What is Server Colocation?

In server colocation, the server remains with the clients but it is stored, managed, and controlled by the Managed Service Provider (MSP) or cloud service provider. Modern data centers are typically extensive facilities that house many servers while also providing storage and access to multiple businesses. The global market for server colocation is growing at such a rate that it will nearly double between 2022 and 2025.

Server colocation is similar to dedicated server hosting. In a dedicated server hosting, the server is hosted by a Managed Service Provider (MSP) facility or a data center. However, in server colocation, the server is provided by the customer as the customer’s organization retains the ownership of the server.

One of the most significant advantages of server colocation is reduced costs. Because the client organization does not have to invest in and maintain power backup equipment, it saves a considerable amount of money. Server colocation also enables the client organization to take advantage of an optimal data center environment that is highly scalable to meet the client’s business demands.

What are Server Colocation services?

Data centers that offer server colocation are set up to provide organizations with safe access to private servers. Standard colocation services include leasing server cabinets and cages, which are secured and inaccessible to other colocation clients. Connecting the ISP network and physical IT infrastructure, as well as server status monitoring, are additional services.

The backbone of any corporate network is its servers. Businesses have always had to make considerable hardware investments to implement, operate, and maintain servers that support operations. From email to document storage and everything in between, this hardware powers the company’s everyday operations.

In addition to the direct costs of owning and operating servers, a company faces a host of additional costs. Electric bills to power and cool servers, rent related to the servers’ physical space, equipment maintenance, and IT staff time are just a few examples.

What are the benefits of Server Colocation?

• Cost-Effective: Server colocation can save your business money in terms of running costs and lost productivity from your IT team. The services provider bears the financial cost of maintaining the hardware (and supporting infrastructure), securing the servers with software, and providing physical structures to house the equipment. As a result, your company has more financial flexibility to concentrate on its core operations.With UnitedLayer, you can deploy and manage your existing hardware in our premier Tier-3+ data center facility while still maintaining the level of access, control, and security of a data center that resides entirely on your premises. With our colocation solutions, you can eliminate the hassle and cost of running your own data center while setting yourself up for a future in the cloud.

• Greater Uptime & Security: Compared to having servers in the office, server colocation provides your company with the potential for greater uptime and data security. Because your colocation servers include quality backups and power redundancy, you can be confident that your data will be protected in the event of a data center power outage. To prevent server downtime, many server colocation providers employ load balancers. This means that if one server fails, the network traffic load is distributed across the remaining servers. Your critical services and programs remain operational during this process even if a server fails. In the event of a power outage at your site, your servers will remain operational at the data center.
  UnitedLayer offers a Tier-3+ data center with superior outage protection to avoid any unplanned downtimes. With a 100% uptime guarantee, greater than N+1 architecture for uninterrupted power and cooling, our N+2 redundant chiller configuration and redundant water sources ensure consistent temperatures are maintained throughout our facilities.

• Professional Technical Support: Server colocation provides your company with access to experienced technical support. If you ever have a problem with your servers, an IT professional is always on hand to assist you. These professionals maintain and monitor equipment, respond to employee inquiries, and intervene if a severe problem arises. With UnitedLayer you get a greater level of service and accountability. From master electricians to network engineers, we maintain a diversified and talented team. Our Managed Services are backed by onsite support 24/7/365 and are hosted in SSAE 18 certified data centers.

About Unitedlayer

UnitedLayer provides the Colocation services from one of the largest data centers in San Francisco, USA, at 200 Paul Ave. Our long list of managed services enables enterprises to modernize their infrastructure and improve their responsiveness, resource utilization, scalability, and agility resulting in better customer experience and faster time to market.

With more than two decades of experience and a pool of experts in leading technologies – we enable enterprises, SMB’s, government agencies, and start-ups to reap the maximum benefits from their multicloud investments.

Discover server colocation opportunities for your business by contacting our specialists by clicking here.

What does ‘server colocation’ mean?

The process of hosting an organization’s computing, storage, networking, and security hardware in a purpose-built data center owned and maintained by a partner is known as “server colocation.”

The server remains the client’s property, but it is maintained, managed, and monitored by the MSP(Managed Service Provider) or cloud service provider in server colocation. The primary objective of server colocation is to take advantage of improved IT support services on critical IT infrastructure/servers without incurring high operational costs.

Using a data center eliminates the requirement for your company to invest money and resources in server storage on its premises. You place your existing equipment in pre-built racks, and the data center takes care of the rest. 

The Impact of Single Server Colocation for Small Businesses

Safeguarding your data is one of many responsibilities that come with operating a small business. Single server colocation is the ideal option to protect your data if your company only has one or a few servers that house it. As the name “server colocation” implies, a single server is a single physical server kept in a data center on a rack alongside several other servers belonging to various corporations and individuals.

Our company, UnitedLayer, delivers value to small businesses along with the reliability of 100% uptime of services. We provide several flexibility options, including on-demand scalability in server colocation, so that a client can start with our most basic plan and expand as their business grows.

Read more about server colocation by clicking here.

Why Use Single Server Colocation?

There are numerous advantages of using single server colocation or a small number of servers owned by a company. While a business can run its server, the services provided by a data center are unrivaled. A data center will not only save you money by eliminating hidden expenditures, but it will also offer you the necessary infrastructure, backup power, synchronous internet, regular maintenance, security, IT professionals, and space for your company to grow.

• Uptime: Data centers ensure a 100% uptime for your small business by monitoring and managing power, cooling, and internet connections. Finding a reputable data center such as UnitedLayer with a proven track record of reliability is vital to saving your company’s bottom line.
• Security: Physical and cyber-threats can endanger your small business and its server. In the event of a fire, flood, or theft, colocating your single server to a data center secures it away from your core location. Single servers are kept in lockable server racks with limited access to those who can open them and are monitored by external and internal CCTV cameras 24/7/365.
• Cost: Every company, especially a small one, strives to reduce costs and increase profit margins. You’ll be able to focus and use your important time doing what you do best if you leave Server hosting and  management to the professionals.
• Growth: Expansion of your own data center might be expensive as your company grows. To house more servers, you’ll need to employ a contractor, purchase additional space, or construct space in your existing building. Not only that, but if you add extra security and power, your cost sheets will skyrocket.

When a company uses a colocation solution, it saves money on growth expenses. Data centers are designed to hold a large number of servers at once. Therefore there is plenty of capacity for your organization to expand and thrive.

About UnitedLayer

UnitedLayer provides highly secure and redundant server colocation services with 100% uptime availability from one of the largest data centers in San Francisco, USA, at 200 Paul Ave. We also have cloud connectivity with all the major public cloud providers through 300+ carrier network providers. Our long list of managed services enables enterprises to modernize their infrastructure and improve their responsiveness, resource utilization, scalability, and agility resulting in better customer experience and faster time to market.

Is your business in need of managed server colocation services? By creating custom plans and quotes, we will work with you to give the best colocation solution. 

Please call us at +1-888-853-7733 with your colocation needs so that we can find the best solution for you.

1. LOCATION: For several reasons, location is one of the most important factors to consider when selecting a colocation data center. The first thing to consider is how easy it is for someone from your company to get to the physical location. It is an essential consideration if you ever need to upgrade or service your equipment (think about how costly having equipment down for an extended period of time could be). You should also consider how vulnerable the area is to natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and tornadoes.

Although the colocation data center provider considered these factors when developing the facility, taking extra precautions with your critical infrastructure never hurts.

UnitedLayer’s 200 Paul colocation data center is the only data center in San Francisco that is built on bedrock with Zone 4 construction and is not in a 500-year flood plain.

UnitedLayer has over 40,000 square feet of fully redundant colocation data center space, which is not in the earthquake fault, liquefaction, or landslide zone for the next 100-year and is seismically rated for protection against earthquakes.

2. FLEXIBILITY AND EXPANSION CAPABILITY (SCALABILITY): As stated in the previous section, you want your provider to be able to meet your needs now and for the next several years. Having said that, different colocation data center providers provide different levels of flexibility. Some will offer out-of-the-box solutions that may or may not meet your requirements. On the other hand, other providers will provide more customized solutions (flexibility) in addition to the more standard offerings.

Find out if there is any additional space, power, or connectivity available. Choose a provider that can scale with you over time rather than one that can’t.

UnitedLayer’s DR solutions are highly customizable, where customers can build specific Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) according to their business requirements. With on-demand scalability, you can add additional resources to meet the increased replication needs, this helps in reducing cost and improving business flexibility. UnitedLayer’s DR solutions are highly secure and

3. RELIABILITY: When selecting a colocation data center or colo provider, reliability is crucial. In the world of colocation data centers, reliability is measured as uptime. A reliable provider should have five 9s uptime, which means they are reliable at least 99.999% of the time.

UnitedLayer has guaranteed availability of 99.999% with High-availability N+2 Clusters. Other things to look for are staff certifications, customer feedback, and on-site support (vs. outsourced).

4. DEPLOYMENT EFFICIENCY: The physical characteristics of a data environment are an essential aspect of optimizing data centers. Poor server deployment may introduce latency into network systems, mainly if a facility uses sloppy, unstructured cabling. If servers are unable to vent heat effectively, the wrong deployment may result in higher cooling costs. Workloads may not be adequately distributed across computing resources, resulting in multiple servers running well below capacity but consuming the same amount of power as servers running heavier workloads.

How quickly do you need your infrastructure to be operational? How soon do you anticipate requiring a new cross-connect or additional rack space in the future? Most businesses want to get their new space up and running as quickly as possible.

Deployment efficiency can be difficult to quantify into a specific stat or number, so make sure your potential vendors communicate timelines clearly to you.

5. NETWORK ECOSYSTEM: The ability to interconnect within a shared colocation data center space is one of the most significant benefits of colocation. Interconnection can be highly beneficial to your business, whether you want to connect with partners, distributors, or even competitors for peering. Learn about the available connectivity options before making a decision. Is the facility carrier-neutral? Do they already have a large ecosystem of customers who are connected?

With over 300+ carriers at our interconnection facilities and direct access to over 3000 carriers, UnitedLayer has extremely low latency connections to all clouds, enterprise colocation data centers, and edge locations.

Choose a colocation data center solutions partner, not just a colocation data center facility

Moving to a colocation facility can help you reduce CAPEX while giving you access to cutting-edge colocation data center technologies. You can also rapidly evolve by utilizing managed services, greater power density, and the hybrid cloud. Choosing a colocation data center provider who will work with you to scale your IT over time is essential.

UnitedLayer provides colocation data center services from one of the largest data centers in San Francisco, USA, at 200 Paul Ave. Our long list of managed services enables enterprises to modernize their infrastructure and improve their responsiveness, resource utilization, scalability, and agility resulting in better customer experience and faster time to market.

Got questions? Want to talk specifics? That’s what we’re here for.

What is colocation?

A colocation center facility is a space that is typically leased by a corporation to store or install servers and other hardware. Colocation data centers normally provide electricity, construction, cooling, bandwidth, and physical protection, while the customer supplies storage and servers.

Colocation Managed Services:

Colocation managed services include system administration, physical hardware assistance, proactive response monitoring, server backups, and network equipment management to standard data center colocation services. You benefit from these managed services by maximizing the value of your existing hardware investments and remaining on a CAPEX model while receiving full support from 24/7/365 expert IT teams in world-class data centers.

The types of managed services offered by UnitedLayer are explained below:

1. Remote Hands: Remote hands is a service that allows colocation data center employees to execute several on-site services for their customers. The data center managed services offered as part of a remote hands vary by provider. Still, data center employees can generally perform IT tasks, including installing new equipment, replacing a failing drive, inspecting equipment status, and even power cycling a server.

Managed Services like remote hands offered by UnitedLayer will give you access to a team of highly trained, in-house, certified technicians available 24x7x365 and can monitor servers remotely through a single pane of glass known as UnityOneCloud.

Explore UnitedLayer’s Remote Hands service here.

2. Smart Hands: Smart Hands managed services include more complex tasks that require someone to be physically present in the colocation site to complete. A few examples are setting up a firewall, managing data center equipment, media and supply management, complex cable configurations, equipment testing, and general troubleshooting.

Smart Hands managed services provided by UnitedLayer allow its customers exclusive onsite technical assistance and troubleshooting services along with hardware installation and decommissioning services, fiber circuit installation to reduce signal errors, device management for remote device configuration, etc.

3. Infrastructure Management: DCIM (Data Center Infrastructure Management) software allows data center operators to execute more efficient operations and better data center infrastructure planning and design. DCIM software can connect information across organizational domains such as Data Center Ops, Facilities, and IT to maximize data center usage.

UnitedLayer’s infrastructure management services help organizations maximize the benefits of a multicloud environment without compromising on availability, performance, and security. Our managed services cover on-premises data centers, UnitedLayer private cloud, and leading public clouds such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Read more: Top Trends That Will Impact Infrastructure Management in 2021.

4. Network Management: Network management is a process of administering, managing, and operating a data network using a network management system. Modern network management systems collect and analyze data regularly and push out configuration changes to improve performance, reliability, and security.

UnitedLayer provides setup and management of network devices like switches and firewall load balancers, including the configuration of these devices to adapt to workloads, security patching, monitoring, alerting, and 24x7x365 support across the globe for every customer.

5. Container Management: A container is a lightweight package that bundles a single application and dependencies, making it easier to develop, deploy, and manage applications in complex IT systems.

Container management is a process of automating container creation, deployment, and scaling. Container management allows for the large-scale addition, replacement, and organization of containers.

UnitedLayer offers configuring, managing, and deployment of containers to enable the deployment of cloud-native applications seamlessly. It includes the setup, installation, and patching of Kubernetes (K8s) pods and containers, monitoring, and performance optimization.

6. IT Estate Assessment: IT Estate management is often known as IT inventory management. It typically involves gathering detailed hardware and software inventory information, which is then utilized to make purchasing and asset use decisions.

Managed Services like IT estate management offered by UnitedLayer will provide you with end-to-end data center assessment of hardware’s end of life (EOL), end of support (EOS), servers, routers, console managers, etc. We also provide IT assets assessments to efficiently migrate to the new data center or a new cloud. This ensures that mission-critical systems can continue to run optimally.

Explore UnitedLayer’s IT Estate Assessment services by clicking here.

7. Database Management: A vast amount of data is generated every second through a wide network of data sources — images, graphs, hypertext, documents, and so on. When legacy systems cannot handle the enormity of data management, databases such as Mysql, which are more agile and up-to-date, come into play. They can handle complex data management needs and provide a variety of database options for different needs and data types.

Database management also refers to the management of Oracle database, SQL database, Mysql database, PostgreSQL database, etc.

Managed Services like database management offered by UnitedLayer enables businesses to reduce data redundancy and improve data integrity and security. Our database experts have the expertise, precision, and updated know-how in database designing, management, and monitoring.

8. Disaster Recovery Solutions: Data Center Disaster Recovery is the process of resuming business operations after an unanticipated event that damages or destroys data, software, or hardware systems.

Most professional businesses use data backup and restore services to secure business-critical data as an integral part of their data center disaster recovery plan. Large professional companies frequently devote a significant percentage of their money to data center disaster recovery plans to avoid potentially crippling revenue losses caused by the inability to conduct operations in the aftermath of a disaster.

UnitedLayer’s disaster recovery managed services solution enables enterprises to be resilient and respond to these critical situations faster and allows them to operate their business without any interruptions.

Learn more about our Disaster recovery solutions here.

9. Cloud Migration: Cloud migration is when a company moves some or all of its data center capabilities to the cloud, usually to run on a cloud service provider’s cloud-based infrastructure.

UnitedLayer’s cloud migration managed services can seamlessly migrate your applications, data, and infrastructure to the cloud. Our experts can help you build your migration strategy, assess your application portfolio, review your cost structure, and identify the best-fit cloud platform for your needs.

10. Cloud Connectivity: Cloud networking is a type of IT infrastructure in which a company’s network capabilities and resources are hosted in a public or private cloud platform, managed in-house or by a service provider, and made available on demand.

Companies can establish a private cloud network using on-premises cloud networking resources, or use public cloud networking services, or a hybrid cloud combination of both.

UnitedConnect® is an advanced interconnection solution to connect your on-premises environment with a private cloud or public cloud (AWS, Microsoft Azure, or GCP) of your choice. Our cloud connectivity solution helps you to reduce your network costs, increase bandwidth throughput, and provide a more consistent network experience than Internet-based connections.

Learn more about UnitedConnect® by clicking here.

11. Data Privacy Management: Data Privacy Management allows enterprises to analyze and continually measure data privacy compliance with multifactor risk scoring, data access, and movement monitoring. Automate risk remediation and cost-effectively report on data subject requests with transparency by automating data protection.

Managed services like data privacy management offered by UnitedLayer will help you comply with data sovereignty and data protection laws applicable to your business in any market globally, including the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Explore UnitedLayer’s Data privacy management here.

12. Security & Compliance: Security as a service (SECaaS) is an outsourced service in which your security is handled and managed by a third party.

Security as a service solutions have grown increasingly popular for corporate infrastructures to ease the in-house security team’s responsibilities, scale security needs as the organization grows, and avoid the costs and maintenance of on-premise alternatives.

Managed services like Security as a Service offered by UnitedLayer will enable you to proactively identify, respond to, and mitigate any security threats against your IT infrastructure. Our comprehensive security management services cater to your on-prem or colocation data centers, managed private cloud, and leading public clouds such as Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Why choose UnitedLayer?

When properly executed, managed services may be highly beneficial to a company, giving them peace of mind that their servers follow the proper procedures to reduce the risk of downtime or data loss to as low as possible. Managed colocation allows you to choose which services and procedures you want to outsource and which you want to keep in-house.

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