Colocation Cost: Save money and advance uptime with Colocation Services.

View PDF | Print View
by: TonySalvati
Total views: 32
Word Count: 381
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2011 Time: 5:13 PM
0 comments

Lets take a look at some of the reasons why.

Bandwidth
Assuming you are operating your servers within your office environment with a fiber network, your cost for good quality fiber access will be in excess to $1,000 /month. Also keep in mind that the $1,000 cost is assuming you are using only one fiber network feed - thus, no redundancy.

Cooling
Enterprises who have their infrastructure internally have very little to no quality mechanical systems designed to cool their information technology infrastructure. Typically, an enterprise has a make shift solution to solve the immediate need of keeping their environment quasi-cool using low end commercial / industrial setups. Proper computer room cooling systems almost never exist in in-house setups.

Power
In house computer rooms typically utilize UPS systems for power conditioning and uptime gaurantees. UPS' are great for power conditioning and short power failures from the street, but are not designed to run for durations in excess of 5 minutes. For a truely redundant system to ensure maximum uptime, you want a series of generators available to power your infrastructure in the event of power failure. Very rare do we find an enterprise client which operates their information infrastructure internally having a generator sub-system in-house. Lets not forget, that there are still no levels of redundancy in most in-house systems. The ideal environment is to have two separate power power feeds from two diverse power subsets (ups and generator) fueling your infrastructure. When the lights go out, you want to make sure your systems stay on-line.

Your Internal Cost
So how do you calculate what you are spending today to run your infrastructure in-house ? Add up your cost of fiber + cost of power and other soft costs (ie. maintenance on your systems, etc.) and see what the number works out to. As a rule of thumb, it is fair to estimate $2,000 /month / cabinet in a low-density type infrastructure (ie. non-blade environment).

Colocation Pricing
Typically outsourcing your infrastructure to a colocation facility will cut your costs down by 50%. Utilizing a data center facility, you will reap the benefits of economies of scale of these facilities. What will cost you $2000 internally, will cost you approximately $1000 at a wholesale data center facility.

About the Author

Tony Salvati is an IT professional which has been involved in the IT industry for over 20 years. He currently works with organizations seeking Toronto Colocation services. He currently oversees marketing of a Canada Data Center facility.