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Colocated Webhosting

1. Rackspace

With colocation you are often charged according to how much rack space you will need. This is usually measured in U's with a 1U being one unit and a 4 U being 4 units. A 1U is a standard size that all rackmountable computers can fit in. If you wish to utilize a standard mini tower sized computer you could need anywhere from 2u to 4u. The rack space fee often makes it more economical long term to purchase a computer or two made in special rack mount cases unless you need a larger minitower case for loads of diskdrives or to house something exotic. If you can utilize a whole rack of 48U then you can usually get a much better deal on rackspace and it is not as big of a factor as to rather you use desktops or rackmountable computers.

2. Bandwidth Amounts and Providers

Bandwidth is either billed according to how much you use; 10 gig of 100 gig or you are charged a set amount for access to a certain amount of fixed bandwidth; a set pipe 128k or 256k for example. It is more cost effective for hosts for you to utilize a a certain pipe say 256K so they know how much you will have access to. If you pay for just a certain amount of bandwidth a host will have to have more than enough fixed larger pipes to cover the fact that web traffic is not steady and a site may require access to X size pipe in the early hours of the morning and have a much greater need later in the evening. A host has to have bandwidth just sitting around not being used to provide a certain amount of gigs a month for their clients. While with a fixed pipe the host just connects your computer to a fixed pipe and has no other worries and can calculate their profits with ease.

3. IP Availability

Ip's are needed for each site you plan to host with its own IP. It is possible to do name based hosting where one Ip is used for many websites. But for certain secure server features and for other reasons you might need or want Ip's for many sites rather than using name based hosting. One to five Ip's are often bundled with a colocation offer, but if you want more they might cost you $1 a month each or have to be bought in groups of five or more more depending on how a host prices them.

4. Your Name Servers Vs Your Hosts

Most colocation plans allow you to use the hosts DNS servers for your sites. You can always set up your own DNS as part of your dedicated server but that requires just a bit more technical knowledge. The advantage of setting it up yourself is that you can add, edit, or delete domains and the ips they use any time all the time. If you are going to rely on your hosts DNS servers you will be relying on their systems and reliability in updating your DNS records. This method should be automatic and even if you do run your own DNS server you probably will be using your host as a secondary backup DNS server unless you plan to have another server to act as your secondary DNS.

5. Speed and Reliability of Host

With colocated hosting and even dedicated hosting you don't have as many concerns as far as speed and reliability that you would have with virtual hosting. The popularity of other sites and their share of system resources is not a factor with dedicated hosting as it is with virtual hosting. Only your sites are on your dedicated machine after all. Your machine should be capable of doing certain things and this will not change so you don't have to worry about using too much of a server's CPU to as large of a degree as you would with virtual hosting. However you need to be certain that your host is reliable and not going to shut down operations anytime soon. Also you need to be certain that if your machine's bandwidth is provided in set gigs per month that the host has enough available bandwidth to accomodate you easily. If your machine is hooked up to a dedicated pipe then your data transfer potential will always be guaranteed. Your host also should not be a haven for Spammers or your ability to use yourdomain.com email may be severely limited due to other ISP's blocking email from your hosts servers including yours. If your are using unmanaged hosting then you will be responsible for securing your server which you would not be responsible for under virtual hosting. So the burden of security is on you unless you use managed hosting.

6. Control Panels

With a colocated server you can opt to install any control panel you want to ease administration of your server and the sites on it. But often webhosts through bulk buying can provide them cheaper to you or perhaps for free. Usually a webhost bundles some sort of control panel with their colocation customers. Popular control panels that are often bundled include Plesk, Cpanel, and Ensim. If you have a control panel preference it might be cheaper to go with a host that provides it for their colocation customers as part of their standard hosting packages.

7. Tape Backups of your Data

Virtual hosts usually perform tape backups of everyone's data on their machiens, but coloaction and dedicated server customers are usually not provided this service. It can often be purchased for an extra monthly amount usually about $50 to $100 a month. If you wish your host to have a copy of your site that can be utilized in the event of a hardware failure this is something you might should consider. You should be backing up your site's data at home as well.

8. Managed vs Non Managed Hosting and Level of Technical Support

Most dedicated servers or colocation offers are unmanaged. That means you will be maintaining the security of the machine and keeping up on patches and software installs. In the event of a problem; hacker attempt, Denial of Service Attack, or Operating system error you will be responsible for fixing it. With Managed hosting your host would take care of such things for you. People who use unmanaged deciated servers usually have greater technical knowledge than those who use unmanaged dedicated servers. The lowest end unmanaged dedicated servers run $100 to $200 a month while managed servers could run $300 to $500 or more a month often with less bandwidth than unmanaged servers have as well. There are companies that can manage your server for you outside of your host as well if you wish to go that route as well .

9: Adult Vs Non Adult Hosting

Some webhosts do not allow adult content at all on their dedicated servers or their colocated servers. This usually has less to do with morality and more to do with the fact that adult sites are infamous for using email spam and for charging clients credit cards more than they agreed to for a given adult service or site. Such things can bring down the reputation of an entire webhost, draw them into legal matters, and make it more likely that domain based email from the host may be blocked by ISP's. Also adult hosts tend to use a higher amount of bandwith than non adult sites. This is an issue if a colocation plan provides X amount of bandwidth as the host really does not want everyone using an amount that approaches X amount of bandwidth. If you plan to host adult sites on a server you should read the terms of service of the webhost and make sure they allow adult content.

10. Computer Hardware Problems and Power

Other things to consider include power and technical support. Most colocation offers factor in the power that your computer or computers will use, but some charge you by the Amp. This is especially true if you plan on utilizing a whole rack of 48U or more. If there is a problem with your computer it is nice to know that your hosting company can fix the situation as quickly as possible. Since your computer is set up to your specifications rather than the hosts this can be a problem. If your server fails your host might have to wait on you to send parts and they will charge you heavily. If your server fails and your host does not have a spare hardrive to your specifications or a CPU fan or some other part that fails on your server then your only recourse may be to use one of their dedicated servers until your machine can get back online. To alleviate this risk you could send an extra server if you only need one and have the extra one hooked up not utilizing bandwidth but in such a way that it could be if the other one fails.

Estimated Colocation Expenses

Summing Up

Colocation allows for large amounts of RAM, faster hardrives, and overall more custom designed powerful computers than dedicated hosting.

There are a few real reasons why the average small time potential dedicated server customer would choose colocation. First most of the cheaper dedicater server hosting packages do not offer high performance SCSI hardrives, or RAID to allow for hardrive redundancy. Also there aren't as many dedicated server offers with lots of RAM or dual CPU, or perhaps simply large hardrives. If you want performance above and beyond the standard dedicated server offers of most hosts you might have to send your own equipment via colocating.