Choosing a Colocation Provider
Changing your car’s oil isn’t exactly rocket science, but unless you’re an auto geek you probably have it done by a professional. Why? Because the oil change shop has the right tools, components and expertise to do it in the most efficient and cost effective way possible. What might take you hundreds of dollars in tools, a bunch of your time, and digging a "pit" in your garage can be done in 10 minutes and at a reasonable price by the professionals.
When deciding whether to host your servers in-house or colocate them in an external datacenter, the same principles come into play. You need to determine if you have the internal resources to build and properly maintain your own servers as well sustain 99.9% uptime. Anything less can near-perfect uptime can mean lost sales and frustration for users. That's why it may be a smart move to put your servers in the hands of a company with the skills, resources and equipment to securely host everything for you.
Once you decide to use colocation services there are several things that you want to consider. Of course, you’ll want to look for a company that you trust, including stablility and experience. At TKG, for instance, we use the highest quality equipment including a Cisco backbone (not to mention a Cisco-certified staff). It's also a good idea to take a tour of a potential colocation data center to ensure it's state-of-the-art and isn’t actually housed in someone’s dingy basement (which happens more often than you might think).
You’ll also want to make sure the colocation company provides the following:
- Battery backups
- Backup generator
- Off-site data backups
- Secure location
- State-of-the-art, temperature-controlled data center
- 24/7 monitoring and customer service
- Uptime Guarantee (99.9%)
- Sufficient bandwidth with redundant connections
- Support for Linux and Windows
When you crunch the numbers, we think you'll find it's a no-brainer to colocate. Especially if you need custom-configured or secure, private servers, server colocation is an easy option that offers cost savings and peace of mind. You can read more about server colocation or get in touch with us today.