Collocation services

SenseiSteve

HD Moderator
Staff member
Collocation Services

With collocation, the client has to purchase one or more servers, and then rack them in a data center themselves or hire someone else to do that for them. The server is theirs, so if a hard drive, RAM or motherboard fails, the replacement is their responsibility.

Most collocation providers offer hands on services at a cost, but it’s best to keep spare parts, in particular, on-site, because there’s no guarantee that the collocation provider has parts on hand that match your server.

I've run across some data centers that have no storage facilities for client's spare parts, or even worse ... only one crash cart and no techs onsite (just on call). I am curious what you think is the absolute minimum you would expect of a collocation provider?
 
I've run across some data centers that have no storage facilities for client's spare parts, or even worse ... only one crash cart and no techs onsite

Eeekkkkk.. That's a concern. As we all know, it's not IF a computer will fail but rather WHEN the computer fails.

Having to wait for a tech in a center is already bad enough, having to wait for someone to leave their house, face traffic and then work on your equipment - that's a lot of downtime.. easily 1 hour PLUS.

Without the ability to store extra drives, and extra memory, I'd be really concerned. We used to have to keep an extra server, then hotswap the drives and patch the cable for fastest response. That should be the absolute minimum in terms of recovery.

No ability to have it on site, may as well just abandon colocation and utilize the machines the center has, or offload to cloud based with Amazon, Google, IBM etc (IBM's cloud took a dive yesterday/today but I had to throw them in there :) )
 
I have to have at least one tech on site and I have some spare parts in a drawer that I provided in the cabinet. I also have a couple of spare servers and everything is backed up locally on backup servers. I can recover if any one server fails. I also provided a KVM over ip and a couple of multiboot USB drives with a few different operating systems I can boot from and install the OS. The tech is there most of the time to simply connect the KVM and the USB drive. I have on occasion asked them to replace a hard drive. I have never had memory go bad and I will not let them open the case.
 
Collocation Services
I've run across some data centers that have no storage facilities for client's spare parts

Most of our clients that require spare parts put a drawer in their cabinet and keep a few spare parts in there. Are you referring to a separate area such as a locker for storage outside of the cabinet?
 
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