Best Colocation Hosting Reviewed
Colocation Hosting Introduction
Colocation hosting service means we rent a server rack from datacenter providers and place our own server there. We pay the renting fee for server rack as well as the bandwidth. Once the server is ready, the service company then provides an IP, bandwidth, and power to your server. Once it's up and running, we just use it like a regular hosting server. The difference is we own the hardware and know about the detailed configurations.
Colocation Hosting Pros and Cons
The advantages are easy to point out with this service. Because we setup the server hardwares completely by our own, we know clearly what we can do with this server and how to optimize with our specific requirements. As long as we're professional enough in server management, we can almost ensure 100% uptime! We can make changes to the server any time in need without having to wait for hosting support. Also, colocation server comes with higher bandwidth speeds and better redundancy for network connections. Means if we have pretty high requirements to online app, colocation server simply provides us the best solution.
So everything is good to colocation hosting? Definitely not. The weakness is mainly by comparing with the standard hosting solutions in the business. Colocation hosting is a costly solution. We need to pay the entire server fee as well as server rack renting fee, other fees such as bandwidth etc are also high. Another weakness is not every hosting company offers such service and actually very few providers do. Especially when you have to send your server to a far away datacenter, there're many uncertain issues to deal with.
Colocation vs Dedicated server
Absolutely, colocation hosting is very similar to dedicated server hosting except we don't own the actual hardware but just renting. However there're many difference with the two services. The dedicated server solution is completely handled by hosting providers and we just use it after paying. Comparing to colocation solution, we saved the money for server purchasing and post fees, we just leave all the work to hosting company. Althoug we don't have the ownership over that server, it's definitely a more affordable solution. The colocation hosting server would be ideal choice if we have very strict requirements for data security and would like to keep everything in hand, the weakness is we have to pay more.
How do we think about colocation hosting? Absolutely, it's not good choice for personal or small business to use such level solution. But if we would like to get full control over the hosting server and make custom configurations at any time, colocation would be the best choice. It really depends your web requirements and financial abilities if to go with this solution or not.
Top Colocation Hosting Providers
There're not so many datacenter providers offering colocation hosting because it's an expensive service comparing to all existing hosting solutions. Actually, the main users with this service are some starter hosts in web hosting industry. They have both financial and technical abilities to build multiple servers and do colocation for them, they can also get some kind discount because of their "bulk buyer" role. Anyway, if you look for colocation hosting providers. The following names probably the best choice to check out
Rackspace – One of the most well know server providers who has leading technologies and business on the globe.
He.net – Another big name for world wide hosting service
Servercentral – Datacenter providers for many hosting companies.
BurstNET – Budget service provider for various hosting solutions including vps/dedi.
DataFoundry.Com – Founded in 1994, Data Foundry is one of the first 50 ISPs in the United States. Their data centers were designed to meet the requirements of High Performance Computing.
