What Is Colocation?

What Is Colocation?

When it comes to the hosting for your business there are many options you may wish to consider and weighing up the pros and cons of these really depends on the individual needs of your business. In this blog, we’re going to take a closer look at colocation.

When we talk about colocation, what we’re referring to is an agreement in which a company purchases all of their own hardware, but rather than hosting the infrastructure in their own premises, they opt to rent space in a data centre. The hardware is installed in the data centre and managed remotely. Click here to read a case study of a company who has benefited from our Colocation service, and even installed a point to point leased line between their own premises and our data centre.

Colocation is different to managed hosting, where you are essentially renting hardware that ultimately still belongs to the hosting company. Many companies opt to buy and own their hardware outright, perhaps for security reasons, perhaps also for the freedom to choose specific makes and models of hardware, that may not have otherwise been offered by a hosting company.

So, if you’re going to buy your own hardware, why wouldn’t you just save on the colocation fees and keep it in your own office? Well, many companies do indeed keep their own hardware on site, and some are able to do this quite successfully. However, the truth is the majority of companies do not have the means, the space, or the correct environmental conditions to house their hardware in the most efficient and secure way.

No two hosting companies will have a completely identical service and infrastructure when it comes to their colocation services, and so for the benefit of this next section we’ll look at some of the most important features that CWCS offer their colocation customers as a specific example.

Network

To ensure business continuity you need to have multiple network providers, this is called a multi-homed network. This will ensure that should a providers connection fail, your connection can failover to another line, giving you the uptime required to run business critical systems.  CWCS is multi-homed using multiple Tier 1 providers.  DDoS attacks are also becoming more and more frequent. Managing and mitigating such attacks on premise, is a very costly and time-consuming task, at CWCS we provide upstream DDoS mitigation as standard.

24/7/365 Monitoring and Restricted Access

The data centres and hardware at CWCS are monitored 24/7/365, with electronic and NFC door systems that can only be used and accessed by authorised personnel. To achieve the same level of monitoring on site, most companies would need to employ specialist technical night staff, and, as well as the cost of those extra salaries, would also incur extra utility costs keeping their premises open and operational overnight. We also have CCTV surveillance in operation throughout the premises both interior and exterior.

Lockable Racks

As a measure of physical security to your hardware, our racks are all lockable and only accessible to those authorised to do so.

ISO 27001/9001 Certification and PCI DSS Compliant

For all of our certifications we have independent audits on a regular basis so you can have the peace of mind that we keep your information secure. We are level one PCI DSS certified and we are ISO 9001 proving our commitment to quality in everything we do.

STULZ Air Conditioning

STULZ are a leading solution provider of temperature and humidity management technology. Put simply, because we have such control over the temperature of our data centres, we are able to keep your hardware running at it’s most optimal and efficient level.

N+2 Riello UPS Redundant Power Supply

Our battery backup system and diesel power generators mean that in the event of a power failure, our systems automatically switch to a self-sufficient power supply without affecting the service and connectivity to our customers.

Therefore, you can see how data centres are a preferable location for your hardware simply due to the fact that they are specifically designed to house and protect it. They provide better connectivity, superior network security, redundant power supplies and greater bandwidth. Another benefit of colocation is that if you need to expand your infrastructure and add more hardware to fit the needs of your business, you can do this easily without needing a bigger premises or costly infrastructure upgrades.

If you would like to learn more about colocation at CWCS, please click here, or get in touch with a CWCS hosting specialist today.