I have been shopping around and looking for a new data center for a few machines but none of the data centers in my immediate area peaked my interest. The data center that I am leaning towards is on the other side of the country (affordablecolo.com in Houston, TX). Other than having physical access to the servers in the data center, is their any other reason why it would be a bad idea to host my machines in a data center so far away? If the data center has reliable techs that I can pay to do reboots and all that other stuff, do I need physical access?

I've heard nothing about good things about affordablecolo.com I am from Canada and I too and forced to go with a data center outside the US. I think if you have remote access and remote boot then there really isn't a difference. I mean even if your server was near you, you wouldn't drive to it to boot it. You would get a techie to do it or get a remote boot. So you have to ask yourself, what's the difference. Besides the quality in the US is so much better to.

It can help to have a server in the same city as your customers.

For example, we have a customer who's customers are all in the same city. His server was in another state and his customers were having slow response times. He moved the server into his own state and the server appeared faster to his customers and he was the hero!

I would say you should pick a place where your server is going to be very responsive for your cusotmers (and also a place that you feel comfortable dealing with and has all the necessary tools to provide a great product and service)

Hope that helps!

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26755

As long as the data center in question has a good network and fast connectivity, location doesn't really matter.