Colocation has become a great option for many businesses who want to take advantage of the many benefits it brings. However, there are many myths surrounding colocation, that we would like to dispel!
1) Colocation Is Expensive
There are many ways for a company to store their data. Businesses can decide between having racks onsite in their offices, using cloud services, or colocation through a colocation data centre provider.
Hosting your own servers, in house, on site at your offices presents its own set of challenges. What if the site goes down? What if there is a power failure? Is it a single point of failure? On top of this, the company must buy their own hardware, and it has to be operated by staff on site.
Using a cloud provider is another option. However, this can get very expensive very quickly. On the other hand, you do have the ability to scale at will.
The third option is colocation. Colocation is a great option for many small to medium-sized businesses and is the most affordable solution. Companies can take advantage of all of the benefits from a trusted data centre provider and reduce overheads for things like power and connectivity.
2) Colocation Is Not Secure
The second myth is that colocation isn’t secure. Data security is one of (if not the most) important factors of storing and managing data, and colocation data centres are no different from other data centres when it comes to that.
When comparing colocation, cloud services, and on-premises solutions—colocation and cloud services can offer better security than on-premises solutions.
Most datacentres are descrete buildings, which don’t have “Data-Centre Here” advertised all over the side of it. Some of the UK’s biggest datacentres are in some of the most inconspicuous buildings. Combine this with onsite security, ram barriers, walls within walls, and a lot of the time on-site security guards, you can rest assured that you kit will be safe inside one of these buildings.
3) Colocation Customers Do Not Have Control of Infrastructure
This simply isn’t true. Many datacentres around the world allow you access to your equipment 24x7x365. Due to the security measures in place, and the availability needed in many of these datacentres by customers who require 24×7 access, you will be able to access your rack whenever you choose.
In many cases you will need to book your visit and you won’t just be able to turn up. Nor will you be able to send a colleague who isn’t registered to have access in your place, but you wouldn’t want someone without clearance in and around your kit anyway!
4) Colocation Providers Do Not Have Guarantees
All trusted colocation providers offer various forms of agreements that give their customers peace of mind about the service they are signing up for. There are Master Service Agreements and Service Level Agreements or SLA. These documented agreements between the colocation service provider and the colocation customer ascertain both the services that are required and the expected level of service.
These service agreements are meant to give colocation customers the knowledge of their contracted services. You should look for a detailed description of the services that are to be provided, the metrics that these services are measured, and the obligations and responsibilities of both the service provider and the customer. The agreement should also state the penalties for breaching this contract, and various protocols if this were to happen.
5) Colocation Does Not Meet Compliance Needs
Again, this is false. A trusted datacentre has many certifications. One of the things to look for in a colocation provider is the company’s certifications. Data Centres in the UK, or further afield are classified in tiers. Data centre tiers are an efficient way to describe the infrastructure components being utilised at a business’s data centre. Although a Tier 4 data centre is more complex than a Tier 1 data centre, this does not necessarily mean it is best-suited for a business’s needs. While investing in Tier 1 infrastructure might leave a business open to risk, Tier 4 infrastructure might be an over-investment.
- Tier 1: A Tier 1 data centre has a single path for power and cooling and few, if any, redundant and backup components. It has an expected uptime of 99.671% (28.8 hours of downtime annually).
- Tier 2: A Tier 2 data centre has a single path for power and cooling and some redundant and backup components. It has an expected uptime of 99.741% (22 hours of downtime annually).
- Tier 3: A Tier 3 data centre has multiple paths for power and cooling and systems in place to update and maintain it without taking it offline. It has an expected uptime of 99.982% (1.6 hours of downtime annually).
- Tier 4: A Tier 4 data centre is built to be completely fault tolerant and has redundancy for every component. It has an expected uptime of 99.995% (26.3 minutes of downtime annually).
Conclusion
There are various myths about colocation and colocation data centres that need to be dispelled. Colocation can offer numerous benefits that small to medium-sized businesses should take advantage of. Colocation data centres often come with the availability, resilience and pricing which suits most businesses, small, medium or large. It’s these advantages that make colocation so attractive to any sized business, with any sized budget.
Our pricing calculator shows you how much datacentres are, allowing you to compare pricing for your exact requirements. Check out the pricing calculator here.
