What to Expect From Your Managed Colocation Provider
The initial concern that IT managers have when looking to move from an in-house data closet or data center to a professionally managed colocation facility is the loss of I uk data centre mmediate physical access to the servers. Moving from an in-house data center where employees can look at the status lights and reboot their servers on the spot, to a colocation hosting facility where the control is over the Internet, is sometimes hard to imagine.
With the proper tools and services from your managed colocation provider, it becomes much easier than you think to manage your servers in a colocation facility. In fact, with the right tools, you can colocate your servers half way across the country and manage them as if they were just next door.
Managed colocation simplifies the move to a professional data center by addressing four critical areas of server management:
Initial set-up and deployment
24×7 access and control of your servers
24×7 proactive monitoring of your entire infrastructure
Full time server management and engineering support
Let’s look at each of these 4 managed colocation services:
- Initial Set-up and Deployment should be as simple as shipping your servers to the data center.
For a simple fixed fee, a managed colocation provider can:
Design and layout the rack
Receive and unpack the hardware
Record and label the assets and serial numbers
Professional assemble and mount servers in the racks
Provide power and network cables