post Category: Barracuda network post postNovember 26, 2009

Many small businesses looking to save money on IT infrastructure consider leasing offsite servers and software from a colocation hosting service. As part of the colocation package, providers manage and maintain their customers Internet connections and environmental issues such as air conditioning, uninterrupted power supply and fire controls. The negative to this type of arrangement is that the colocation customer bears all responsibility for maintaining the server itself.

Colocation hosting providers have been encouraging customers to lease dedicated servers serviced and maintained by the colocation company itself. By renting server space through colocation, companies are not required to build and maintain the infrastructure needed to host their own servers and maintain their own Internet connections or keep dedicated personnel on staff. That is what the colocation hosting provider is for. A shift of infrastructure responsibility to a colocation service results in huge financial savings to a small or medium sized company on the way up. Theres no need to keep reinvesting in infrastructure as the company grows, as the colocation hosting service takes care of all that off site.

IT managers can be confident that colocation hosting services provide the best possible environmental protection for their servers. The data centers are located in disaster resistant buildings, monitored on an around the clock schedule, protected by redundant air cooling and filtering systems and powered by a surge resistant power supply. System redundancy means uninterrupted uptime should any equipment go temporarily offline, and environmentally controlled conditions ensure a longer server life. Colocation also means that you enjoy dedicated bandwidth, RAM and other hardware that guarantees your server will run at its highest possible capacity.

Businesses need to be connected to the Internet in order to remain competitive in todays market. Colocation hosting ensures your business uninterrupted connectivity to hundreds of national and global Internet networks that reduce the chances that your network will go down. Just think of how much business a shopping website would lose if its website crashes. Colocation also offers the opportunity to connect with a higher Internet bandwidth and improve connectivity speed without a time consuming and expensive overhaul. Such a switch takes mere minutes at a colocation facility.

Colocation customers also share in the benefits of having access to network and hardware specialists who are dedicated to servicing problems with your equipment as soon as they arise. A good colocation service includes around the clock availability for management tasks like server recovery or hard drive swap out as part of their monthly maintenance package.

1 person has left a comment

#1

Other companies send their servers to the facility, where the server colocation company plugs them into the network.

Will the colocation company perform upgrades or physical maintenance to my server?

No, maintaining and updating the server is your sole responsibility. The colocation company will not intervene except in case of damage caused to the equipment on the rare occasion that disaster strikes a facility. It’s easy to perform software upgrades from a remote location, but if you want to upgrade the server, you will have to send a tech to the facility or have the server unhooked from the network and sent back to you.

What is the advantage of server colocation over keeping the server at my company offices?

Colocation companies offer state of the art networks, which can be expensive for a small or mid size business to set up.

Web hosting rochester ny wrote on December 19, 2009 - 8:22 pm
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Write Your Comment

Comment Guidelines: Basic XHTML is allowed (a href, strong, em, code). All line breaks and paragraphs will be generated automatically.

You should have a name, right? 
Your email address, I promised I won't tell it to anyone. 
If you have a web site or blog, you can type the URL right here. 
This is where you type your comments. 
Remember my information for the next time I visit.