5 Things You Should Know About Co-location
What Is Co-location?
Co-location services allow businesses to host their mission-critical systems and applications in a secure, highly available, off-site data center. To support the servers, systems and applications you host in a co-location environment, co-location services typically include:
- A secure facility that houses the data centers.
- A secure rack environment.
- Monitored physical access.
- Redundant, uninterrupted power supplies.
- Full generated power.
- Redundant cooling systems.
Many co-location providers can also assist with diverse fiber network connections from your primary location to your racks in their co-location facility.
With companies becoming more and more reliant on technology, off-site co-location data centers have become a viable option for either data center expansion, disaster recovery or off-site data replication needs. Many companies have decided that outsourcing their data center needs to a co-location provider is the way to go.
Here Are 5 Things You Should Know About Co-location:
1. The Cost Benefits of Co-location
Co-location has proved to be a cost-competitive option for many companies. With co-location services, the cost of generators, chillers and real estate are shared among multiple clients.
Co-location services often provide built-in benefits, such as data center facility support, secure rack access, cooling and power redundancies, and diverse access to fiber carriers’ backbones – all for a lower price than companies would independently pay.
2. Co-location Providers: What to Look For
There are many co-location providers out there. When looking for a provider, ensure that they have the following:
- Redundant power and cooling systems.
- Diverse access and egress for all telco services.
- Multiple carrier options for private fiber and internet services.
- High-density power capabilities.
- Off-grid power supplier.
- Fiber connectivity to public cloud providers like AWS, Google, Azure, Office 365 and others.
Co-location can also be beneficial in the event of a natural disaster, power outage or other unexpected natural occurrence that affects a company's headquarters.
3. Co-Location Services Are Secure
Co-location offers tenants a number of physical security benefits, such as unique card access controls for entry into the facility and the data centers, locking co-location racks unique to each client, 24/7 video surveillance of all areas within the facility with archiving capabilities and restricted access to non-tenants.
When seeking out a co-location provider, ensure that they can fulfill the full range of your requirements.
4. Co-location and Cloud Can Work Together
Which is the more appropriate solution to host my company’s off-site networks: co-location (physical) or cloud (virtual)?
Fortunately, this frequently asked question has an easy answer: nowadays, businesses leverage both. You can physically host your networks in an off-site co-location facility, providing geographic diversity and system redundancies, as well as leveraging the power and unlimited capacity of public cloud providers such as AWS, Google, Azure, Microsoft 365 and others.
When implementing a hybrid approach, make sure your co-location partner has the ability to securely connect you to the cloud directly from your co-location racks.
5. Your Co-location Environment Requires Always-Up, Always-On Connectivity
Co-location partners must not only maintain excellence in delivering data center services, but also have the capabilities and experience to provide your company with diverse, redundant connectivity paths from your business to your co-location racks.
A well-designed WAN connection is as important a service component as the quality of your co-location data center services. It does not matter how amazing your co-location provider’s services are if you cannot access your racks.
Ensuring always-on connectivity to your co-location racks is an essential component of a well-designed solution.
At ChimeNet, our co-location services offer an opportunity for you to expand your existing data center footprint and disaster recovery strategy without additional capital investment. Our CT-based, audited co-location data centers are well-engineered, well-constructed and expertly maintained by our trained, certified technicians who are available to assist you 24/7.
Learn more about our co-location services in our overview.