What is a Data Center?
A data center is a facility wherein a robust IT hardware and software infrastructure is centralized and shared as private servers or public sharing servers for various information systems tasks like storing, processing, and disseminating data and applications.
A data center is extremely critical and is highly secured for it houses an organization’s critical and proprietary assets and is vital to the continuity of daily operations, using the hosted applications on managed VPS or unmanaged VPS
Related article: How Data Centers Improve Your Business
What is a Colocation Data Center?
A colocation data center is a third-party facility where businesses can rent secure physical space to house their own servers, storage systems and networking equipment. Instead of building and operating a private data center, companies place their hardware inside a professionally managed facility that provides essential infrastructure such as rack space, power supply, cooling, physical security, bandwidth and network connectivity. Colocation generally means the organisation still owns and controls its IT hardware, while the data center provider manages the facility environment that keeps the equipment running reliably.
In a colocation environment, servers and network equipment from multiple businesses are housed within the same data center facility. These servers are “co-located” in shared infrastructure, but each customer typically uses its own dedicated rack, cabinet, cage or suite, depending on the level of space and security required. This allows businesses to benefit from enterprise-grade infrastructure without carrying the full cost and complexity of maintaining their own data center building.
Colocation is especially useful for businesses that need the performance and control of private servers but do not want to manage power systems, cooling equipment, fire protection, physical access control and network connectivity on their own. The provider maintains the facility, while the customer remains responsible for its own servers, applications and data unless additional managed services are included in the agreement.
A colocation data center commonly provides:
| Facility Component | What It Means for Businesses |
|---|---|
| Rack or cabinet space | A secure area to install servers, storage devices and network hardware. |
| Power supply | Reliable electricity, often supported by backup power systems. |
| Cooling system | Temperature-controlled environments to protect servers from overheating. |
| Physical security | Access controls, monitoring and facility protection for hosted equipment. |
| Bandwidth and connectivity | Network access through internet service providers, carriers or private connections. |
| Remote hands support | On-site technical support for basic hardware checks, cabling or troubleshooting when required. |
Colocation can also support wider IT infrastructure strategies. For example, a company may deploy equipment across several colocation data centers in different locations to improve redundancy, reduce latency, serve users in multiple regions and create a stronger geographic footprint.
This makes colocation a practical option for businesses that need scalability, resilience and connectivity, but still want direct control over their own physical hardware.
What is the difference between a Data Center and Colocation?
A data center is a facility that is designed and built to efficiently store, power, cool, and connect the IT infrastructure whereas colocation is one of many services offered by the data center and is the act of hosting IT hardware like private servers or managed VPS outside the company premises and in a data center.
What are data center tiers or data center levels?
Four different data center levels or data center tiers are as below:
Tier 1 Data Center
Tier 1 Data Center (Basic capacity) is the lowest-rated tier which is a little more than putting a stack of servers in the office closet and can be resourceful as free VPS or Cheap VPS
Tier 2 Data Center
Tier 2 Data Center (Redundant capacity components) offering Tier-1 services, with few additions in handling any redundancy impacts.
Tier 3 Data Center
Tier 3 Data Center (Comprehensive redundancy) is capacitated to handle far more superior redundancy protections that are preferred by most SMBs as part of their affordable VPS selection.
Tier 4 Data Center
Tier 4 Data Center (Fault-tolerant) security marks the highest standard for data centers and is utilized by businesses requiring reliability, sustainable services in the managed VPS, and an affordable VPS environment.
- Tier I: 99.671% uptime; maximum downtime of 28.8 hours per year
- Tier II: 99.741% uptime; maximum downtime of 22.7 hours per year
- Tier III: 99.982% uptime; maximum downtime of 1.6 hours per year
- Tier IV: 99.995% uptime; maximum downtime of 0.4 hours per year
Related article: Which tier (1,2,3,4) is Right for Your Business
How do businesses benefit from Colocation Data Center Hosting?
1. Reliability
Colocation facilities offer private server management essentials like cooling systems, power and communication systems, power backup, and disaster recovery plans, with multiple backups to ensure uninterrupted service setup.
2. Performance
Necessary measures to keep the private server’s deployment locations in desired-temperature controls, manage the necessary monitoring and controls to maintain optimal performance handling any kind of downtime triggers that could impact the services of managed VPS.
3. Physical Security
A data center is designed to protect the private VPS or managed VPS systems from theft and other risks that impact the security of information systems and enforce stringent measures for securing data such as video monitoring, private suites, fire detection, and suppression systems and mantraps.
4. Uptime
Server uptime is a big advantage that the businesses experience by going for any of the data center tiers without an additional maintenance cost, and reliable services of managed VPS.
5. Risk management
Choosing a colocation data center facility ensures business continuity planning, disaster recovery planning, and backup systems management scope over the managed VPS networks.
Predominantly such wide scope of risk management is possible within an affordable VPS environment.
6. Cost
One of the main advantages of the colocation data center is the significant cost savings against an in-house private server.
Huge IT infrastructure costs attributing to capital investments into the systems environment can be avoided in managed VPS environments as colocation centers.
7. Bandwidth
The colocation data center manages superior levels of bandwidth, which enables a seamless flow of data processing and connectivity to the systems hosted in the managed VPS environment.
Affordable VPS is feasible in colocation data centers, due to its relative structure of combined infrastructure.
8. Support & certifications
The colocation data center operates in compliance with global standards for IT systems management.
Periodical assessment and audit of the data centers ensure checks and balances on how the managed VPS or affordable VPS environment is complying with the global standards.
9. Scalability
Ease of using the infrastructure as private or shared or limited and occupying limited space for IT in the business premises is the significant value additions in private servers hosted in colocation datacenters.
10. Competent Management Maintenance
A data center is always managed by professionals handling a diverse range of activities integral to handling sustainable quality of services over the managed VPS environment, thus offering affordable VPS or cheap VPS with assured quality and competitive pricing.
11. Speed
The colocation data center offers cost-effective connections to multiple internet service providers and provides top performance in the event of connection interruption or overload.
12. Better Connectivity
A data center has fully redundant network connections to ensure that your business-critical applications always run uninterrupted, in compliance with the service level agreements with clients for managed VPS or affordable VPS services offered.
13 Premium Network Security
A data center comes with a robust systems security infrastructure covering distinct aspects like physical security, network security, comprehensive systems for threat assessment and elimination, and firewalls to detect and prevent unauthorized access to your systems over the private servers or managed VPS.
The colocation data center offers businesses an alternative to housing data in-house.
Is your business limited on space but you need a robust IT infrastructure? Does your business require to trim on the IT staff to reduce the cost of operations?
Colocation helps you with maintenance and keeping the data secure with secure data storage, IT infrastructure dependability, better connectivity, and capability for private servers by managed VPS services of colocation data centers.
Here, to know more about the benefits of using colocation services? Connect with Exabytes now to learn more and host your company servers at our colocation data center to experience hassle-free, safe management of your server.
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