Advantages and Disadvantages of Colocation
Hosting your own server can be a costly venture. Not only do you have to pay for the server itself, but the bandwidth it uses as well as any maintenance and administration necessary to keep the server running. This could end up costing your company a lot of money, but there's a less expensive alternative to all of this: colocation.
With colocation, you're still responsible for buying the server, but bandwidth charges are the responsibility of your server colocation hosting provider. How does colocation work? Your company stores your sensitive data, such as web pages and downloadable collateral, onto your server. Your server is physically taken to another location. This location is the home operation center of the colocation provider you've chosen. Once it's there, the provider installs your server on their rack.
Once installed, you'll receive an IP address which allows you to connect to your server from afar and allows other people to access your website. Since large file downloads or a lot of traffic to your site can dramatically increase the amount of bandwidth you use and thus, cost you more money, colocation is a great option.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Server Colocation
With any computing resource service, you're bound to find a number of advantages and disadvantages to using the service. The same is true with server colocation. While colocation may be a great option for some companies, for others it might just cause more headaches.
Advantages:
- Your colocation provider is usually well equipped to deal with any problems that might arise.
- Providers likely have a more secure location for your servers than you might have in your office.
- Server colocation eliminates the need for payment of expensive circuits to your location while simultaneously allowing you a greater level of uptime reliability.
Disadvantages:
- Although colocation hosting includes rack space and bandwidth at the data center, you may still responsible for all other charges.
- If you want to upgrade or change your server or software, it's more difficult to do because you must access the server, which is not physically in your building.
There are many more advantages and disadvantages of colocation hosting, and Expedient can help you discover how colocation can work for you. Request a server colocation quote today.
Bryan Smith is a data center administrator specializing in server colocation. With many years of experience in server colocation hosting, Smith has ensured that each server at an Expedient data center is operating properly. Even with power outages, data loss and or other issues that might affect the privacy and safety of data, Smith's expertise in server colocation hosting has ensured that each client's servers and data are secure.