- Colocation data centres allow for easy expansion of IT infrastructure without the high cost of building expansion.
- These centres ensure high performance and uptime through robust bandwidth and power in a controlled environment.
- Colocation data centres help meet regulatory standards and provide redundancy for improved data security and business continuity.
A colocation data centre is a facility where you can rent space to house your own hardware, such as servers, networking equipment and cabling. This option provides an alternative to maintaining these resources on site, offering both space and infrastructure support. Demand for colocation services is growing, driven primarily by the increasing adoption of cloud services by organisations ranging from large enterprises to small businesses.
The growth of the colocation market is also driven by the flexibility that these services offer. Colocation allows companies to easily scale their data centre resources up or down based on their current needs. This adaptability is critical as businesses continue to enhance and expand their digital capabilities. As the digital landscape evolves, the need for dynamic and scalable data centre solutions, such as colocation, becomes more critical, making it an essential component of modern business infrastructure.
What is a colocation data centre
A colocation data centre is a data centre that allows you to rent space for your own hardware. For example, instead of using your own on-premises space for your servers, cabling, networking and other computing equipment, you can rent space in a data centre.
What is colocation
Colocation is the term used to describe a data centre that houses the servers and other equipment of many companies in a single data centre. The hardware is often owned by the company renting the space, and the data centre staff simply house it.
It also alludes to the idea that a company’s equipment may be spread across multiple locations. For example, they may have servers spread across three or four colocation data centres. This is crucial for international businesses who want to ensure that their computer systems are close to their physical offices.
How does a colocation data centre work?
This is how a colocation data centre works: Business customers use colocation data centres to house their servers and other equipment required for regular business operations. Colocation ensures adequate bandwidth and provides shared, secure areas in a cool, controlled environment suitable for servers.
Also read: Data centre equipment: Essential components explained
The difference between a data centre and colocation
The main difference between a data centre and a colocation data centre is that colocation refers to a service, whereas a data centre is a physical location. When thinking about cloud versus colocation, this is the most important distinction. A data centre is a physical location that houses the equipment that powers the cloud. Whereas colocation is a service that allows you to set up your own cloud infrastructure or components in someone else’s data centre.
Types of colocation data centre facilities
Retail colocation: Retail colocation is where you rent space within a data centre, typically either a rack, an area within a rack or your own private room.
Wholesale colocation: Wholesale colocation also gives you space in a data centre, but at a lower price. As a result, the power provided by the data centre to run your equipment and the space available is less than what the data centre would provide to a retail customer.
Hybrid cloud colocation: Hybrid cloud colocation involves setting up a combination of your own data centre space and space you rent from another data centre.
Also read: How does your data centre recover from a disaster?
Things to consider when choosing a colocation data centre
Cost: It can be very expensive to build and maintain an in-house data centre. Colocation, on the other hand, can give you the resources you need to support your computing equipment at an affordable price.
Regulatory compliance: In some cases, colocation can make it easier to comply with regional data management requirements. For example, if your company is required by law to maintain an off-site storage facility for backups, colocation can help you meet that standard.
Performance: Without colocation, it can be difficult to get the power and bandwidth you need to support your key business processes. But with colocation, the data centre housing your components can provide a service level agreement that guarantees adequate power and Internet service.
Redundancy: By using a colocation service to house backup systems, you can create a reliable, redundant infrastructure. This can be a business saver if your in-house components go offline.
Scalability: If you think you may need to scale up in the near future, colocation can make it easier because you can rent the space you need for additional servers and other components. But building the space to expand in-house may not be economically viable for some organisations.
