Colocation continues to evolve every year as needs for storing mission critical information change. For many companies, balancing profitability of IT with constant repairs, downtime, and continuously improving security has become overwhelming. As such, colocation is in demand, simply because it makes good business sense.
When determining if colocation is the best solution for your company and how it aligns with your company’s long-term strategy, you may come across a few new terms. To help you during the discovery process, we created the following list of 8 key colocation terms that you can share with your team:
1. Hybrid Colocation – the act of storing data both on and off-site.
2. Rack Space – the amount of physical space you will need to house your servers off-site.
3. Cabinet Space – a cabinet is the term commonly used to reference one full rack (42-47 U). Half and full racks as well as space by the unit can be rented at most colocation facilities to house your company’s servers.
4. Cage Space – provides an added layer of physical security. The additional layer of protection provides you with the peace of mind that no one will have access to your highly sensitive date.
5. Uptime – refers to the availability of your servers and is often measured in a percentage. A data center’s estimated uptime is categorized by tiers. Tiers range from 1-4 or 99.61% – 99.99% expected uptime. What is your uptime?
6. N+1 Redundancy – have an independent back-up in case of failure to assure that your data remains available. A common example includes: back-up generators.
7. Service Level Agreement (SLA) – a contract outlining what level of service the provider will deliver and what consequences there will be for not abiding by those commitments. Addresses: performance, reliability, and support.
8. SSAE 16 SOC II – a detailed auditing report created by the AIPCA, is designed specifically to evaluate a data center’s security, availability, processing, integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. It also replaces the use of SAS 70.
To learn more about Colocation, download our free white paper: 4 Factors to Consider with Colocation.