Question : Problem: remote colocation setup questions

Hello,

Our company is considering colocating. One provider is Colopronto. The prices and specs seem right however we have some reservations about colocating out of our physical realm. The question of this post boils down to:

1. How necessary is it to have immediate physical access to your own colocated server?

2. What other levels of maintenance are there besides remote hands? If something *really* needs to be checked into with your server how is this done? Mail it back to you?

3. What is the best server for a 1U space.

4. We have 2 sites that are heavy on video. What are the pros/cons of hosting both sites on the one server.


Thanks

Answer : Problem: remote colocation setup questions

I'll give you some ideas for some of your questions.

1. It depends on what your server is doing.  There is a lot of remote administration tools like IBM's Remote Supervisor Adaptor and HP's iLo which both give remote monitoring and remote control of the server, even when turned off.  As long as the server has network and power plugged in, you will be able to partially manage it.

2.  See above, that will fix alot.  Anything hardware you will need remote hands (normally cheaper than mailing parts back to yourself then back to the colo again)

3.  Depends on it's use.  You can't really give the best server based on rack space.

4. Pro's:
Cheaper
Potentially less maintenance


Cons:
No failover
potential performance limiting

Why not investigate load sharing to host the sites over multiple servers?