What is colocation, and how does it work?
For years, the standard approach to IT for a growing company was to buy a few servers, find a spare cupboard in the office, crank up the air con, and hope the power didn’t trip over the weekend. Unfortunately, this approach is not only straining against our growing use of digital tools, but also the increasing requirements for reliable, secure, and highly available infrastructure.
This dawning reality has led thousands of organisations to turn to colocation instead. But what is colocation? What can seem like a complicated step is actually a straightforward concept: a halfway house between self-hosting and the cloud, where you both own your own equipment and benefit from the world-class resilience of a purpose-built data centre.
What is colocation in cloud computing?
To understand how colocation fits into the modern tech landscape, it helps to understand the physical parameters of the cloud. When people talk about the cloud, they’re usually referring to both the software provided by companies such as Microsoft or Amazon, and the physical hardware that hosts it. While you are renting both, you only ever see the software, while the computers running your systems could be entire countries away.
Colocation is a more hands-on process. Instead of renting someone else’s computer, you buy and own your own servers, storage drives, and networking equipment. However, instead of keeping that expensive kit in your own office, what you are renting is the physical space inside a data centre, along with the expertise to keep it ticking.
You can think of it like the difference between staying in a hotel and renting a flat. In a hotel, everything is provided for you, but you have very little control over the decor or features. Colocation is more like a flat, where you bring the furniture and set it up how you like, but leave things like maintaining the structure and utilities to the landlord. You own and control the contents, while outsourcing the headache of looking after the building it sits in.
What is a colocation provider?
A colocation provider is the company that owns, operates, and maintains the data centre that contains your colocated servers. Their job is to oversee your digital infrastructure, but also to help configure and maintain it, ensuring that your equipment never experiences any failures or downtime.
When choosing a provider, the relationship matters just as much as the technical specification. At Sota, we’ve spent over 35 years working as a trusted IT partner, and have always believed that infrastructure is nothing without direct accountability. We operate as an independent network operator with our own data centre facilities, meaning we don’t rely on third-party landlords or infrastructure to keep our clients online.
A quality provider gives you total peace of mind by managing the complex environment around your servers. They handle the heavy engineering, monitor power grids, maintain advanced fire suppression systems, and employ around-the-clock security teams. They also offer vital support services, with technicians performing tasks like physical reboots or swapping out components, saving your own team from visiting the facility every time an adjustment is needed.
What is a colocation data centre or facility?
A colocation data centre is a data centre specifically built to house and protect digital hardware. Unlike a commercial office where you might usually host a small business server, every element of these buildings is designed around security, resilience, and keeping your equipment cool.
These facilities are usually graded using a standard tier system, with Tier 3 being the benchmark for professional business hosting. A Tier 3 data centre ensures that aspects such as the power supplies, internet connections, and cooling units all have built-in redundancy. If a main power line is accidentally cut during local roadworks, for instance, uninterruptible power supplies and backup generators will take over automatically, without a millisecond of interruption to the servers.
The facility itself contains rows of secure enclosures known as racks or cabinets. A clean environment is maintained to prevent dust from damaging delicate circuitry, while advanced climate control systems precisely manage temperature and humidity. All of this helps to minimise maintenance costs, and ensure continuous 24/7 uptime without any performance degradation.
At Sota, our data centre facilities are situated within a secure, 25 acre ring-fenced tech campus. By basing ourselves outside towns or cities, we’re able to offer both a more secure and cooler environment with its own on-site power supply, shielding our clients from any instability of the national grid.
How does colocation work?
The practical process of colocation is fairly straightforward. First, your business decides on the amount of space required. This is typically measured in units known as “U” (rack units), with a standard full enclosure measuring 47U. A business with a few servers might choose to rent a quarter or a half cabinet, while a larger organisation might rent several full rows of cabinets.
Your internal IT team will then typically work with a migration specialist to physically install your servers into these assigned racks, a process known in the industry as a rack-and-stack. Once the hardware is physically secured in the cabinet, the data centre provider will connect it to the power and internet.
Power is delivered through redundant feeds, ensuring that your equipment is always drawing electricity from two separate sources simultaneously. For connectivity, quality data centres operate on a carrier-neutral basis., with multiple independent fibre-optic networks running directly into the building. This allows you to choose your preferred telecom provider, or connect directly to a private regional network for ultra-low latency.
With the physical setup complete, your IT team can begin to manage the software, operating systems, and your data remotely, while visiting the data centre when needed. You can log in, deploy updates, and manage your user permissions from anywhere in the world.
Meanwhile, the colocation provider will continuously monitor the colocated servers, ensuring the hardware is kept at the perfect operational temperature, that no unauthorised people enter the building, and that the automated fire suppression systems are functioning. You can focus entirely on your data and software, while your provider focuses on keeping the hardware safe and stable.
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Opting for colocation frees you up from the responsibility and costs of maintaining your own servers, allowing your business to scale without the expenditure of building your own server room. It’s a practical middle ground between the flexibility of modern data management, and handing over complete control of your assets to a public cloud provider.
By colocating your hardware in a specialist data centre managed by an experienced local partner, you get the benefits of a world-class data centre alongside the personal care of a dedicated team. It’s a practical, secure, and efficient option that keeps your servers fit and firing, and ensures the digital heart of your business keeps beating.