When is the right time to work with a data center and when is the right time to just go through a Web host instead? There are a lot of questions surrounding collocation in the Web hosting industry, and hopefully I can get more than a few of them answered for you today.
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I got an E-mail from a Web Hosting Show listener the other day. Shane wanted to know what I thought about Web server collocation. When you should do it, when you shouldn’t do it and so on. So here we go.
When a Web host collocates the servers that it owns, that means that it rents out space in different data centers that are not anywhere near the central base of operation. The good thing about this is if something bad happens and disaster strikes then you are not left with every server a Web host runs going down. The bad side is that most of the repairs, upgrades and monitoring must be done through a third party, the folks that own and run the data center the sever is in.
Now I’d say this system is alright for about ninety percent of us out here. The other ten percent would be big corporate companies or very demanding Web sites that need a quicker response time when things go bad. Sometimes it might be better to sign up with a data center on your own, leaving the standard Web host out of the equation.
That way you are cutting out a middle man when it comes to those support upgrades you need. If you do this though, you must make sure that you have a system in place with sever administrators and folks that know how to do the dirty work with the server. In my case, I would probably be pretty lost when it comes to running a Web server by myself. I’d need to find some folks that had run a server before. That is some of the experience that you are loosing if you cut the Web host out of the deal.
So hopefully that answers a few questions about my thoughts and opinions on Web server collocation. Remember if you have any other questions you’d like to hear me answer, just drop me an E-mail at mitch@mitchkeeler.com.
