WHAT IS COLOCATION?

Our specialised expertise in Colocation services has played a pivotal role in assisting numerous organisations, aligning seamlessly with your specific requirements. Colocation involves relocating your servers to a data centre physically. Redcentric boasts over three decades of experience in managing cutting-edge UK data centres. With an impeccable record, we have never experienced a power outage, and our commitment ensures a 99.999% network uptime across our 8 UK data centres.

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What is a colocation data centre?

Data centres constitute the nucleus of the contemporary technology industry. Neglecting to leverage the efficiency and emerging technologies they provide may result in your business lagging behind in terms of IT services.

Colocation presents enterprises with the chance to utilise third-party data centres, yet several factors must be carefully considered to determine its suitability for your company. In this article, we’ve outlined what colocation services are, the benefits of colocation solutions, and the ways our data centres can help improve business processes and efficiency.

What are managed colocation services?

Every business relies on servers to operate their computer services, and these servers require a connection to the internet. Maintaining servers in a dedicated server room within your office presents several challenges:

Colocation involves the relocation of your servers and other IT equipment to a third-party data centre. This is cost-effective (and notably less challenging) alternative to constructing your own data centre, offering a myriad of additional benefits. Embracing colocation effectively addresses these challenges while enhancing resilience and security.

The key benefits of colocation services

There are a series of compelling reasons to consider adopting colocation solutions, including:

1.       Create room to grow

Your in-house servers take up a lot of expensive office space (especially in London). Moving your IT equipment into a colocation data centre will not only give you more office space (and therefore help you save costs) but if you DO have to move, you don’t have to worry about migrating your servers again.

2.     Power supply redundancies

Colocation data centres use UPSs (Uninterruptible Power Supply) and generators to protect equipment from power failure, which guarantees your IT systems keep running and prevents any damage a power failure could cause.

3.     Your IT infrastructure can grow

If you need to expand your IT equipment beyond the space you have in your office, this could stifle your ability to operationally grow the business. Once you move to managed colocation rack space in a data centre, you’ll never have to worry about finding more room – and you can scale resources up and down with ease.

Learn more about calculating how much server space you’ll need.

4.    Connectivity options

In a world of hybrid-working, running essential computer systems off your standard office broadband is a recipe for disaster for your remote workers. Internet connectivity in a data centre we be a significant upgrade, as they operate ultra-fast, carrier-neutral, and highly resilient fibre networks.

5.    Peace of mind

Tier 3 colocation data centres deploy sophisticated ‘concurrently maintainable’ (i.e. highly resilient) power, cooling, and internet connectivity systems. What this means is you don’t need to worry about an outage if one component (i.e. an air-con unit) fails, as there are multiple redundancy systems in place to pick up the slack.

6.    Efficient Cooling Systems

It may not come as too much of a surprise, but lots of servers means a lot of heat; and cooling them can be very expensive. Colocation data centres run a lot more efficiently than traditional air conditioning units, which keeps costs down.

7.     Lower costs

There are a number of ways in which a managed colocation data centre can save you money, including, importantly, their efficiency, which help to reduce energy-related costs. They’ll give you more flexibility around your internet speeds and billing, as well as protecting you from costly downtime.

8.    Enabling AI and VFX

The use of HPC (high-performance computing) for things like AI and VFX has grown significantly recently. However, HPC set-ups require extensive infrastructure to run, so for most companies, the only way to use them is by utilising a specialist HPC colocation data centre like our Gatwick site.

9.    24-hour monitoring & remote hands

With round-the-clock monitoring and a remote hands service, colocation in a data centre means someone will be able to quickly fix an issue no matter what time of day or night it happens. This reduces downtime and saves your engineers a lot of time and effort.

10. Eco-friendly data centre solution

While data centres use a lot of electricity, this doesn’t mean that they are bad for the environment. The energy used by a data centre is considerably less than what would be required to run the same number of servers using in-house systems in individual offices; so, managed colocation solutions offer an opportunity to increase your sustainability.

Our data centres feature multiple server racks, with clients renting as many colocation racks as needed for their equipment. Additionally, some colocation data centres incorporate eco-friendly cooling systems that leverage evaporation to reduce energy consumption. Even though data centres use a lot of energy, they are still the future of green technology. Discover more about Redcentric’s green credentials.

11.    Resilient infrastructure

One of the most significant benefits of colocation solutions is its substantial reduction in downtime, attributed to exceptional levels of resiliency.

Data centres deliver their internet services in a carrier-neutral manner, ensuring connections with various internet providers. In the event of a network failure, the data centre can seamlessly switch to alternative providers. Moreover, the physical network cables exiting the data centre follow geographically diverse routes, mitigating risks such as construction work disrupting internet connections.

Data centres are fortified with Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) and generators to maintain server power in the event of a primary failure. UPSs act as large-scale batteries, sustaining power until the generators take over.

12.  Securing your data

Implementing the necessary security measures for specific data can pose challenges and expenses within your own office environment. In contrast, data centres inherently incorporate robust physical security measures.

At Redcentric we provide:

Discover more about Redcentric’s cyber security services.

Is colocation a cost-effective investment?

Opting for colocation services in a data centre presents a valuable opportunity for cost savings within your business. The pricing of managed colocation is contingent on several factors, including:

  1. Amount of Space: Data centre racks are typically measured by height, denoted as ‘U.’ These racks come in various sizes, such as quarter racks (11U), half racks (22U), and full racks (ranging from 42 to 48U). Utilise our calculator to determine the appropriate rack size for your needs.
  2. Level of SLA (Service Level Agreement): Data centres offering comprehensive SLAs on system uptime generally entail higher costs. It’s essential to assess the acceptable downtime for your operations. Additional features like 24-hour access and remote hands may contribute to higher costs at premium data centres.
  3. Power Requirements: Data centres charge based on energy consumption, given the significant costs associated with power. Typically, a full rack consumes up to 24 amps of power, considered normal power density. Higher power density, exceeding this threshold, incurs additional costs due to increased energy requirements (both for running and cooling servers).
  4. Location: The geographical location of the data centre is a key factor. Facilities in major cities or capital cities tend to be 30-40% more expensive than those in non-metro areas. However, data centres outside urban centres offer unique advantages

Interested in receiving a quote for colocation?

How can you utilise data centres for high-performance computing (HPC)?

Given the power and cooling requirements demanded by high performance computing, the most straightforward approach for businesses might be in an HPC-ready colocation data centre. In such a facility, storage space is abundant, and the environment is finely tuned to meet the specific needs of HPC.

Unlike traditional, medium-density CPU storage, which typically requires a power deployment of around 3 to 7 kW per rack, HPC clusters of CPU and GPU cores demand a significantly higher power draw, ranging from 20 to 40 kW per rack. This substantial increase in heat load necessitates specialist cooling.

At Redcentric, we provide colocation immersion cooling, which is an exceptionally efficient method involving the submersion of servers in liquid. We also have rear-door cooling to suit whatever your HPC needs are.

Read our supporting blogs to find out more about HPC:

Colocation vs cloud data storage

When embarking on digital transformation, specifically transitioning from on-premises servers to a managed infrastructure service, the primary options to consider are colocation vs cloud.

The fundamental distinction between colocation and cloud, both hosted in a data centre, lies in server ownership. In colocation, you retain ownership of your servers, whereas with the cloud, your provider assumes responsibility for all hardware. While neither approach is inherently superior, the choice may hinge on the following factors:

Cloud repatriation

Due to cloud’s ability to rapidly scale, and no need for capital investment, it’s where a lot of businesses start with their IT. However, it can grow unsuitable over time for several reasons including:

When this happens, the best option is to repatriate systems off the cloud. Managed colocation is incredibly valuable here, since you don’t need to start housing your IT yourself, and you still retain an excellent level of resiliency.

Adopting a hybrid IT model that combines colocation and cloud

Modern digital technology continues to advance rapidly. Fortunately, the choice between colocation vs cloud computing is not an either-or decision; instead, you have the option to integrate additional platforms into your colocation strategy to meet all your requirements.

This approach, known as hybrid-IT, embraces a workload-first methodology for managing your IT, allowing different applications to be hosted on diverse platforms without compromising on performance or capabilities.

Hybrid-IT represents an integrated IT system where various platforms, such as colocation, private cloud, public cloud, etc., seamlessly combine into a unified system.

Colocation offers exceptional resiliency, reliability, and the added security of storing data on your dedicated hardware. For organisations handling highly sensitive or proprietary data, colocation becomes an indispensable component of their IT strategy. However, when combined with the flexibility and expandability of the cloud, a hybrid-IT system emerges as the optimal solution, offering the best of both worlds, offering the best of both worlds.

How to choose a data centre

Colocation opens the door for businesses of any size to leverage the capabilities of a data centre. There are various hosting options for your IT system, and while there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, integrating colocation services into your strategy can enhance IT reliability and security while reducing costs.

Capitalising on a data centre’s infrastructure while retaining ownership of your hardware brings a diverse range of benefits. To determine if managed colocation services align with your digital transformation strategy, assess your capacity and specific needs, and seamlessly incorporate colocation solutions into your plan.

If you are considering colocation, whether exclusively or as part of a hybrid IT approach, you’ll need to start comparing data centres to see which offers the best colocation. You can use our data centre checklist for the 22 essentials your colo facility should have, to check through and make sure the data centre you’re looking at has everything it should.

You also need to decide which tier of data centre would be best. Data centres tiers range from tier 1 (least resilient) to tier 4 (most resilient) – the most common in the UK is tier 3, which strikes a strong balance between resilience and cost.

We have 8 data centres across the UK. If we’re a good match for you, then please get in touch with one of our experts for advice and a bespoke quote.

 

redcentric

Redcentric

0800 983 2522 sayhello@redcentricplc.com