Businesses are having a tough time in the rapidly developing world of information and technology. Survival in the cut throat competitive business world needs them to look for ways to improve their services. One way of doing this is to buy space from the large corporations that have their infrastructure on the internet and place their servers in the racks of the big business houses. Corporations have the space and IT teams to manage and support the site. The small and medium businesses buy these services and this system of sharing the platform and making use of all the resources without much investment is called colocation server hosting. The client has to decide on which option among managed and unmanaged would be a viable.
Managed Colocation Service:
The colocation server hosting provider owns a dedicated server with certain prefigured configurations that has some specified applications on it which they sell to the customers. The service provider also takes the burden of providing software updates to any of the applications that have been given and provides support and maintenance covering any reboots, hardware issues and backups. By availing this option the SMBs do not have to invest on the infrastructure and can manage without employing any technically qualified staff. The hindrance to the client comes when they are in need of some software applications that are not supported by the provider.
Unmanaged Colocation:
Unmanaged colocation system is useful in cases as mentioned above. Here customers can bring in their own hardware and manage it on their own using the rack space of the colocation server hosting provider. The latter can put in restrictions and limitations to the hosting on their servers like disallowing pornographic content, bulk mails and other things that create traffic congestion. The client will need to invest on IT qualified professionals to manage the software and hardware.
Though the expenses involved with colocation server hosting are mainly for the server space and bandwidth, the client may have to be prepared for some additional expenses that may be required for maintenance of the server.
The Colocation Server Hosting Provider may Charge for
Remote Reboot: When the server is in a remote location and cannot be rebooted the client will need will need the services of the service support number or request for a remote power port management screen
Remote hands: Services of technical personnel on any hardware or software issues if requested by client.
Other charges may be applied if the customer wants backup to mail server, more IP addresses or additional domains, back up for server backups and firewalls to maintain security and privacy.
Another option that many SMBs are availing of is the VPS Server Hosting platform. Here a single physical server is split as virtual private servers and offered to the clients in different plan options based on limited space, RAM and bandwidth. The client is allowed to use any software that is compatible to the VPS. The client gets all the facilities extended to the dedicated server but pays much smaller fees.