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Introduction to Server Co-Location
Server co-location web hosting has become an effective solution for the low to mid end hosts in recent years as the demand for bandwidth and reliable connectivity have exploded. With more and more businesses realizing the potential of an international market (via the World Wide Web and, of course, the Internet), the opportunities in delivering new, safe and reliable services are created. In order to capture this, host providers must be able to provide customers with efficient services at high speeds and also be able to support a broad number of users simultaneously.
But most importantly, what is Co-location? Co-location can be defined as out sourcing the storage and facilitation of both hardware and software outside business or personal premises. This is maybe due to security reasons, connectivity limits or simply a cost factor. To gain access to high speed connections and the installation cost associated with it can be very high since addition hardware, for instance, digital telephone circuit and routers are required in most cases. The bottom line is that it is out of reach for most providers who hope to deliver high speed services eg web hosting. This is where co-location (and dedicated hosting) comes in. Depending on the requirements, most hosts can become service providers with only a few hundreds dollars - compared with a thousand or more for leased high speed lines which often have year long contracts as well.
The advantages of co-location are you are not sharing server resources with other sites. This gives you the control to ensure your content is quickly delivered to your clients. Its also has the advantage that if you want to use particular components to manage or customize your site such as a database, or application modules.
If your site is very large in terms of disk space and has a high traffic throughput it may be more economical to have your own server.
You may also consider having a managed server; this is when the hosting company run the server on your behalf. This has some disadvantages as you may be limited by the components that they support so may defeat the object of having your own server. Other firms effectively lease the machine which may be more flexible. But if you do not have the technical in house expertise to set up and run your own server this can be a good option.
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