What would make it so you switched to colocation instead of whatever you are using now?
Interested in things like price, bandwidth, specs, etc..

What would make you say wow, I'm dropping my ______ (current hosting solution) and I'm going with colocation instead?

All comments welcome..
Thanks,
raqworld

Bandwidth being sold at $1 a Gb with only $2 a GB overage charges

if you wanted more control over your own server , and price is higher but cheaper in the long run , if you plan on doing virtual hosting you can make your money back ,

Equity, owning your own hardware.

What about current hosts or resellers or web designers or whatever?
What would make you switch to colo from your current solution?

raqworld

Originally posted by Raqworld
What about current hosts or resellers or web designers or whatever?
What would make you switch to colo from your current solution?

raqworld


For me to switch any of my servers, I'd need great support, good pricing, and damn good DC uptime.... I would only go with a proven host, I can't risk new options that could fail....

To be frank it isnt easy for International people to colo, Most of the packages get lost on the way, especially if they are servers or other expensive stuff (A laptop I ordered last month using Global express >GUARANTEED< from USPS still hasnt arrived)

then again if there was good pricing, reliability and good customer support (Important), it would make me think of switching.

I would colocate if I lived in the central US, lived within 5 mintutes of the data center, and had 24/7 access to my servers. Oh, and if the monthly rent made it worth it to switch from dedicated.

Keep the comments coming..

As for international customers, I would have to agree that unfortunately colo would be a pretty major decision unless it was local to where you are or in your country..

Also, I understand why you would want physical access to your machine, but if you didn't live near the colo facility, would you NOT choose them because of that? Even though staff would be able to handle requests you may have? If you would NOT choose them, why not? Especially compared to dedicated servers where you don't have access to the machine..

Interesting comments so far..
raqworld

I'm not a webhost or anything similar, but if I was going to consider colocating a server I would want:

1. Reliability of service. Something along the lines of rackspace's "no more than 24 seconds per month of downtime", with an SLA to back it up. This applies to both network and power, of course, and it would have to be general -- blaming an upstream ISP's off-property router just wouldn't do.
2. A fast network. I'd like to see the "95th percentile below 50% capacity" rule applied strictly, with MRTG graphs to back it up.
3. Fair pricing. By this I mean that your pricelist should bear some resemblance to your costs. One GB of traffic shouldn't cost twice as much as another just because the other was bought in advance rather than being "over-usage".
4. A well-stocked supply of hardware, with online information about what you have stocked. If a hard drive fails on a colocated machine, you don't want to ship it across the country to fix it, nor do you want to ship a hard drive across the country to replace it. You'd like to phone up your colocation provider and tell them to replace the failed drive with one out of their stock... and you'd like to know, before you send the servers over in the first place, what hardware they will have so that you can build the servers out of replaceable parts.
5. Techs who can *follow orders*. Understanding unix, or computer hardware, might be useful but people colocating servers should know enough for themselves... what techs are there for is to do stuff which can't be done remotely -- like "remove the drive labeled #4, and replace it with a new X15".

Excellent comments.
This is what I'm looking for.

Keep 'em coming..
raqworld

Originally posted by Raqworld
Also, I understand why you would want physical access to your machine, but if you didn't live near the colo facility, would you NOT choose them because of that? Even though staff would be able to handle requests you may have? If you would NOT choose them, why not? Especially compared to dedicated servers where you don't have access to the machine..

With dedicated, you don't need access to the machine, because hardware maintenance is included. The amount you pay for dedicated is bound to be way less than the amount you would have to pay if you had colocated and required the techs there to correct the problem at $150/hour or whatever they would charge. And I doubt that they could fix it as fast as I could, anyway (which is one downside with emergency support for dedicated right now).