Colocation is an internet hosting service where organizations, be it large or small can rent facilities such as network, physical space, electricity, cooling, storage facility, & physical security for their servers or IT equipment.

1. What Is Colocation?
Colocation is an internet hosting service where organizations, be it large or small can
rent facilities such as network, physical space, electricity, cooling, storage facility, &
physical security for their servers or IT equipment.

2. Colocation service provider usually owns the infrastructure facilities also
termed as a datacenter which includes building, cooling systems,
etc. which is completely maintained and managed by the service provider.
Colocation is one of the most expensive forms of hosting service it is even
more expensive than managed hosting. But it is far cheaper as compared to
the price incurred in managing and maintaining a complete in-house
infrastructure.
Initially, organisations used to use colocation for disaster recovery purpose
solely. Nowadays organizations, be it large or small usually opt for
for cloud services and to reduce the massive amount of CAPEX and OPEX
associated with building, managing, maintaining & updating large
facility. There are certain standards for reliability which needs to be
maintained in datacenters or colocation facilities. The most common are
16 SOC 1 Type I and Type II (formerly SAS 70 Type I and Type II) and the tier
system by the Uptime Institute or TIA.

3. Colocation Infrastructure
The Infrastructure of a datacenter is developed keeping in mind the standards
since the very early site selection as in the site shouldn’t be a disaster-prone
vicinity be it natural or man-made it is also suggested to select the site with
lower temperature or suitable weather it helps in saving lot of energy & cost
required for cooling the facility. Construction of the site such as the walls of the
datacenter, the construction material used, proper insulation such as heating,
ventilation & air conditioning (HVAC) standards has to be met. Excessive heat
rise may result in malfunctioning of electrical and computing devices thus it is
very important to have a powerful air conditioning system in place. Datacenter
hosts very critical and crucial information of various companies and
organizations it is the service providers responsibility to keep this data and
information safe and secured from any disaster hence there also need to be a
reliable fire protection system & physical security in place. Along with this, the
network services &, power supply to maintain the promised uptimes, physical
security, cabinets, suites, cages, racks & modules etc. used in the datacenter
have to be maintained for their standards. According to the level of services and
infrastructure facilities, the datacenters are further classified into different
standards viz tier I, tier II, tier III etc.

4. Cons of Colocation Services
Colocation can be an ideal solution for some organizations but still, colocation
services have its own cons. In colocation, an organization or individual hosts their IT
infrastructures in the service providers infrastructure where distance can be a major
problem as it creates a lot of feasibility issues and increases costs considerably. Even
though the IT equipments are hosted at the service providers infrastructure but the
management and maintenance of the hardware is the owner’s responsibility. Any
updates or upgrades to the system or hardware have to be carried out by the owner
manually even a minor change in any hardware equipment’s can cost a lot of time
and money to the customer. In colocation services the customers have to get in
long-term contracts hence the customer has to bare the costs even if there is a
change in market rates.

5. The question remains, is colocation right for you? Colocation tends to be the right
option for the business that has outgrown managed web hosting but is not yet large
enough to make in-house web hosting and a dedicated IT department practical. Think
of colocation as a compromise between managed and in-house web hosting. What
does outgrowing managed hosting mean? Managed web hosting tends to force you to
think within the narrow preconceptions of the industry. Once this narrowness begins to
interfere with your vision, you have outgrown it.

6. About Chronicloop
Chronicloop is an avid initiative to spread knowledge and
information about the latest trends and technology. For more
information visit: www.chronicloop.com