A Colocation service offers many benefits for a startup company versus internal hosting. Besides the well known benefits of uptime and reliability, colocation offers a substantial cost savings. Building a in-house tier 3 or tier 4 type data center (learn more about data center tiers here), can cost thousands of dollars. By utilizing a colocation service, start up companies can save money by utilizing just a portion of a qualified data center’s rack space, power, air conditioning and Internet bandwidth. Assuming your startup company is considering a colocation service, lets now look at some of the more important things to consider when picking a colocation solution.
What is the Best Data Center Location?
In our humble opinion, you should first look at a data center colocation facility within a one hour commute time from your IT person’s office or place of residence. Most colocation providers offer rack space, power and bandwidth. They manage those compenents and it is your responsibility to manage your network gear. When problems arise with a server or internal switch, it is your responsibility to fix it! Being able to quickly get to the data center to troubleshoot problems is a key factor when trying to eliminate website and application downtime. There is nothing worse than being stuck in traffic or 3 hours away from your servers when your are having server issues and upper management is calling you looking for a status update.
Where can you Find the Best Colocation Pricing?
Unfortunately, many top US cities don’t offer attractive startup colocation pricing. Startups looking for per U colocation pricing in East Coast cities such as Boston and New York can expect to pay two or three times more when compared to some of their West Coast counterparts in Los Angeles or Seattle. To learn more about colocation price options in the US, check out our colocation pricing page. If you have the flexibility to ship your server(s) to another location, it might make sense. Many qualified colocation providers offer “rack and stack’ and remote hands services for no additional fees. Server diganois work is usually charged at an hourly rate plus materials. If you go this route, make sure your new colocation provider is competent with your specific type of server gear – If you colocate Dell Servers make sure your new colocation provider is an authorized Dell shop. Texas, Miami and Virginia offer some of the most attractive colocation pricing for startups looking to save money on monthly colocation hosting fees.
The above are just a few things startup companies should consider when selecting a colocation vendor. To learn about more, please check out our free “10 Tips Whitepaper.”