Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Colocation and Data Centers : Some basic questions

[Papipo]

Excuse my ignorance, and my english...

What is co-location? Is it the same as Housing? Which differences does it have with a dedicated server?

Thx

[salad]

With colo you own and admin the server.
Dedicated servers are rented, administration is included with 'fully managed servers' and it is not included with self-managed or semi-managed servers.

[Joseph_M]

Colocation is when you sent a server that you bought separately to a datacentre.
The datacentre provides power, space in one of their racks, and access to their high-speed lines.
So you pay the datacentre for rackspace and bandwidth, instead of having the additional server rental each month.

[Papipo]

You can buy those servers directly to the colocation company?
What about backups, redundancy, load balancing, HA, etc?
How much does it cost, usually?
And, can I choose wich Os to install?

I'm developing a shared hosting enviroment like lycos, f2s, etc... with free accounting and so on. Additionaly there will be domain registration and hosting services (under payment, of course ).

What do you suggest to me?
Is a colocation environment what I need? I think that LMDS is too much expensive in my country

[Joseph_M]

Typically you can't buy the server from the colocation company, as that then defeats the point of colocation.
You have to pay extra for backups, redundancy, load balancing, and any extra power that your server needs.

You can choose which O/S to install, however if it is insecure then the colocation company may decide to pull the plug on your server and send it back to you.
It normally costs around $30 / month per U of rackspace, and then it depends on the type and amount of bandwidth you want on that cost.

Rackspace is measured in Us or units. You need to buy a specialist server case to be able to put it into their racks, as well as enough cooling to satisfy their requirements.

You normally have to buy bandwidth on a /mbit commitment which means upwards of $125/mbit/month.

You're also responsible for the hardware, so if a hard drive fails, or the processor/RAM fails then you have to replace it with your own money (or ship it out to them), then pay them a remote hands fee to install it into your system.

To be honest you'd be better off going with a dedicated server company, as your startup costs will be much lower, and if the hardware fails its their responsibility NOT yours. Also they have the large commitments with ISPs and so you don't have to pay the high prices associated with colocation.

[Xenos]

Colocation companies will usually build a server for you, but it is not cost effective to do that. It is a good idea to colo if you need special server configurations for backups and load balancing. Colocation is normally more expensive than dedicated servers unless you require half a rack or more. You can choose any OS you want although you would need to pay for licensing (ie Windows) and to have it installed. Overall, it depends on how many servers you need.