Have you thought of co-locating servers and paying for space at a datacenter to have them? What has caused you to either move forward with it or stay away?

Yes, I'd love to co-locate. And I will very soon .

One main thing is you OWN the servers you co-locate, they are yours, you don't pay an extra fee per month for a larger hard drive etc. If you need to do big upgrades to the server, you can do yourself and don't have to pay a fee.

You can also setup hardware firewalls and routers at your co-location spot, so once again, that would be your own. So it can be much more secure then a normal dedicated server would be.

I plan to buy a dell server or two this year and co-locate them in a local datacentre here in Sydney, Australia. I'll keep you posted on my progress with that.

- Shane.

Very Interesting. Co-Locating is not good for people who aren't positive the webhosting business is for them, because once you purchase a server and the space in the data center, you cant really change your mind. Just my outlook on it

I do agree with you there.

personally colocating a server is not a smart move.
First off, it costs $2500 for the server. than it costs another $69-149/month to have your server hosted.

Why not rent a server from a third party datacenter and pay $149/month for a nice server that you can get out of when ever you want.

Yeah there are both positive and negs about co-locating servers... I think it would be fun but then on the other hand to much damn work for pennies There are a few data centers kind of close by in Plano, Dallas area... might see how much they want to put a small server there..

We have colocation space with a data center.
I wouldn't have it any other way

Blacknight, so you do all the hands on?

frattay22: we manage our own equipment as well as providing colo space and dedicated servers to other clients, so yes, we do it all ourselves or through the data center.

How much colo space do you currently have?

Several cabinets with more on the way

If you're not yet sure if web hosting is for you, you'll want to either get a dedicated server, or a reseller account. However, if you know you're in it for the long haul, co-location gives you the flexibility you need to grow.

We co-locate some of our servers, but mainly use dedicated servers. For the money, its sometimes cheaper to get a dedicated server than to co-locate. ($199/month for a dual xeon HP server, vs. spending close to 2 grand, then still paying close to that in monthly fees.) Yes, eventually it would be cheaper, say 1-2 years later, but 1-2 years later the hardware is now obsolete.