Co-Location is the term for “putting your server on the Internet.” Daily Data will install your server at our leased cabinet at the H5 Colo Network Operations Center (NOC) in Dallas, Texas, US. This highly secure facility has fully redundant, high speed connections to the backbone of the Internet, constant air quality and temperature, UPS’s and fail over power generators, and physical security better than some military installations. Colocation allows better speed, security and reliability than simply using your existing enterprise-grade internet to access servers located on your physical premises- especially vital with increasing numbers of businesses utilizing remote workers.
No need to lease a half or full rack, at prices comparable to your facility rent when you only need one or two servers placed. A “U” is the common measurement of the height of a rack mount server, 1.75 inches. No need to purchase a 1/2 (24 U) or full rack (42 U) when your need requires only 1 or 2 units in a rack. If you’re worried about paying for more than you need, our shared colocation solution offers the reliability and redundancies of a data center while only billing for the space, power and connectivity your business requires. Included with this, you’ll have the option to ship us your own equipment and we will rack and stack it for you. Colo by the “U” is a scalable solution for your growing business.
Your server can now be whatever you want, and the whole machine is dedicated to that purpose. Need more disk space, just add it. Need more memory; add some.
Your Colocation fee gives you.
- 1 Dedicated IP Address
- 10 Mb/s 95 percentile
- 1U Server space in cabinet
- VPN backside access on request (additional fee)
- 120 Watt maximum (runtime, 240 Watt startup)
- Sensors showing bandwidth usage
- Sensors showing server health upon request (requires software install on server)
Upgrades
- Additional bandwidth
- Dedicated VLAN (ties two or more servers together, securely)
- Additional physical space for larger servers
- Additional IP address
- Additional Power (Full A/B Redundant Circuits)
- IPMI connection
- Maintenance and Management
- Backup Service
- Installation Service
Exceptions
- Bandwidth overages are billed monthly.
- If your power overage does not endanger other colocation clients, you will have 30 days to correct the issue. If we feel your power overage endangers others sharing your cabinet, your server will be shut down immediately.
- All work will be done in the presence of a Daily Data technician. You may arrange a scheduled visit by notifying us 48 hours in advance. In emergencies, please give us 2 hours notice.
Notes
Bandwidth
Network usage is calculated using 95 percentile. This allows you to have a few bursts of high speed access, but only pay for the “normal” usage the rest of the time. For a greater understanding of how this works, see https://colobytheu.us/bandwidth-vs-traffic/. Your network usage is calculated every 5 minutes. At the end of the month, the highest 5% of your usage is “thrown away.” Your charge is for the highest amount of traffic in the remaining 95 percent of the usage over the month.
Power
Do not confuse the power billed for and the power your system is capable of. We bill for the actual power used by your system, which depends on the number and activity of your hard drives, the amount of memory, and the activity on your CPU’s (the brains).
For example: An HP DL380G6 server with 2 processors (each with 6 cores) and 48 Gigabytes of RAM. It has two power supplies capable of 750 Watts each (3.5 amps at 208 volts).
When this machine is “quiescent” (no activity going on), it runs about 120 Watts, or about 0.58 amps. If you add eight 2.5″ 1 Terabyte hard drives, it will jump to 240 Watts, or 1.17 amps. When the machine starts doing some work, the power requirements will increase to 300 Watts or more. During startup, when everything is very active (and possibly going from cold to warm state), the power can reach 400 Watts (1.92 amps) or more.
Newer machines and Solid State Drives can greatly reduce the runtime power requirements of a server. Since the colocation facility is maintained at 70 degrees year round, your server will not have to use as much power trying to keep cool also.
Our billing is the maximum runtime power usage. In other words, we assume the startup power is about twice the runtime power, and so long as you do not exceed that value we are ok. We will take 5 minute readings of your power usage throughout the month, and your power usage charges are the maximum non-boot time power usage.
IPMI
IPMI is an interface to your physical computer that allows remote reboots (hard and soft) and sensor readings. If you would like access to this, Daily Data will provide it to allow you to remotely monitor/manage your server. Since IPMI has very poor security, we provide access via an OpenVPN connection which will only allow access to your device. You can use tools like ipmitool (Linux) or your hardware manufacturers solution for Windows.
If you choose, you can also grant Daily Data access to the IPMI interface (over the network), in which case we can perform standard health monitoring, and perform soft reboots as necessary (otherwise, if we need to reset your server we would have to remotely “unplug” and “plug in” your server, ie a hard reboot).
Sensors
At the base, Daily Data will monitor your bandwidth usage directly from our Layer 3 switches, and your power usage from our Smart Power strips. However, should you choose, Daily Data can monitor these and other parameters of your system through our network monitoring tool. You will then be able to access your information via a secure connection. Additionally, if you choose to grant Daily Data access to your IPMI ports, we can monitor and report the data from there also.