Housing a server on your own premises is an expensive undertaking. That’s why many organisations are achieving cost savings by moving their servers to a trusted vendor’s facility. This allows you to maintain control over your data without having to worry about expenses like power distribution and cooling systems.
How does colocation work?
With our colocation service, you simply transfer your equipment into our data centre and we provide the supporting infrastructure. This includes hardware upkeep, rack space, cooling, physical security and more. Using one of our data centres removes the need for your business to commit money, resources and building capacity into housing your infrastructure on your own premises.
How much does server colocation cost?
When evaluating colocation pricing models across suppliers, it’s important to ensure equivalent services are compared. Different businesses have different needs, and these can impact colocation cost parametres.
Superficially, the cost of colocation seems to be one of the most straightforward elements of your IT expenditure. You need a known number of racks, and a known amount of power, to house your servers. These requirements should be fixed and unchanging over the length of your contract term. Any additional set-up fee to initially install your equipment in the racks can be amortised over the contract term. The result should be a constant, predictable, monthly bill for your colocation services.
The factors that determine a colocation fee
When you are comparing colocation services, there are considerations aside from price that you should take into account. Housing a server safely and securely, for instance, requires capital and operating expenses beyond the simple cost of rack capacity. Your monthly colocation bill may not list these items specifically. It is, therefore, important to understand what is available beyond a simple rack and fixed power feed.
Here are a just handful of the colocation services included in our fee:
Security
Your IT equipment needs to be physically secure. Our data centres offer premium security with multiple levels of access controls. We also provide internal and external CCTV, steel perimeter fencing preventing access, and visitors escorted by our staff. Our ISO 27001 accreditation for IT security covers all of our data centres and we can meet your compliance requirements, such as those needed for PCI-DSS.
Reliability
Our data centres include multiple levels of equipment redundancy to ensure that services continue, even in the case of a component failure. In the crucial matter of power supply, for example, we have multiple banks of UPS systems to supply your servers with power in the event of a mains outage. Our dedicated on-site diesel generators take the load in case of a longer-term outage. Within Pulsant’s server colocation costs, you are paying for a level of reliability that most organisations cannot achieve on their own premises.
Connectivity
Isolated servers are of little use. You need your colocated equipment to be connected to the outside world. We offer fast, high-capacity, reliable connectivity to the Internet. Additionally, we offer a range of network carriers at each of our data centres to provide connectivity options.
Maintenance
Our data centres are wholly-owned by us and staffed by our own expert engineers. Because we own and manage the entire environment, all the way down to the basic components, this provides us with clear visibility of any issue affecting your colocated servers. In turn, vastly increasing the speed of diagnosis and resolution of issues.
Support
We offer “remote hands” services, where our engineers act on your behalf in carrying out essential maintenance, repairs, or upgrades to your colocated equipment. This means that, in many cases, you can avoid sending your own engineers or employing a third party to make costly visits to our data centre. You can also arrange to visit the site and carry out your own maintenance.
Look beyond cost per kW
The key cost advantage of colocation is that we house multiple customers within each data centre, allowing us to spread the cost of maintaining all of the above. That means we are able to offer high service levels at a reduced overall operational cost.
As your IT needs grow, your Pulsant data centre footprint can scale accordingly. This is without the up-front capital expense you would need to expand an on-premise server room.
Therefore, when you are looking at colocation pricing comparisons, look beyond the cost of square feet and kilowatt hours. Instead, look at the total service you are receiving. Pulsant offers you the right level of reliability, connectivity, security, and support at a competitive price.