Colocation – maximum security for your servers

Colocation, or server housing, refers to the outsourcing of one’s own IT hardware to an independent data center. A customer books the required number of server cabinets and pays a monthly rent. In contrast to hosting, the hardware comes from the customer and not from the data center or service provider.

Compared to hosting on a customer’s own premises, colocation offers two key advantages:

Data centers have high-performance fiber-optic connections from various carriers and an uninterruptible power supply. The redundant Internet and power lines achieve a high level of fail-safety. The second advantage is reflected in the cost savings for the customer. Proper connection of the hardware on the customer’s own premises initially requires some conversion or renovation work, such as the installation of a special air-conditioning system to ensure constant temperatures. On top of that, there are ongoing costs for operation, maintenance, and servicing. And yet the server room does not meet the security requirements of a data center. In a data center, these total costs are apportioned to all users. Consequently, the company’s own share is low.

When operating a server room within one’s own four walls, there are a number of obligations and legal principles to be observed. According to the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI for short), the basic IT protection in INF.2 Section 1, Chapter 1.1, Point 2 since February 2020 states:

“If an IT-using institution has only one central IT operating area, this, together with the necessary support areas, must always be treated as a data center in accordance with the protection requirement.”

Furthermore, the BSI’s IT-Grundschutz Compendium states under point G 0.29 on the violation of laws and regulations:

“If an institution’s information, business processes and IT systems are inadequately secured (for example, by inadequate security management), this can lead to violations of legal provisions relating to information processing or of existing contracts with business partners. […] The management of a company is obligated to exercise appropriate care in all business processes.”

When operating a server landscape in one’s own company, there are thus many rules and regulations to be observed. If security measures are not observed, the management is liable for organizational negligence.

Criteria for selecting a data center and provider

Companies should always pay attention to the availability and performance of the data center. Furthermore, additional security and fire protection fire protection measures to ensure that the data is protected against unauthorized access. When choosing a colocation data center, the so-called “tier standard” offers a good and generally valid classification. In addition, certifications serve as a good quality indicator. For example, if the provider can show the corresponding ISO 27001 certificate, customers know that their equipment and data are in safe hands. Regarding the location, it is essential to consider other parameters in addition to the pure costs for rack, electricity, and the physical proximity to the company’s own location. Usually, colocation providers can offer racks including Internet access as ready-made packages. But when it comes to turning your wishes into a concept that suits your company and adapts to your individual requirements, you need a partner who sees eye-to-eye with you. Both the right connection to the Internet and flexible networking with other data center locations with sufficient bandwidth are important factors in medium- and long-term expansion planning for your own IT. In addition, other topics such as backup and disaster recovery play a decisive role for companies. If, contrary to hope, data should be stolen or accidentally deleted, it is advantageous to keep the physical paths between computing and the first stage of backup to a minimum. This avoids unnecessarily high latencies. When setting up a second, geo-redundant site, fiber optic networking between the data centers is of central importance.

FlexCompute Colocation is more than just metal and electricity

“Once the hardware has been set up in the data center, we don’t have to do it again. Then everything will be up and running” is something we hear repeatedly. But the opposite is often the case. Due to personnel bottlenecks or involvement in projects, it is often simply not possible to make the trip to the data center to press a button, check a plug connection or replace a hard disk. For these and many other cases we offer our support – because our trained and highly motivated engineers are already on site at the data center. weSystems supports you from hour 0. This is the time of taking stock and creating the design of the future infrastructure. Once all doubts have been cleared, we begin early planning of the hardware move together, starting with determining the order in which systems need to be powered down at the old site and powered up again at the new data center. With our expertise, we can provide valuable tips and keep downtimes to a minimum. We also do not leave you on your own when it comes to setting up the switches, load balancers, firewalls, and servers, and provide support where required.

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Managed Colo Remote Hands for Onsite Support

Managed Hardware Hardware replacement based on your maintenance contracts

Managed OS Installation and operation up to top OS including patch plan

Managed Security Extended protection of the server landscape with e.g. DDoS protection and firewalls

Managed Internet We manage the carrier and its lines for you

Managed BGP We take care of the BGP-capable IP addresses and support you from setting up or implementing the routing concept to swapping between data centers

Monitoring Permanent monitoring of your servers and systems

Hybrid Solutions Cloud computing and backup in close proximity to your colocation has advantages in terms of processing speed