What do you utilize your COLO for? What defined a use for your environment?
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Just wanted to see what everyone is using their COLOs for and what made your company move to use a COLO?
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Response time, geographic distance, customer reviews (while antidotal can be useful), cost.
There are multiple factors and while any one of them may be what gets you to colocate your services its a conversation. Not just one thing. At least in most cases.
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That's priceless... lol
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We use Colocation America. We moved to them from a Canadian facility with 3z. 3z was great, if you are okay with Canadian hosting and being limited to one city (but multiple facilities) they are unbeatable. Great prices, great people, top end datacenters.
But being in Canada wasn't ideal for a US company. We moved to ColoAmerica and it's been great. Their pricing is very similar but we don't have to ship equipment across the tax border with Canada, which costs a fortune. And they have facilities all over the US.
We use them for nearly all of our workloads. We have a large lab facility in there, plus our email, chat and similar is hosted there.
Lab use is what pushed us as an MSP to be in colo, we need a capacity that would be unaffordable on a cloud. And hardware flexibility.
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Don't forget that there are primarily 2 different types of colocations.
- Ones that you can go in a put your own equipment in how you want
- Ones that you send your equipment to and they do all the physical lifting for you.
Our company utilizes the first one. We rent out a full 42U rack and the colocation provides us with power and networking. We have to specify ISP, WAN connections, etc.
We choose it for resiliency from physical threats, such as fire, weather, physical security, etc. Our colocation is in North Dallas while both plants are 30 miles+ from it and each other. My plant is in South Dallas and the other plant is on the other side of Fort Worth.
What determines your need for a colocation is what risks you are mitigating with the use of the colocation.
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@nerdydad said in What do you utilize your COLO for? What defined a use for your environment?:
Don't forget that there are primarily 2 different types of colocations.
- Ones that you can go in a put your own equipment in how you want - consumer
- Ones that you send your equipment to and they do all the physical lifting for you. - enterprise
The heavy lifting is bench work. Even the biggest enterprises don't do that themselves. Not in their colo.
Unless you are renting out whole rooms, it's really not something you do as a business practice. There are colos that do that, and it's normally super entry level facilities you don't want to be in, and can't trust, because allowing you in there allows you around other people's gear, too.
The ability to visit, is other peoples' ability to visit.
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@dustinb3403 said in What do you utilize your COLO for? What defined a use for your environment?:
i dig the negative color scheme;
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@wrcombs yeah its nice, helps save the eyes.
The new post box is still white background with black text. But meh, can win em all.
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@scottalanmiller Each rack is locked up and only the tenant and the owner can enter the rack.
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@nerdydad said in What do you utilize your COLO for? What defined a use for your environment?:
@scottalanmiller Each rack is locked up and only the tenant and the owner can enter the rack.
Still, you can get at them. It's silly and risky. What's the upside to doing your own bench work, off site. Over having bench professionals who are on site and ready to handle things immediately?
And you are asking third party people to deal with the security of other third party people. It's just a lot of risk, but what is the benefit?
