What is a Colocation Data Centre?

A Colocation Data Centre is basically a very large building filled with servers, good air conditioning, a reliable supply of electricity, and securely locked doors. Such colocation centres tend to have hundreds or even thousands of servers located inside simple, thick-walled buildings with no windows. These buildings are normally built to withstand extreme weather and even natural disasters such as floods, tornadoes or earthquakes. They also generally have on-site generators in case the power fails, and multiple fiber optic cables running directly to the facility to ensure that data transmission continues even if one or more of the cables is severed. They may even have multiple connections to several power grids to ensure reliability!

These colocation data centres are staffed by the finest IT professionals available, who work hard to maintain, upgrade and monitor the servers at all times of the day or night, regardless of the time of day or the fact that it may be a holiday. It is their job to ensure that data is transferred safely and efficiently at all times and that none is lost. As such, they go to great lengths to back up each and every server elsewhere within the facility (or at another colocation data centre) and routinely examine the servers to ensure that they are in perfect order.

In the end, a colocation data centre is a very large server room staffed by very dedicated IT professionals, but because of the size of the facility and the number of people depending on it, a colocation data centre will have hardware, equipment and backups that are impractical for or beyond the means of most companies. After all, most companies would find it prohibitively expensive to connect to multiple power grids or keep their server rooms at a cool temperature even during the hottest parts of the summer. They would also find it prohibitively expensive to give their servers constant attention and upgrading, but a data colocation centre does so without trouble.