What You Need To Know About Colocation

Colocation is the purchase of a web server by a company. The web server is physically on the premises of a third-party company. This third-party company provides networking services. Colocation is for those companies that require complete control over their server configuration. This essentially means that a company will connect a server that it owns to the Internet. Additionally, the company owning the server must provide necessary technical support. When the web hosting company owns a server, it is referred to as a “dedicated server”, whereas in a “colocated environment”, the company opting for the service owns the server.

Colocation services are accompanied by costs. These are of two types: rental fees and connection charges. For rental charges the company pays for having the server in the data center of the web host. There are certain terms that a person needs to know, such as the height of the server expressed as “1u” or a “full rack”. Nearly all servers have a configuration of either 1U or 2U. Those that have a larger number of hard drives come in the capacity of 3u or 4U.

Connectivity charges are also included in a collocation agreement. There are a number of gigabytes that are transferred every month. Hence, a standard is used for calculation. If a 1mpb/s connection is used, then the average is calculated on the basis of 1 megabyte per second. This is not all though. There is a certain method by which the “transfer” is measured. The widely accepted method is through a system referred to as “95th percentile”, where bandwidth measurements are recorded every 5 minutes. Thus at the end of every month the data shows the highest readings, which are obtained when the top 5% are not needed and hence not considered.

For a customer, it is important to have first-hand knowledge of the physical location of the server. Natural disasters can occur, and the safety of a server that contains volumes of data is of paramount importance.