Is it good to co-locate hosting servers with an ISP, if so could someone please tell me the pros and cons of it?

If you have an easy physical access to your server, 24/7, then it's actually much better to colocate than to rent a dedicated server. If not, then it's your cons ...

Collocation is great if you're not quite ready for your own data center but perfectly ready to take on all of the responsibilities of your own hardware and software.

Many of the cons of common collocation can be prevented by locating your servers in a data center that is close to you and that permits you 24/7 full access to your servers.

Pros include the ability to do what you want with what you choose in the hardware/software areas while sharing the high costs of rolling out a data center with others.

Cons are much the same as they are with anything just a level up. You are still dependant on the owners of the data center and their choices. Their decisions can change quickly at times and they do not usually take you into consideration when they change.

The pros and cons of collocation vs dedicated is much like the pros and cons of dedicated vs shared hosting.

Your freedoms increase proportionality with your responsibilities.

I've just started recently looking into colocation services in different parts of the country and find it almost frustrating looking at prices and things like that. It's pretty easy to see how the Laws of Overselling come into effect when you compare a company that can provide a ded. server to you and can provide you with some rack real estate.

One thing that I'm paying close attention to is the support/reboot features that each colocation provider provides. Theres really no way for me to be able to physically locate myself near the datacenters, so you have to put a lot of trust into the people that you're sending your box to.

I like the idea of being able to send either your little POS in the corner or a rigged up dual proc. box and its the same cost.

Anyway, I guess I need to post something useful. Bandwidth expenses is a con in a weird sort of way. If you find a company that can provide you with 300GB of bandwidth on a server and compare that to the prices of 300GB of colocation, it's usually cheaper to get the server included. If you really use that much bandwidth, you are getting it cheaper than you would if you had it colocated and you can argue that it's what you pay for with your ded. package.

If you find something useful above, let me know (cause I can't). :D

Originally posted by WebmastTroy
Bandwidth expenses is a con in a weird sort of way. If you find a company that can provide you with 300GB of bandwidth on a server and compare that to the prices of 300GB of colocation, it's usually cheaper to get the server included. If you really use that much bandwidth, you are getting it cheaper than you would if you had it colocated and you can argue that it's what you pay for with your ded. package.


I started looking around at this option (colocating) and found the same thing. Granted I have not done a full examine of all the colocation hosts but it seemed that colocating was more expensive than renting a unmanaged dedicated server in most, if not all, cases. I suppose if you had a much better server you wanted to colocate or your server had better software (that's a judgment call for each individual) putting your server in would be better, but for a small number of plain jane servers it doesn't seem that colocation is worth the money.