One of many main advantages of colocation knowledge facilities is that they permit companies to deploy their infrastructure with out having to construct and handle their very own amenities.
A problem of colocation, nonetheless, is sustaining {hardware}. If another person owns and manages the information middle that hosts your servers, how do you handle and monitor them?
There are a number of potential solutions. Let’s discover them by discussing approaches to managing customer-owned {hardware} in colocation amenities.
{Hardware} and Colocation Data Centers: A Primer
A colocation knowledge middle is a facility the place a number of firms can arrange servers and different IT assets. This makes colocation totally different from an information middle that an organization builds and operates solely for its personal use.
As well as, a colocation facility is totally different from a public cloud knowledge middle as a result of the latter doesn’t permit companies to deploy their very own servers or different {hardware}. As a substitute, the general public cloud includes prospects “renting” servers which are owned and managed by the cloud supplier, and which the cloud supplier makes obtainable utilizing an IaaS mannequin.
If you choose to deploy servers in a colocation facility, you personal the {hardware}, and you’re finally chargeable for managing it. Nonetheless, another person owns and operates the information middle the place your {hardware} resides, which can prohibit your potential to entry the tools.
Efficient administration of {hardware} in colocation knowledge facilities is essential for companies to maximise management and optimize their infrastructure (Picture: Alamy)
Approaches to Sustaining Colocated Data Center {Hardware}
There are 4 foremost methods to keep up your tools in a colocation knowledge middle:
1. Sending Workers to the Colocation Facility
Essentially the most easy method to managing {hardware} in a colocation knowledge middle is for a corporation to ship its personal workers to the power. From there, they’ll arrange and handle their {hardware} as wanted.
This method supplies the best stage of management over and entry to colocated {hardware}. A draw back, nonetheless, is that it may be pricey to deploy workers to a distant colocation web site. The proprietor and operators of the power may place restrictions on when your workers can enter and the way lengthy they’ll stay. Most colocation suppliers gained’t let their prospects’ engineers hang around indefinitely or set up a everlasting on-site presence.
2. Outsourcing Upkeep to the Colocation Supplier
In lots of instances, colocation suppliers supply managed companies to keep up colocated {hardware} for his or her prospects.
The forms of companies that colocation suppliers supply on this vein can range. Some may deal with all features of {hardware} setup and upkeep, whereas others solely supply fundamental monitoring or troubleshooting, for instance.
Thus, it might be essential to ship your individual workers to a colocation web site at the very least sometimes to deal with duties that the operator gained’t. However working with a colocation vendor will be one technique to cowl the majority of {hardware} administration tasks with out the associated fee or complexity of deploying your individual workers on a continuously foundation.
3. Outsourcing to a Third Celebration
Outsourcing {hardware} administration to third-party managed service suppliers (MSPs) is one other potential choice. This includes hiring a third-party agency – one that’s not the colocation supplier – to arrange, monitor, and handle colocated {hardware}.
Your colocation supplier should be keen to permit the MSP into its facility for this mannequin to work, after all, and also you’re nonetheless topic to any entry restrictions that the colocation supplier imposes. However general, this method might show cheaper or easier than deploying your individual workers. It’s additionally doable that an MSP can supply higher costs or extra intensive {hardware} administration companies than a colocation supplier.
4. Distant {Hardware} Administration
Distant administration of colocated {hardware} is an choice as properly, after all – and one that may be paired with any of the opposite approaches described above.
Distant administration means connecting over the community to manage {hardware} remotely. Usually, your {hardware} will must be instantly related to the web for this to work. Nonetheless, some colocation suppliers supply options (corresponding to Serial over SSH from Equinix) that make it doable to interface with {hardware} that’s not related to a community.
Distant administration isn’t a viable means of organising {hardware} or changing damaged elements, after all; you want boots on the bottom to try this. However as soon as servers are up and working, distant entry allows administration duties like putting in software program upgrades or, in some instances, even putting in new working techniques.
Colocation {Hardware} Administration: Discovering the Finest Match
Sustaining colocated {hardware} could seem daunting, nevertheless it does not need to be. Whether or not you choose to ship your workers on-site, work with a 3rd get together, or leverage a mix of those approaches, supporting {hardware} inside a facility you don’t personal is possible sufficient – and the power to depend on distant administration options for some wants makes the method much more streamlined.
