Colocation

Colocation for hyperscale infrastructures

Certus Alliance is a collective dedicated to environmentally friendly results. Together with our partners, Certus promises end-users that our collective IT infrastructure is deployed in an efficient and environmentally friendly manner.

Certus provides secure and sustainable data center services, with cloud- and carrier-neutral data centers in Europe and the US. Certus is home to growing data systems of customers around interconnection and hybrid cloud, operating at the edge of the Internet and providing access to public clouds. Certus enables global and local customers to build their IT infrastructure for growth, creating value for customers and partners alike.

WHAT IS COLOCATION?

Colocation (also known as ‘co-location’ or ‘colo’) is the practice of housing privately-owned servers and networking equipment in a third party data centre.

Instead of keeping servers in-house, in offices or at a private data centre, companies can choose to ‘co-locate’ their equipment by renting space in a colocation centre.

Therefore, unlike other kinds of hosting, where customers can rent space on a server owned by a hosting provider, with colocation the customer already owns the server and rents the required physical space to house it within a data centre.

HOW IT WORKS

A colocation provider will rent out space in a data centre in which customers can install their equipment, but will also provide the power, bandwidth, IP address and cooling systems that the customer will require in order to successfully deploy their server.

Futhermore, colocation providers deliver much more stringent levels of security, including security guards and even biometric access control. Resilience is another key feature, with data centres providing backups and UPS devices to protect against outages, including those caused by natural disaster, fire or flooding.

Space is rented out in terms of ‘racks’ and ‘cabinets’. A rack is a standardised frame for mounting equipment and hardware, usually horizontally.

BENEFITS

ECONOMIES OF SCALE

Colocation allows customers to benefit from economies of scale that would not be available to them with an in-house option. Housing hardware in a colocation centre gives access to higher levels of bandwidth at a low cost.

LOW NETWORK LATENCY

Network latency can be far lower with colocation, whilst reliability can be significantly higher. There is greater protection from power outages and 24/7 staff on hand should problems arise.

PHYSICAL SECURITY

Customers may also choose colocation services due to higher levels of physical security available in comparison with in-house hosting. For example, there are options such as CCTV monitoring and lockable (or ‘closed’) cabinets.

FLEXIBILITY

Choosing a bespoke build allows customers to personalise their colocation plan and decide which aspects of their system they want to focus on, choosing from a range of facilities for individual infrastructures and budgets.

DATA CENTRE INFRASTRUCTURE

Colocation allows users to take advantage of data centre infrastructure while maintaining control over the upkeep, maintenance and configuration of their servers, freeing up office space and improving cost effectiveness.

DISASTER RECOVERY & BUSINESS CONTINUITY

By placing servers in a data centre rather than in an on-premises comms room, customers build in an extra layer of disaster recovery in the event of power loss, enabling them to recover business critical data.