What is CoLocation and how customers use their CoLocation

benefits of colocation

Datanet Full Rack 47U

At Datanet we have a variety of customers who use CoLocation services to their advantage in many different ways. CoLocation is all about housing your critical IT equipment in a resilient data centre with diverse power, cooling and connectivity together with knowledgeable, helpful staff on hand 24×7. In this post we take a look at some of the uses of CoLocation implemented by several of our customers, along with case studies, to highlight a few of the many positive advantages of offsite CoLocation.

Colocation to provide Managed I.T Services CASE STUDY

The most common use and example of CoLocation is that of the customer providing managed I.T. services who requires as little as 1U or more often a ⅓ rack (one-third rack of 14U) or all the way up to their own 47U full rack. They take CoLocation to house their IT hardware with which they provide their customers or staff with a resilient and secure suite of IT services which they deliver from Datanet’s data centre. Datanet’s tier3+ data centre, with multiple onsite generators, UPS systems, cooling systems and resilient Internet connection, guarantees 99.999% uptime and they rely on this guarantee to give their customers or end users an always-on service and availability of their applications and services at all times.

Colocation to provide Hosting for legacy hardware Case Study

There are many examples of hardware and applications that just don’t transition to or lend themselves to Public Cloud services. Graphics rendering, high performance computing (HPC) and HyperConverged Infrastructure (HCI) computing are just a few of the many examples. Here the customer or end user needs unusually high compute or storage or power requirements or the application just simply needs to live on dedicated hardware that just isn’t suitable for Public Cloud.

benefits of colocation ⅓ rack

Datanet ⅓ Rack 14U

Colocation to provide Managed I.T Services from the cloud CASE STUDY

Another good example is the customer who offers managed Cloud services. They take CoLocation to provide their customers with a resilient and secure suite of cloud services, this is private or hybrid cloud that you could take from one of the big public cloud providers but you don’t want to be dependant or tied into their inflexible and often very expensive model, plus you may have some legacy applications that just don’t work in public cloud and you need “the edge connect” flexibility provided by the Datanet data centre where you can mix cloud and legacy hardware and applications.

Colocation as part of your Business Continuity Plan CASE STUDY

One of our customers, operating from central London, uses our CoLocation as part of their business continuity plan which requires them to house their critical DR servers in a secure offsite location outside of London. The offsite hardware needs to be close enough for them to get to quickly if needs be and Datanet’s London Edge data centre is ideally situated to this end. They also backup all their data to Datanet’s Dell EqualLogic  storage arrays and in the event of a loss of infrastructure in London they can come to the Datanet offices to restore all their valuable data onto the hardware which is housed in a rack in the data centre i.e. CoLocation. The added advantage that Datanet has is that we also offer customer suites that are available to our customers.

Colocation as a Proof of Concept (PoC) Laboratory. Case Study

Another of our business customers takes a significant amount of rack space to provide their Proof of Concept (PoC) laboratory services. They perform testing of various applications and hardware for their large International Telecommunications customers before releasing it into a live environment. CoLocation within our Data Centre allows them to simulate a global live environment on which they can fully test these applications, software and hardware ensuring that they are delivering a finished product that will work as expected when rolled out into the real world.

 

co-location_managed_services

Your ⅓ Rack full of your servers, that’s CoLocation

So, as you can see, just from looking at a few examples of our CoLocation customers we have highlighted a variety of uses for CoLocation which can benefit businesses and give you a choice, you don’t have to go to the big Public Cloud providers.

Whether it is used as part of your Business Continuity Plan, to offer managed I.T. services from the cloud for your own customers or to set up a proof of concept lab to perform testing, CoLocation is a fundamental building block for these and many more business propositions.

Datanet CoLocation not only offers space, power, cooling, connectivity and security but also availability of your data and services and high bandwidth but we are very flexible and accommodating.  You also have the peace of mind that on-site expert engineers are available when you need them.

 

Datanet has been providing customers with  CoLocation, Hosting & Connectivity solutions for 25+ years.  You too can benefit from the highest levels of resilience provided by our Tier 3+ London Edge Data Centre ensuring plentiful POWER, COOLING, CONNECTIVITY and SECURITY.

Contact one of our team on 01252 810010  to find out how your business could benefit from a CoLocation solution

Get a quote

* Required field

Call our team today on 01252 810010 to find out more about how we can help you