After choosing to go with dedicated hosting, which is great because you own it and can set it up how you want to, you still must decide whether to rent or buy the hosting.
When you are renting a server from a web hosting company, you are paying for dedicated hosting. You can also choose to purchase your own server but still pay a hosting center to house the server at their location and connect it to the internet for you. This is called collocated hosting.
Collocated hosting has the same advantages as dedicated hosting, because you still own and have control of your server. The added benefit you receive with collocated hosting is a reduced cost per month.
As you’ve purchased the physical server, rather than just renting it, you’ll only need to pay your host for the actual space your server occupies in its data center.
This requires a larger investment initially, but the long-term costs are much lower.
What is the cost for collocation?
Your cost depends on the space your sever uses. Data centers will usually keep the servers in racks, which are kept in cabinets.
Typically, cabinets are forty rack units in height, with individual units measuring 1 3/4 ft. Servers mounted on racks are normally measured in rack units, with one unit being 1.75′. Typical server dimensions are 1, 2, or 4 units, thus what you pay is based on the number of units per your server.
Another thing to consider with collocated hosting is how much bandwidth your site will require and how much the bandwidth will cost. Your bandwidth cost is dependent upon both the amount of bandwidth allocated to your particular server, and the total amount of data transfer, as your server’s traffic is routed through the data center.
Collocation versus Dedicated Hosting
With collocation, you own the hardware and that means that if anything goes wrong, you have the responsibility of fixing it. In the event that you experience a hard drive or CPU failure, a replacement will be mandatory.
With dedicated hosting, these issues are the responsibility of the web hosting company, so they will attend to any problems that come up.
With collocated servers, you also have to pay for costs associated with software licenses for operating systems and any needed software for the servers. Normally the software needed to run your server is included with a dedicated host.
The decision should be made based on a cost benefit analysis that compares the additional costs of purchasing dedicated hosting versus the convenience of collocated hosting.
You should choose the collocation option if you have the staff and money to maintain the server and your requirements are high.
Stephen Grisham, Sr. is a Staff Writer for InfoServe Media, a Houston Web design business that provides custom web design. Visit today, or call 1 (800) 838-2203 for a free quote.
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