What Should One Look For in Colocation Services?

willeg asks: "I am charged with the task of recommending a company for co-locating our auction site. The problem is that on paper, they all look about the same. What other information should be used in order to make the decision on a good hosting pick service?" This will probably be a question that many will ask in the future. With the Internet being the 'next big thing', everyone will be looking to stake a claim on their own portion the digital real-estate. Problem is, not many people can afford the bandwidth costs of getting wired for high-speed access, especially for businesses in out-of-the-way areas. Is colocation the easy answer? Or is just as expensive?

Comments

Features you want

[synx]

The problem with colocation is that everyone promises the world, but non deliver.

You want the following features:

* electronic security (good to find out who was in when)
* multiple 100 meg pipes...
* full BGP4 routing so all those pipes are used at all times, not just when one fails.
* good connections... who are they peering with?
* indivdual locked cages, video security is very good.
* switched ethernet (ok, if you're talking 100 meg colos... but if you find you're on a hub, thats a major sign they are incomentent)
* obscure locations - you don't want a sign saying "very expensive computers inside"
* 24/7 on call support if necessary... what if you need to have that critical machine rebooted at night? sure it'll cost you, but it'll cost you more to have it down.

I work at a colo company, and our fast facility meets these requirements... Actually, I note that Vancouver is one of the best wired cities in North America, we got fat fat pipes to Seattle which is of course set up beyond belief..

Anyways...

Re:Features you want

[slashdotter168]

You also want to know:
-what kind of heating/cooling the facility has?
-is your equipment going to be off the floor in case of a flood?
-what kind of fire supression equipment do they have?
-are the NOC monkeys knowledgable?
-do they monitor your equipment for you?

Secure, physically and digitally

[ParticleGirl]

You might want to check out an excellent article at TopHosts.com. You server needs to be in a secure location, physically, so it's safe from damage (natural, ie earthquakes, as well as man-made, such as theft.) It's also best if you physically own the server, and can remove it entirely if you wish. Redundant connections to the net are also useful so that you can't easily be cut off.

Don't ask US...

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

...ask THEM.

Ask all of your bidders: "What can you give me that the others can't?" You are sure to get a bunch of crap like "a sense of well-being that your blah blah blah". Take all non-nonsensical (would that be "sensical"?) responses and redistribute to the vendors for response. Let them respond again.

At the very least, this will weed out the people who don't know what they're talking about.
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Compaq dropping MAILWorks?

Go read Kuro5hin's recent thread

[FFFish]

Once again, Kuro5hin and Slashdot are duplicating each other. This recent thread on Kuro5hin had some answers.

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Choosing for bandwidth or full service

[Tim McNerney]

The first thing to do is determine whether you are going to need full administrative services or whether you are just looking for bandwidth. Both are available, but make a number of differences in what to look for.

Once you've decided what you want, find out who else uses a given service. This applies both if you are looking for bandwith only or are looking for full service. You want access to be fast. You want it to be reliable. Do traceroutes from different locations to determine response times to the other clients of the service you are looking at. You can figure out a lot about their peering arangements and see if there are problems with a given site.

Ask them directly about their peering arangements. Find out about failover strategies. Ask them about service guarantees and make sure that partial refunds on service are available if those marks aren't met. This is key. If they don't meet their obligations, they don't get paid.

If you are also looking for 24/7 admin, find out how familiar they are with the apps you'll be using. Find out how they monitor the apps in question. Do they have people on site 24/7 or is most of the work done remotely? Ask them about their backup strategy and how they go about recovery of a fully lost system. Ask them to recommend a configuration for your site. You don't have to use it, but it should give you a good idea of how well they understand the networking issues.

Especially if you are doing the admin yourself, you need to know where the physical facility is and what kind of access you can have to it. If you have a server at an ok prompt, you'll need to get to it physically (unless you've set up a portmaster with remote access).

That should help you get down to a few possibilities.

Its all about service

[adturner]

Having had servers at 3 totally different types of Co-Lo's, I can say that you're absolutely right, they are all basically the same. All claim to have the "best network" and uptimes, but reality is that problems will happen no matter where you go. Routers and switches will and do blow up, peering points will and do get saturated, fiber lines will and do get cut. UPS/disel generators will and do fail to keep your servers powered.

Where things are different is the type and level of service you'll get. Some co-lo's are just that- straight co-location. Others provide more managed services. Some claim to have really good managed services, but really really suck at it. Others specialize at managed services and suck at plain co-lo.

Another thing to worry about is the fish/pond issue. Are you a big or small fish? What sized pond do you want to swim in? Small fishes in big ponds tend to get the shaft, but their co-lo's tend to have more negotiating power with other carriers. A small fish in a small pond will get better service, but their co-lo may not have the power to get better connectivity when they need it.

Your most important thing is references from other companies with the same needs as your own. Talk to them at length and get the real scoop. When something broke, how quickly did it get fixed? Did it happen more than once? If they were down for a period of time, did the co-lo's SLA cover their lost revenues/good-will with their customers? How well were they kept informed with regards to the situation and scheduled maintenance.

My .02:
Exodus- good for straight co-lo. Lowsy managed services. Has a great or horrible backbone depending on who you ask.
NaviSite- good for high-end managed services. Lowsy at straight co-lo. Very different network design which may be a good or bad thing depending on your point of view.
AboveNet- Seems to be a nice pond to swim in, but they seem to have more than their fair share of BGP issues than most.
GlobalCenter/Frontier- Seems to have a lot of peering problems. No idea on their level of service.

Co-Lo's

[HavokDevNull]

I work at a small Co-Lo and web design company in the North West. And have worked at large ones as well. And from my experience it is not all about who has the biggest and "fattest" pipes or bandwidth. It is about the people.

Ask yourself this question would you have your server housed with 100 Network Operation people running around with their heads cut off, do not know your name, and would not give you the time of day unless you flashed $100 in front of their noses, because the are so big.

Or a small company, were you know they will know your name, and are able to take the time to hear your concerns and not pass them up the food chain to middle management. I personally know every client by name and their box even better. I know each of the boxes personal quirks and their needs as well as the box owner's quirks and needs. Because it is a small company I'm in better position to do the job I love and able to pass that along to the customer.

So my suggestion is to meet the network operation personnel the real people taking care of your investment, not just the sales manager. Ask to take a look at the server room. Make sure it is clean and free from obstruction, environmentally controlled. Do not let some yahoo tell you that you need dual oc-48's to host your site. I can host a site just as well as anybody from my dsl-line. Get a feel on how well they take pride in their job, and you should be fine.

Which one is better?
"Kill -9 needs no justification" BOFH

Different Types, Topologies Of Colo Service

[billstewart]

Colo's a fairly wide business, with different providers offering different topologies, and hosting businesses piggybacking on colo businesses, professional services businesses consulting for both, some colo provided by IP carriers, other by pure colo providers. You need to think about what you're trying to accomplish, what your busines needs are, how much management you want to do, and anything special you want beyond the vanilla service (e.g. lots of electricity, access to local telco facilities, etc.) Here are a few categories of services and providers

• Shared hosting - you're not renting a box, you're just renting capacity on a box.
  
• Dedicated managed host - the provider is still managing the computer, but it's all yours
  
• Dedicated unmanaged host - you're renting the machine, but you're root; extra fees for hands-on help. You may or may not have physical access.
  
• Cage/Rack rentals - You're renting real estate, power, and network feed. Physical access is usually somewhat restricted, but some places let you do whatever you want in your cage. If you need more power than a vanilla colo, e.g. you've got a lot of 1U servers, check with the vendor carefully - some places can't handle it, or can only handle it in some of their buildings.
  
• Content Distribution/Caching Services - This is an alternative to using your own systems to distribute everything - pre-cached or demand-cached servers handle lots of the content, especially static graphics. Akamai is the best known, but other players such as AT&T are getting involved, and everybody's got their niche.
  
• ------
  
• Pure-Colo/Hosting, Few Locations - some companies aren't in the datacom business. They're generally located in one or more NAP/MAE cities, and rent telecom from big ISPs. Check out their service providers and peering, but think about your performance needs - for some customers, the extra few milliseconds of response are critical; for others it's the quality of technical support, or price or quantity of the raw bandwidth.
  
• ISPs providing Colo - Level 3, AT&T, Frontier Globalcenter, etc. - these providers have backbones, and customers on their backbones, and may be providing peering from their backbone rather than their hosting centers - or they may do both.
  
• Telco Cage Space - AT&T and some Bell telcos rent cage space in their offices. If your business needs a large number of physical locations, or better connectivity to the telephone network than colo vendors provide (e.g. for modem pools, or DSL, or lots of T1s, or lots of DS3s or OC3s between your locations), these may be an interesting alternative. They tend to be extremely secure - and therefore hard to get access to at times - with exceptionally good power systems, fire/earthquake/flood resistance, and cooling. They're usually more bureaucratic to set up, e.g. needing to know power and HVAC needs upfront, but they're located almost everywhere.
  

(Disclaimer: I work for AT&T, but not in the hosting group., and this is my personal commentary, not a company statement, in spite of the occasional shameless plug in the content.)

Take a step back...

[Tony Shepps]

"Multiple OC3s! Automatic Halon systems! Passkeys and dead-space entryways!" Very geek of everyone to require highly expensive but ultra-cool setups of their providers.

Did anyone see Jurassic Park? OK, dumb question, everyone saw Jurassic Park.

All these ultra-complicated solutions sound very Jurassic-Park-ish to me. There is, it seems, a turning point where you have such a complex setup that it is guaranteed to fail; and when it fails, it will fail in unpredictable but spectacular ways.

Like, as someone else pointed out, the colo that was so secure that he couldn't get in with a valid ID card. Doesn't it defeat the purpose of security if the people who should be able to get in cannot get in? Isn't that just as much of a danger?

And what's faster -- multiple T3s that are saturated, or single T1s that aren't?

And exactly how long does it take Cisco's biggest router to boot? And how many of them are between you and the rest of the world? And why would you want that?

The biggest difference between ALL co-los, in my opinion, is customer service. THAT is the value added that really makes a difference. Your system is unavailable at 3 AM. DOES ANYBODY CARE? This means so much more than all the geeky stats, hops off the 'bone, etc. If they CARE, they will put you right, no matter what their situation; if they DON'T care, you will be unhappy even if they have all the gear in the world.

So, evaluate your potential providers the old-fashioned way: ask other customers if they are satisfied.
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What's good, what's not

[Raptor CK]

Having seen my fair share of datacenters, I can't give you any reassuring advice.
1) Exodus (NJ location) looks obscure, but lacks any decent security persence to the extent that I'd like. You just sign in to gain access, and all that they check that on is a contact list.
2) GlobalCenter (NY) uses the same system, but there, you can sign in as "Samuel L. Jackson," "Tommy Lee Jones," etc., and they let you in anyway. They don't even check.

These two also share another aspect that I dislike: Communal rack space. You can have your servers right next to those of another company, and there's no barriers at all. Makes it incredibly easy for gear to get inexplicably damaged, although it's rare that it happens.

GlobalCenter's got a decent amount of private cages available, though, and those are pretty good.

3) Level 3 (NY) has lockdown cabinets in the datacenter, decent security, and biometric identification for datacenter access. If you don't belong, or aren't escorted by someone who *does* belong, you're not getting in very easily.
However, they take forever to actually get your line installed sometimes, which certainly puts a damper on your critical business setups.

4) Globix (NY) has much of the same setup as Level 3. Lockdown cabinets, biometric identification, etc., but they also have beefier physical security, and even if you *do* belong there, you still have to sign a key out if you want access. For some systems, you'd need to authenticate across no less than 4 keycard locks, 3 of which are biometric, two security guards, and a room full of NOC techs. The drawback? Their turnaround time can be dog slow as well, and they have been known to oversell well beyond their frazzled tech staff's capabilities. To make matters worse, the datacenter has windows, and you can see their gear from across the street. That's extremely discomforting.

As for key questions, I'll bypass most of the redundancy, and just recommend a tour, possibly inviting your own network engineer or a consultant to help out if you don't know all the BS from the actual details. Key things to ask about are:
- Raised floors / Drop ceilings? (Key for them wiring you quickly and flood avoidance)
- Conditioned power/Backup batteries/TESTED generators?
- Glycol or Halon fire suppression? (Glycol is less likely to kill you if you're in the room.) To that end, ask if there's a way to halt the fire suppression if you're still in the room. I can't stress the importance of being able to get your people out before the FM-200 kicks in.
- Security and surveillance? You need ID checks, sign-ins, the whole nine yards, since nothing is more critical then your information and the gear it runs on.
- Network redundancy and quality. I'd focus on the redundancy more than the quality myself, since most providers do have pretty much equal bandwidth. However, if they only have one way out of the datacenter, that's going to hurt you at some point.

Those are the key points that I'd worry about. NOC competence isn't something you can always rely on with any company (I should know, I *was* one :-), so just be sure that you know your stuff well enough to get things done quickly and clearly.


Raptor