What is Coloca­tion? Server housing explained

Every company that manages its servers in a des­ig­nated room ap­pre­ci­ates the effort involved. The fa­cil­it­ies that house the server tech­no­logy must comply with strict security guidelines con­cern­ing digital access and direct access by third parties. Fur­ther­more, the server must be cooled con­stantly and should not fail to operate in the event of a power supply outage. For companies, this presents the challenge of time-consuming man­age­ment alongside greater financial burden. An al­tern­at­ive to this is the in­teg­ra­tion of your own server into an external computer centre.

The external ad­min­is­tra­tion of one’s own server is referred to as “coloca­tion,” “server housing” or even “server homing.” It involves out­sourcing a company’s server hardware to a coloca­tion data centre. These computer centres are operated, for example, by Internet Service Providers (ISP) that already have the necessary in­fra­struc­ture at their disposal. The ISP’s computer centres offer not only suf­fi­cient space for setting up external servers on so-called “racks,” but also a secure power supply, adequate air con­di­tion­ing, and stable Internet access. The latter ensures that these centres regularly have access to fibre-optic cables installed for this purpose, which guarantee stable network avail­ab­il­ity.

“Server housing” is not to be confused with so-called “server hosting.” With hosting, it is not only the hardware that is managed, but also provider software. The host of the server au­thor­ises customers to use it. In a sense, customers rent server util­isa­tion periods. The rented server can be located anywhere in the world. Customers have no physical access to the hardware. Housing in the computer centre, in contrast, refers to the storage and con­nec­tion of one’s server hardware to external data centres. The ad­min­is­tra­tion, man­age­ment, and main­ten­ance of your server are performed by the company itself provided that nothing else has been agreed upon. For basic work on the server, it is also possible to hire an external tech­ni­cian from the computer centre operator.

Server housing is similar to dedicated hosting. However, while in the case of the latter one rents their own server from the provider, in the case of coloca­tion, one in a sense only rents the storage space, including its in­fra­struc­ture. The server itself belongs to the company and is housed in the provider’s computer centre.

Out­sourcing the server to a coloca­tion centre is es­pe­cially practical for companies whose own fa­cil­it­ies and network con­nec­tions do not comply with the hardware’s minimum re­quire­ments for failsafe and downtime-time safe operation. Through coloca­tion, business pro­fes­sion­als can enjoy the ad­vant­ages of excellent cutting-edge IT in­fra­struc­ture and still operate their own server. This method is practical if the server contains highly sensitive data that must be protected from un­au­thor­ised access or if the server software is highly cus­tom­ised and complex. If companies cannot forgo operating their own server, yet their on-site fa­cil­it­ies are not ideal, server housing is often a good solution for them.

Another reason for using server housing is the question of costs. The setup and operation of one’s own server room not only requires a lot of effort to manage; it is also cost-intensive. Out­sourcing your server to an external data centre can save you costs. However, the expenses for server housing vary widely. This primarily has to do with the fact that there are dif­fer­ences in quality among the providers. Quality is measured according to the so-called “tier clas­si­fic­a­tion system,” with Tier 1 being the lowest and Tier 4 cor­res­pond­ing to the highest level of quality.

When choosing a coloca­tion data centre, it is re­com­men­ded that you focus on providers that are Tier 3 standard. This tier guar­an­tees that the server is ac­cess­ible 99.98 percent of the time, which cor­res­ponds to a maximum downtime of 1.6 hours. In addition, it ensures stable power supply and reliable Internet access with high bandwidth of up to 10 GB/s. All these factors are essential for the server’s smooth operation and low latency.

The biggest advantage of housing in a computer centre is that a company can use the provider’s pro­fes­sion­al in­fra­struc­ture. This in­fra­struc­ture offers an optimal power supply and un­in­ter­rup­ted network avail­ab­il­ity. That’s because the wiring at computer centres consists of mostly ultrafast fibre-optic cables spe­cific­ally installed for this purpose. The company you’ve hired can make use of all these technical ad­vant­ages without you having to re­lin­quish control over the software to external IT spe­cial­ists.

A dis­ad­vant­age of server housing is the con­sid­er­able physical distance of the owner and operator from their server. Should none of the company’s IT experts be available within proximity to the data centre, it is often difficult to rectify problems without the help of the computer centre operator. This often incurs extra costs. Another negative is that a company’s own tech­ni­cians can only access the company server at specific times – and only when ac­com­pan­ied by the computer centre’s security personnel. This can be a problem when urgent repair work is needed. Also, fluc­tu­at­ing energy costs and a long contract period should be taken into con­sid­er­a­tion. All even­tu­al­it­ies should be clarified with the provider before fi­nal­ising a contract, and if needed, with the help of a lawyer.