A colocation site is a data center where multiple companies can co-locate their servers and hardware to gain economic, sustainable and operational benefits. The data center provides space, electricity, access to the internet or ethernet, cooling and security, and other needs the customer may have. The purpose of colocation is to make it easier and cheaper for the customer to run their IT infrastructure and to scale it as their need grows.
What does it mean to use a colocation data center?
When companies use colocation, their servers and network equipment will be stored with a third-party service provider in an external data center. This means that a customer rents space for their equipment in a secure facility, where the servers are maintained either by the customer themselves or qualified IT personnel from the data center supplier.
It is beneficial for companies to move to a data center if they no longer want to be responsible for storing, managing and maintaining their own infrastructure, reducing operational costs and future investments.
What is colocation?
When several businesses move their servers and other hardware to the same physical data center it is called a colocation data center.
Colocation can also mean that a company has placed their servers in several different colocation data centers. This may, for example, be relevant for companies with large geographical distances, and who want their servers to be close to the various physical locations.
What are the benefits of a colocation data center?
A colocation data center offers companies a number of advantages including:
- Reliability: A colocation data center offers cooling, electricity, security and communication systems that ensure continuous connectivity. Data centers also provide good protection in the event of power outages, as they have good routines for backups. Some data centers can guarantee up to 100% uptime on their services.
- Better performance: Electronic equipment thrives best in a temperature-regulated, dust-free environment. A colocation data center offers redundant cooling systems with components that ensure that the air flows through in a good way and that makes sure the correct temperature is maintained.
- Physical security: A colocation data center offers a high degree of physical security by having access control, surveillance (CCTV) and physical barriers to prevent intruders or others who don’t have access from entering the site. This is important to keep the data secure and well protected at all times.
- Speed: Colocation data centers offer cost-effective connections to several Internet providers, which ensure top performance in the event of connection interruptions or overloads.
- Staff who continuously watches: Data centers have IT personnel who monitor and maintain the servers.
What is the difference between colocation and cloud services?
The main difference between colocation and cloud services is the way data is stored and managed.
A colocation data center is when companies move their own servers, which they have set up or have planned to set up, to an external data center. Included in this is the use of the data center’s electricity and cooling, as well as internet and security systems.
With cloud services, on the other hand, companies use the cloud provider’s server to store data. In other words, it is the supplier who is responsible for setting up the infrastructure like servers, racks and other hardware.
Another difference is the cost. Cloud services will cost more in the long term, as costs increase in line with the amount of data to be stored and prices for electricity. With colocation, on the other hand, the company only rents space for the servers and data storage equipment, not the data storage itself, which makes it less expensive over time.
Are you considering moving your servers to a colocation data center?
We at GreenBox offer colocation where your servers are placed in the GreenBox rack system which includes various cooling options. Read more about our product here. If you have any questions feel free to contact us at any time.
Do you want to learn more about different types data centers? Check out the article below:
