Was tempted to title it "Would you go LOCO .." but figured that would be confusing.

There is a colo/datacenter facility very close to where I live and I'm tempted by them all the time. However, I know that the "big guys" have a bit more just due to their massive corporate stature.

I guess if the stats/features are good enough and the price is right (giving a little more for the fact that they are 10 minutes from my house) I should probably call this a no-brainer!

What do you guys think? Is being close a real value add? Or is it just a commodity feature that is nice to have? Do the big guys make you more comfortable? Let us know!

Plexi,

I would suggest to go local, only if they provide you access to the datacenter to fix problems. Normally when you colo a server they will not allow you access to the datacenter because someone else will be managing the integrity of your server. HINT HINT: You may ask yourself why this is? I only live 10 minutes away from the darn thing! Here is the answer to the above. They make more money off of services. The place I colo charges me $75.00 an hours for hands on work, they told me if I were to tell them to turn the servers off and pull them out of the server they would even charge me for that. LOL! I only live an hour away but it is the price you pay when you don't have your own rack in a dc.

If you can purchase your own rack so your not hit with management charges!

Thanks, TheReason. I should have specified that it would be a rack and wouldn't have to pay anybody from their staff to do anything unless I wanted to.

Sounds good! The rack is definitely the way to end up going if you can handle the upfront costs for it. I will be investing into a rack soon at cihost but they don't allow irc traffic so I will just be able to offer standard hosting there! Anyways good luck, let me know how it goes!

We're currently in ThePlanet and have a server at another datacenter as well. Both are fine but I'm beginning to feel less secure that we don't have any internal hands-on people that can verify that the guys are working hard to get something done that we are paying them for (such as a server OS re-install).

That being said, these are the same large companies that get bulk discounts on hardware/software to make other aspects of hosting affordable. For long term viability, I'd go with co-locating at a local datacenter.

Roj

There building a DC right next door to our office. We will have 100% access to it.
I can't wait. If you guys want to colo with me, I will be able to give you guys some great prices! Let me know, because I would like to begin to round up some people interested. There taking forever to build it though . Hopefully be done this summer.

Where is this location?

bowling green KY

Seems that way with everything we want, eh? The more you want it the freakin longer it takes!!! lol

Seriously, sounds great and best of luck when it finally opens and you get some space.