What to Expect From Your Managed Colocation Provider
The initial concern that IT managers have when looking to move from an in-house data closet or data center to a professionally managed colocation facility is the loss of immediate physical access to the servers. Moving from an in-house data center where employees can look at the status lights and reboot their servers on the spot, to a colocation hosting facility where the control is over the Internet, is sometimes hard to imagine.
With the proper tools and services from your managed colocation provider, it becomes much easier than you think to manage your servers in a colocation facility. In fact, with the right tools, you can colocate your servers half way across the country and manage them as if they were just next door.
Managed colocation simplifies the move to a professional data center by addressing four critical areas of server management:
Initial set-up and deployment
24x7 access and control of your servers
24x7 proactive monitoring of your entire infrastructure
Full time server management and engineering support
Let's look at each of these 4 managed colocation services:
1. Initial Set-up and Deployment should be as simple as shipping your servers to the data center.
For a simple fixed fee, a managed colocation provider can:
Design and layout the rack
Receive and unpack the hardware
Record and label the assets and serial numbers
Professional assemble and mount servers in the racks
Provide power and network cables
Cable between cabinets as specified
Fully-document the cable list
Provide final documentation of layout and cable runs
Deliver Visio diagrams and digital picture documentation of the final assembly
If desired, you should be able to ship your hardware directly to your managed colocation provider, who can install and set up your equipment without you or your team ever setting foot into the data center. We call this "Rack & Stack".
2. 24x7 Access and Control of Your Servers. You should be able to access and control every aspect of your servers across the Internet. This is typically done through a Portal such as shown below.
The remote server management capabilities of the colocation portal should include:
System monitoring and messages posted by the data center engineers as they perform work on your behalf - to provide you full transparency to the data center, network and server status.
Instant chat with a support technicians
Device details - that includes asset tracking information, serial numbers, warranty information, hardware configuration and IP addresses for each device in your system.
Support ticket requests, status and resolution history.
Bandwidth usage tracking with both historical and real-time trending information.
Real-time server monitoring and alarming - so you can view the stats of each device in real-time.
Remote reboot capability - to reboot each device in your system across the Internet.
KVM access - direct access to any connected KVM so you can control your server as if you were standing in front of it.
Document vault to store disaster recovery or production documents.
With the right managed colocation portal, you can manage your servers in your pajama at 3AM across the Internet as if you were standing right in the data center.
3. 24x7 Proactive Monitoring - Your managed colocation provider should be able to monitor every one of the devices in your system 24 hours a day - and proactively warn you about outages or problems that could lead to an outage. An example of the monitoring system that is available through the portal is shown below.
Real-time colocation server monitoring should include:
Server monitoring including SNMP and WMI monitoring capabilities to every device in your system.
Real time server statistics including CPU, memory disk space usage and network traffic for capacity planning and performance monitoring.
Alarming to an e-mail, cell phone or SMS on error, or near error conditions such as a failed application or disk space near capacity.
Server uptime monitoring through any number of ports including ping, HTTP, HTTPS, URL and SMTP.
End user monitoring to ensure end user availability from disparate locations across the Internet.
In many cases, managed colocation can provide a more advanced level of monitoring than many users have in their own data center. Because the managed colocation provider deploys the tools across hundreds of clients and thousands of servers, they can deliver enterprise level monitoring for a fraction of the cost that most end users would pay in their own data center.
4. Full time Server Management and Engineering Support - Managed Colocation means that your colocated servers are managed as if they were managed dedicated servers - the difference is that you provide the hardware for managed colocation compared to having the hardware supplied for you with a managed dedicated server.
For a fixed monthly fee per server, you can get:
Unlimited 24x7 technical support - where engineers are available to assist you with any issues with your servers.
First Responder Service - where the data center engineers will be the first ones on the scene when there is an alert on the server monitoring. The engineers troubleshoot and coordinate the resolution to any server problem, only notifying you on a as-needed basis so you can sleep through the night.
Troubleshooting and remediation support - a trained expert will identify the root cause of all server problems and solve them. If outside parties are required for remediation of a problem, the engineer will coordinate those parties to ensure your server is back up and running quickly.
Asset and Change Management Support - with a change management service that tracks and records all changes and corrective actions to the network, servers and OS so that your system is fully documented with SAS 70 audited change control.
Managed colocation eliminates many of the fear points in moving from an onsite data closet to a professionally managed data center. By supporting the entire colocation lifecycle from installation to 24x7 monitoring to support and maintenance, managed colocation can alleviate the headaches of outsourcing your data center so your IT team can spend more time focusing on your applications and core business.
Mike Klein is the President and Chief Operating Officer at Online Tech, a leading managed data center operator in the Midwest. Online Tech offers a full range of colocation and managed server hosting in their SAS-70 secure and reliable multi-tenant data centers across the Midwest.
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