Colocation Hosting

Introduction

Colocation Hosting is recommended for small to medium scale businesses who want the benefits enjoyed by large corporations without having to shell out the same amount of money.  Large companies have the resources to employ a group of IT professionals who will oversee the internet infrastructure and other technological needs of the company. However, for small companies or for individuals they do not have the capacity to employ these professionals. For this reason, there is a variety of options available in running your own servers and one of this is colocation.

What is Colocation?

Colocation is the practice of placing your server in a datacentre in order to benefit economies of scale, greater bandwidth and a whole lot more of advantages. It allows the client to place their servers on someone else’s and share their bandwidth.  This costs more than standard web hosting but much lesser than when you set up a bandwidth in your place of business. First set up your machine, and then physically take it to the colocation provider. Next, you need to install it in the colocation provider’s rack or lease a server from the colocation provider. The provider will then give you the bandwidth, IP and power to your server machine.

Advantages of Colocation

The following are the benefits that you can enjoy from using Colocation Hosting:

  • The greatest advantage of colocation is the savings that you can get for the bandwidth.
  • In colocation facilities, you are better secured in the occurrence of power outage.
  • You own the server machine in colocation hosting which means that if the machine’s performance is slow, you can immediately upgrade the server without waiting for the provider to upgrade it.
  • You are the owner of the server software and do not have to depend on your provider to install the software that you want.
  • In a colocation environment, your server is being maintained in a secured space.

Disadvantages of Colocation

While there are advantages of colocation hosting there are also drawbacks for this kind of hosting. They are as follows:

  • The foremost drawback is that colocation providers are difficult to find. You would want a provider near your home or office so that you might upgrade your server anytime you want. However, you will not find a provider unless you are situated in a bustling city where there are many network hubs.
  • When compared with basic hosting, colocation hosting is much costly. This is much expensive to maintain because you have to manage the servers yourself. When there is a need for the server to be upgraded, you have to purchase the hardware or software and do the installation.
  • Another difficulty for this kind of hosting is the accessibility. You need to travel to the location of your host provider.
  • If you plan to move away from the colocation provider, you need to either relocate your server to a new web host provider or leave them with your current provider and pay them for the maintenance of the server.
  • Another disadvantage is the varying monthly prices that the customers will experience with colocation hosting. One of the factors in the monthly billing of collocation is the volume of data that are transferred from the server. When you have an unusual huge traffic in a month, the bill that you will be getting will shoot up dramatically.

Should I go with Colocation?

You need to consider all aspects before jumping into the conclusion of buying the services of colocation hosting providers. Colocation is suitable for small businesses that want to enjoy a large web presence but do not want to deal with a huge amount of network connections. The bottom line is, you need to review the pros and cons of this type of hosting and seek out opinions of experts in the field before making up your mind.