Denver-Colocation.com

Denver-Colocation.com is your resource for understanding server colocation and all services available with server colocation.

What is server colocation?

Server colocation is provided by a hosting company who will provide you space, electricity and internet connectivity for your server in a datacenter.

What are the benefits of server colocation?

• Uninterruptible power provided by redundant power feeds, UPS battery backup and backup generator power.
• Multiple internet connections eliminate dependence on a single internet connection, provide faster connections when used with intelligent routing and provide burstable bandwidth.
• Regulated climate control which maintains temperature and humidity providing an optimal environment for your server hardware.

The overall benefit of having your server colocated in a datacenter is maximum uptime.
Server uptime is increased when a datacenter has redundant power feeds, multiple internet connections and AC/humidity controlled environments.

In addition to redundant power feeds the data center should have a generator or generators and battery backup UPS system which will prevent the loss of power in the event both power feeds are lost.

Having multiple internet connections is called "multi-homed", "multi-homing" or "multi-home". A multi-homed data connection increases uptime by eliminating the reliance of an internet connection on a single bandwidth provider. Multi-homed connections also benefit from intelligent routing which provides users with the fastest connection by using the data provider with the fastest connection to the end user. One form of intelligent routing is Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).

A colocated server also benefits from a larger bandwidth pipe. Many datacenters offer 100Mbps (Mega Bits per Second) and larger bandwidth pipes. Having a 100Mbps connection is like having 69 T1s at your disposal. This allows your server to output more data when demand increases.

Another benefit is the controlled environment of a datacenter which regulates the air temperature and humidity which increases server uptime by keeping the server in its optimum operating environment 24/7 365 days a year.

Additional colocation options:

• Hands Free Remote Reboot - This is made possible by an appliance which allows you to cycle the power your server via a webpage that requires a login. Benefits include speedy reboots and the convenience of not having to rely on calling a person who has to physically locate your server and power cycle it.
• KVM/IP Services - This appliance allows you to console into your server via the internet as if you were physically consoled into the server. This enables you to trouble shoot server issues without having to make a trip to the datacenter.
• Firewall Services - A firewall adds an additional layer of security for you server.
• Dedicated VLANs - A dedicated VLAN provides increased security, bandwidth savings by eliminating broadcast traffic from other users on the same switch and allows for future scalability.
• Remote Hands - Remote hands are employees of the hosting company who are on site and available at an hourly rate for server maintenance.

Why a rack mount server?

• Reduces Monthly Costs - A rack mount server is optimized for cabinet installation and thus takes up less physical space which saves you on monthly colocation fees.
• Maximized Uptime - Rack mount serves are designed for maximum uptime. Many include redundant nic cards, power supplies, hard drives eliminating the downtime from a loss of any one of those items. Multiple hard drives configured in certain RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) configurations eliminate a system failure with the loss of a hard drive. Note RAID Zero does not eliminate a system failure with the loss of one drive.

What are my bandwidth options?

• Dedicated Pipe - A dedicated pipe is burstable up to the size of the pipe so if you have a 1Mbps pipe the max transfer at any one time is 1Mbps. Dedicated pipes come in many sizes such as 256K, .25 Mbps, 1Mbps, and 10Mpbs, 100Mbps++ and most any value in between.
• Per GB (Giga Byte) - Many hosts bill some fixed amount for each GB of data transferred to and from your server. Many server colocation packages include
• Per Mbps (Mega Bits per Second) - Larger bandwidth users will opt for per Mbps pricing.
• When does it make sense to opt for Per Mbps pricing? - If your server used 1Mbps of bandwidth 24 hours a day for an entire month it would use 320GBs on average. So 1Mbps = 320GBs. Once your bandwidth bill for GB usage exceeds the cost of a Mbps it would make sense to switch to Mpbs pricing.

How much bandwidth will I need?

• Depending on the application running on your server this can vary greatly.
• Most users who require large amounts of bandwidth which we will call amounts over 100GBs know that they use lots of bandwidth since they have very popular sites or services.
• Typical servers providing websites, email and other similar services don't generally use all that much bandwidth. For example a server hosting a website and 40 email accounts will generally use less than 20GBs of data transfer during a month.
• Servers which host online games or stream audio and or video are candidates for higher bandwidth needs. For example streaming audio streams at 128KBps to 8 concurrent listeners consumes 1MBps of bandwidth.
• If you currently host your server in an office with a T1 then you can safely assume the server uses less than 1.44 Mbps of bandwidth since a T1's max bandwidth is 1.44Mbps. If that T1 is shared with other servers and or employees for an internet connection more than likely the server uses a lot less than 1.44Mbps.

How much bandwidth can I transfer with a given pipe?

• You can safely transfer 80% of the pipes total size. So you could transfer 8Mbps over a 10Mpbs pipe. The other 20% of the pipe is utilized by the protocol transferring the data.
• Note currently most web surfers can't download data from a site at speeds greater that 4 or 5 Mbps. So unless you expect many concurrent users transferring large amounts of data at the same time a 10 to 20Mbps pipe is more than large enough.
• Seeing that most web pages are less than a few 100K many concurrent requests can be handled with a 1Mbps pipe.

How is bandwidth measured?

• Actual bandwidth Usage - Some hosts will bill you for the total transfer sent to your server and from your server.
• 95th Percentile - 95th percentile disregards the top 5% of bandwidth measurements over the billing period. Thus bandwidth spikes which are short in duration are disregarded. Large attachments in an email could cause a bandwidth spike which falls into the top 5%.
• Note if your hosting provider has a flat network (i.e. Does not user Dedicated VLANs) your bandwidth usage will be increased by another server on the same switch if it broadcasts data. A good example of when this happens is when a server is compromised for a virus like the SQL slammer virus.

What is a U, 1U, 2U, 1/3 (third) Cabinet, 1/2 (half) Cabinet, Full Cabinet, Cage?

• A U is 1.75 inches high, 16.9 inches wide and up to 24 inches deep.
• 2U of space is two times the space of 1U. 3U is three times the space of 1U.
• 1/3 of a Cabinet is 12U of colocation space.
• 1/2 of a Cabinet is 20U of colocation space.
• A full cabinet is 42U of space.

How many IPs do I need to host multiple websites?

• Many people think they need an individual IP for each website they wish to host. This is not the case. Many websites can be hosted on a single IP.
• IIS handles this by using host headers for each site sharing an IP.

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