What is Colocation Facility

A colocation facility work as a type of physical data center hosting facility. It allows customers to deploy their own equipment such as servers, hardware, and other equipment and procure all other services like Internet bandwidth, power backup, electricity, and others from the data center based on a monthly billing cycle. 

It provides all these facilities to companies and businesses that need a network service provider at a reasonable cost. 

Businesses could invest a good amount of money in creating a private infrastructure, but by tapping into colocation facilities, those same enterprises can choose to rent the services they need from these colocation facilities without having to create the communications system themselves.

However, data centers are providing expansive bandwidths and space for servers that don�t mean that colocation facilities are online only. But actually, these facilities are physical structures.

Types of Colocation Facilities

Generally, data center colocation facilities are of two types: retail or wholesale. Recently, there is one more colocation facilities become common i.e.hybrid cloud-based colocation facilities. 

Retail Colocation

A customer rents a space within a data center, usually a rack or space within a rack, or a caged-off area.

Wholesale Colocation

A tenant leases a fully-built data center space, generally at a low-cost than retail vendors, but with lower power and space requirements.

Hybrid Cloud-Based Colocation

A combination of in-house and outsourced data center services is called Hybrid cloud-based colocation.

How do businesses set up at a colocation facility?

Mainly, at the initial stage, businesses set up their servers in-house at their own offices. But in actuality, there are two options for associating with a colocation facility. 

The first one is when each business creates its own server machine and prepares it in a manner that would perfectly benefit that business. Once the server machine is completely established and ready to go, the business can shift the machine to a colocation facility for installation.

The second option is when the business simply leases a server machine from the colocation facility, allowing the facility to help establish the server�s parameters. This may be a convenient option for small businesses that lack the technical knowledge to create their own servers.

No matter which option is chosen, the colocation center will provide the bandwidth, the power, and an IP address for the business server to begin running. The business leasing the space at the colocation facility gets unlimited access.

What are the various benefits of a colocation facility?

Though colocation facilities offer several benefits, here are a few of them for businesses that utilize colocation facilities.

Physical benefits

The building which houses colocation facilities is extremely secure. It is constructed with in-built lockable cabinets surrounded by a server rack. Not only this, most facilities offer security with access granted based on identification, video surveillance, and real-time monitoring by security agents on closed-circuit televisions. 

Some technically advanced centers use biometric access such as fingerprint and voice recognition software to grant entry into the building. Colocation facilities also offer smoke detectors and sprinkler systems to prevent data center in a situation of fire. 

Information and power back-ups 

Colocation facilities don�t negotiate with the crucial data of the customer. They provide a vast array of backup strategies to thoroughly ensure the security of each business� information and service. 

Several types of power backups are used in data centers such as diesel generators and batteries that come into existence when any power outages occur. 

Also, colocation facilities allow redundancy which means it creates an array of backups for all the crucial information stored on the servers. 

In case of any power or connectivity issue, the skilled experts of these centers are ready to assist you. For small businesses, this is another benefit otherwise they need to hire personal technology engineers for such obstacles.

Cooling systems

Computers and servers generate a huge amount of heat when they continuously running for extended periods of time. Imagine when a large number of computers or servers are placed housed in a single building and when they run, they create an immense amount of heat. To get rid of that, colocation facilities provide extremely powerful air conditioning systems that help in keeping the air of the data center appropriately cool and moisture-free.

Economic advantages 

Probably this is one of the biggest advantages of colocation facilities for small businesses of renting a colocation space. It will help to increase the bandwidth, enhance productivity, secure, and keep you away from the fear of losing crucial information or data during power outages or technical malfunctions. 

A small business can hire the colocation center and use its services for an approximate savings of 95% which is much more than establishing their own data center.

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