A colocation centre (also called co-location or colo) or “carrier hotel,” is a type of data centre where cabinet, equipment, space, Internet and bandwidth are available for rental. Colocation facilities provide space, power, cooling and physical security for the server, storage, and networking equipment of other firms. They also seamlessly connect them to a variety of telecommunications and network service providers.
Many Canadian colocation providers serve a wide range of clients, from large enterprises to small IT companies.
Typically, the customer owns the IT equipment, and the facility provides power and cooling. Customers retain control over the design and usage of their equipment, but daily management of the datacenter and facility are the colocation provider’s responsibility.
Carrier Hotel Plans and Terms
Cabinets – a cabinet is a locking unit that holds a server rack. In a carrier hotel, servers within cabinets share raised-floor space with other tenants, in addition to sharing power and cooling infrastructure.
Cages – a cage is a dedicated server space within a traditional raised-floor data center; it is surrounded by mesh walls and entered through a locking door. Cages share power and cooling infrastructure with other datacenter tenants.
Suites – a suite is a dedicated, private server space within a traditional raised-floor data center; it is fully enclosed by solid partitions and entered through a locking door. Suites may share power and cooling infrastructure with other data center tenants; alternatively, cooling may be provided on a dedicated basis.
Modules – data center modules are purpose-engineered modules and components to offer scaleable data center capacity. They typically use standardized components, which make them easily added, integrated or retrofitted into existing datacenters so they are cost effective and easy to build.
In a colocation environment, a datacenter module is a datacenter within a datacenter. It has its own steel walls and security protocol as well as dedicated cooling and power infrastructure.
Nuday’s Role in Your Business
Reliability
Nuday offers much more consistent and optimized service than the public cloud. Using Nuday colocation in conjunction with other data storage tools (e.g. SAN) means that you mitigate the risk of costly downtime when performing maintenance operations because you move data seamlessly from one virtual server to another without any impact on user performance.
Security
Many organizations in Canada host highly sensitive client data from financial details to classified communications to medical records. By using a private cloud, your private, confidential data has nowhere near the same exposure to public access as it would in a public cloud. You design the security protocols for your server, including firewalls, anti-virus software and physical access. Connectivity with the Internet can also be monitored and limited through security measures.
If your organization is based in Ontario, you need to be aware of the following Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) regulations:
- Private organizations operating in Ontario are subject to this legislation (with the exception of handling employee information across provincial or national borders)
- Private organizations within the federally regulated sector operating in Ontario, such as banks, airlines, telephone companies (and others) must also adhere to this information handling legislation
Smart Out of Band
Out-of-band management (OOBM) is a method of monitoring and overseeing the WAN telecommunication components of a network with the assistance of a secondary network communication link. OOBM grants access and control to all major IT assets in critical situations. For example, when the production network is down and unavailable or there is unplanned downtime, you can easily access and control all the internal nodes or IT assets through OOBM. This feature is built into Nuday packages and all the private cabinets.
Business Continuity Plan
A business can ensure business continuity after an incident or disaster by developing a business continuity plan (BCP) that includes the elements of business continuity.
At Nuday, we understand the importance of a datacenter disaster recovery plan (DRP). Our datacenter experts will help clients create a DRP to ensure it meets the requirements of their organization and industry.
Carrier Neutral Data Center Packages
Nuday is a brand new datacenter in Toronto, Canada. It is entirely carrier neutral. Nuday provides connectivity with cost effective cross-connect to 151 Front Street, choice of carriers, ISPs, Internet Content Distribution Networks (CD ) and other network service providers (i.e. Rogers, Bell, Cogeco, Hydro-One, Ravand) to build your communication networks and deliver an optimal end-user experience.
Unlimited Plans
Nuday provides customized colocation plans customized for enterprises to small businesses. They recently added unlimited 1GB bandwidth usage to all packages from 10U to 42U. All customized colocation quotations are free of charge.
Savings
An important consideration for businesses is their bottom line. While private clouds can provide great cost savings, virtual and physical host servers offer greater overall value because they offer more storage at a much lower cost than buying public cloud servers. While investing in colocation is a significant initial cost, there is a significant long-term savings opportunity. Over a period of three years, a package with Nuday costs ten times less than purchasing public cloud services.
