Wednesday, January 4, 2012

A Number Of Different Types Of Colocation Hosting

By Dusty Bentley


It's very often suitable to rent a number of dedicated servers to suit a hosting requirement. Because with dedicated server rental you are also renting the hardware, you can save money by opting for colocation. With colocation you offset a lot of the cost by purchasing the hardware up front, and then paying just for the rackspace and bandwidth you need. So what are the different types of colocation package available? We will look at the biggest packages, through to the smallest.

If you wanted the most expensive colocation package, you'd fit out an entire datacentre. Having your own datacentre is a very complicated job- you'll need to sort out connectivity, power and security from the ground up. For the vast majority of businesses, this obviously isn't practical. Datacentres range in from size from a dozen racks, to thousands of racks spread across multiple floors.

A lockable cage or suit might be considered if a datacentre is overkill. A cage or suite is a private enclosure in a datacentre where you host your own racks. The benefits of this is that you are separated from other customers racks.

If a private cage is overkill, then individual racks might be considered. The standard rack offers up to around 16amps of power and 40U of rack space. Typically, within these confinements you would be able to host around 30 servers. Servers are becoming more power efficient these days to to the rising power of costs and concerns about the environment. For security and peace of mind, you can access and lock a rack both at the front and back.

A full rack might not be the best bet if you are only hosting a few servers- and you might instead consider quarter or half lockable racks. These offer considerable price savings over a full rack, while still offering the security a full rack offers. Sometimes you may find quarter and half lockable racks shared the same power feeds as other lockable rack customers. Always make sure you have your own power feed for peace of mind.

For those with only a couple of servers, lockable racks might be a bit too much. Don't worry though, there is a simple colo package for you. You can rent rackspace for individual servers. From a 4U down to a 1U server, you have plenty of flexibility. Check before you sign up, to ensure your colo provider allows supervised access. Do consider that if you are in a shared rack, you are sharing power and bandwidth with other customers.

As you can see, there is plenty of flexibility in collocation. Whatever you need to host, you should find the right colocation package.




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