Advantages To Colocated Servers Vs. On-Premise Servers

When setting up a company server, it can seem advantageous to keep servers in your offices and constantly accessible. When you have an on-premise server, the server has low latency and is in your complete control -- and hardware is constantly accessible for upgrades and modifications. But there are also some clear advantages to colocated servers, especially for companies that don't have dedicated IT personnel.

Accessibility: Data Transfer Speed

Though an on-premise company server will be highly accessible within your offices, it may be extremely sluggish when being connected to outside of your office. Workers who need to connect from other offices or telecommute from home will find their productivity dampened. Data centres have extremely fast Internet connections, making them fast and reliable from anywhere in the world. Something as simple as downloading your emails from the on-premise email server could take quite a while, because the data would need to go through your corporate Internet connection.

Reliability: Data and Power Outages

Data and power outages are often unavoidable and they can take your entire system down. A data centre will have redundant systems and backup generators, to avoid this problem and make sure that your business can keep working. A data centre can even run backup protocols on your servers and mirror your disks, ensuring that you will not lose any data should the worst occur. 

Simplicity: Deployment and Maintenance

Often, you can purchase a server to be deployed through the data centre itself. From then on, any maintenance and upgrades will be performed by the data centre. The data centre will also make sure that the server is always up; if the server does go down, they will perform troubleshooting and will often guarantee a certain level of server uptime. An on-premise server will need to be maintained by an on-site IT technician, which not all businesses can afford. Otherwise, a contractor may need to be called in for any system and support issues -- and that can get costly quite quickly. 

Cost: Equipment and IT Support

The cost of an on-premise server is often far more than a colocated server, as the proper equipment needs to be installed to create a server environment. A colocated server is usually leased at a low monthly fee and often has a one-time setup cost that is extremely affordable. There are no additional IT costs, making on-premise servers the less cost-effective choice.

A colocation data centre can help you determine whether colocated servers may be best for your needs. In general, unless you can afford to have a professional server setup and server room in your offices, on-premise servers aren't likely to be beneficial. For more information, contact a company like Cologix.

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