that collocating your servers ultimately has pros and cons that you must come to terms with before you allow your precious resources to reside in a data center managed by another entity.
The obvious pros of allowing your servers to reside in a third party’s data center is the managed services that may be bundled into your agreement with the data center. When you enter into a collocated agreement, the data center will provide uptime monitoring and notifications and they will alert you of failures if they should occur. Depending upon the management contract that you setup with the collocation provider, you may be able to get your data center to provide extensive off hour services should your resources crash during off hours when no employee is available to recover the services.
Colocation services also alleviate you of the responsibility for up keeping a data center. When you have an onsite private data center, you are responsible for all of the intricate moving parts including HVAC, power consumption, network connectivity, monitoring and more. Purchasing collocated services can alleviate a huge burden off of your IT team by providing them with a team of experienced data center professionals who can tackle your problems as soon as they arise.
The Cons of Collocating your Servers
Some data center administrators enjoy having access to their bare metal hardware. Other concerns with collocation services is the cost associated with these services. As you begin to host more servers inside of a collocated data center, you will be able to get a better deal based on volume. If you are just hosting a small rack of servers or even one or two servers, you may find that the cost associated with collocation may not be economical for what your organization is trying to accomplish.
