What is colocation?

A colocation center facility is a space that is typically leased by a corporation to store or install servers and other hardware. Colocation data centers normally provide electricity, construction, cooling, bandwidth, and physical protection, while the customer supplies storage and servers.

Colocation Managed Services:

Colocation managed services include system administration, physical hardware assistance, proactive response monitoring, server backups, and network equipment management to standard data center colocation services. You benefit from these managed services by maximizing the value of your existing hardware investments and remaining on a CAPEX model while receiving full support from 24/7/365 expert IT teams in world-class data centers.

The types of managed services offered by UnitedLayer are explained below:

1. Remote Hands: Remote hands is a service that allows colocation data center employees to execute several on-site services for their customers. The data center managed services offered as part of a remote hands vary by provider. Still, data center employees can generally perform IT tasks, including installing new equipment, replacing a failing drive, inspecting equipment status, and even power cycling a server.

Managed Services like remote hands offered by UnitedLayer will give you access to a team of highly trained, in-house, certified technicians available 24x7x365 and can monitor servers remotely through a single pane of glass known as UnityOneCloud.

Explore UnitedLayer’s Remote Hands service here.

2. Smart Hands: Smart Hands managed services include more complex tasks that require someone to be physically present in the colocation site to complete. A few examples are setting up a firewall, managing data center equipment, media and supply management, complex cable configurations, equipment testing, and general troubleshooting.

Smart Hands managed services provided by UnitedLayer allow its customers exclusive onsite technical assistance and troubleshooting services along with hardware installation and decommissioning services, fiber circuit installation to reduce signal errors, device management for remote device configuration, etc.

3. Infrastructure Management: DCIM (Data Center Infrastructure Management) software allows data center operators to execute more efficient operations and better data center infrastructure planning and design. DCIM software can connect information across organizational domains such as Data Center Ops, Facilities, and IT to maximize data center usage.

UnitedLayer’s infrastructure management services help organizations maximize the benefits of a multicloud environment without compromising on availability, performance, and security. Our managed services cover on-premises data centers, UnitedLayer private cloud, and leading public clouds such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Read more: Top Trends That Will Impact Infrastructure Management in 2021.

4. Network Management: Network management is a process of administering, managing, and operating a data network using a network management system. Modern network management systems collect and analyze data regularly and push out configuration changes to improve performance, reliability, and security.

UnitedLayer provides setup and management of network devices like switches and firewall load balancers, including the configuration of these devices to adapt to workloads, security patching, monitoring, alerting, and 24x7x365 support across the globe for every customer.

5. Container Management: A container is a lightweight package that bundles a single application and dependencies, making it easier to develop, deploy, and manage applications in complex IT systems.

Container management is a process of automating container creation, deployment, and scaling. Container management allows for the large-scale addition, replacement, and organization of containers.

UnitedLayer offers configuring, managing, and deployment of containers to enable the deployment of cloud-native applications seamlessly. It includes the setup, installation, and patching of Kubernetes (K8s) pods and containers, monitoring, and performance optimization.

6. IT Estate Assessment: IT Estate management is often known as IT inventory management. It typically involves gathering detailed hardware and software inventory information, which is then utilized to make purchasing and asset use decisions.

Managed Services like IT estate management offered by UnitedLayer will provide you with end-to-end data center assessment of hardware’s end of life (EOL), end of support (EOS), servers, routers, console managers, etc. We also provide IT assets assessments to efficiently migrate to the new data center or a new cloud. This ensures that mission-critical systems can continue to run optimally.

Explore UnitedLayer’s IT Estate Assessment services by clicking here.

7. Database Management: A vast amount of data is generated every second through a wide network of data sources — images, graphs, hypertext, documents, and so on. When legacy systems cannot handle the enormity of data management, databases such as Mysql, which are more agile and up-to-date, come into play. They can handle complex data management needs and provide a variety of database options for different needs and data types.

Database management also refers to the management of Oracle database, SQL database, Mysql database, PostgreSQL database, etc.

Managed Services like database management offered by UnitedLayer enables businesses to reduce data redundancy and improve data integrity and security. Our database experts have the expertise, precision, and updated know-how in database designing, management, and monitoring.

8. Disaster Recovery Solutions: Data Center Disaster Recovery is the process of resuming business operations after an unanticipated event that damages or destroys data, software, or hardware systems.

Most professional businesses use data backup and restore services to secure business-critical data as an integral part of their data center disaster recovery plan. Large professional companies frequently devote a significant percentage of their money to data center disaster recovery plans to avoid potentially crippling revenue losses caused by the inability to conduct operations in the aftermath of a disaster.

UnitedLayer’s disaster recovery managed services solution enables enterprises to be resilient and respond to these critical situations faster and allows them to operate their business without any interruptions.

Learn more about our Disaster recovery solutions here.

9. Cloud Migration: Cloud migration is when a company moves some or all of its data center capabilities to the cloud, usually to run on a cloud service provider’s cloud-based infrastructure.

UnitedLayer’s cloud migration managed services can seamlessly migrate your applications, data, and infrastructure to the cloud. Our experts can help you build your migration strategy, assess your application portfolio, review your cost structure, and identify the best-fit cloud platform for your needs.

10. Cloud Connectivity: Cloud networking is a type of IT infrastructure in which a company’s network capabilities and resources are hosted in a public or private cloud platform, managed in-house or by a service provider, and made available on demand.

Companies can establish a private cloud network using on-premises cloud networking resources, or use public cloud networking services, or a hybrid cloud combination of both.

UnitedConnect® is an advanced interconnection solution to connect your on-premises environment with a private cloud or public cloud (AWS, Microsoft Azure, or GCP) of your choice. Our cloud connectivity solution helps you to reduce your network costs, increase bandwidth throughput, and provide a more consistent network experience than Internet-based connections.

Learn more about UnitedConnect® by clicking here.

11. Data Privacy Management: Data Privacy Management allows enterprises to analyze and continually measure data privacy compliance with multifactor risk scoring, data access, and movement monitoring. Automate risk remediation and cost-effectively report on data subject requests with transparency by automating data protection.

Managed services like data privacy management offered by UnitedLayer will help you comply with data sovereignty and data protection laws applicable to your business in any market globally, including the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Explore UnitedLayer’s Data privacy management here.

12. Security & Compliance: Security as a service (SECaaS) is an outsourced service in which your security is handled and managed by a third party.

Security as a service solutions have grown increasingly popular for corporate infrastructures to ease the in-house security team’s responsibilities, scale security needs as the organization grows, and avoid the costs and maintenance of on-premise alternatives.

Managed services like Security as a Service offered by UnitedLayer will enable you to proactively identify, respond to, and mitigate any security threats against your IT infrastructure. Our comprehensive security management services cater to your on-prem or colocation data centers, managed private cloud, and leading public clouds such as Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Why choose UnitedLayer?

When properly executed, managed services may be highly beneficial to a company, giving them peace of mind that their servers follow the proper procedures to reduce the risk of downtime or data loss to as low as possible. Managed colocation allows you to choose which services and procedures you want to outsource and which you want to keep in-house.

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Disaster recovery solutions supports a company’s ability to maintain its operations after an adverse effect. Today the success of a business is determined by its vast and sustaining clientele and the launching of innovative products. A focus on company resiliency has been added to these corporate growth techniques; that’s where disaster recovery solutions and business continuity comes into the picture. IDC conducted a survey sponsored by Zerto and found that 79% of the companies who surveyed activated a disaster response, 83% experienced data corruption from an attack, and nearly 60% experienced unrecoverable data. They come in handy to help a company figure out various challenges while meeting organizational objectives.

Different methods for disaster recovery for your business

Every organization, from small enterprises to giant corporations, has become increasingly reliant on digital technology to bring in money, offer services, and support clients who always want applications and data to be accessible. The decision makers understand that mission-critical data should always be accessible; even noncritical data has become tremendously important.

There are different ways to approach disaster recovery, here are some of the common ones in the industry:

• Active active disaster recovery: Also known as stretched clustering, in this mode of DR the deployment of a second identical live infrastructure which continually repeats with the first site. The load is synchronously shared between the system and the site, which means that when disasters occur the backup is instantly available. Due to the simplicity of the concept, speed, and ease in which recovery occurs, it is usually the first choice of many decision makers. 
• Active passive disaster recovery: An active-passive DR solution offers an environment that is not intended to be live for IT production until the company declares to be in a disaster. This setup offers a warm site, which basically ensures that core processes are constantly backed up and available instantly when a disaster occurs, but the site may experience some delay. This DR setup creates large initial cost savings on hardware. Often times, businesses will remodel their legacy IT equipment and servers for their DR site to realize even greater financial benefit. 
• Active replicated disaster recovery: Applications that are not mission-critical and need not be recovered instantly can be stored in a cold site in an Active-Replicated setup. Disaster recovery replication should be continuous and continuing because, in the event of a disaster, you must fail over your most recent, mission-critical IT operations to the DR software and hardware as soon as is reasonable. This is the most budget-friendly setup which can be used to store data that may not be accessed often but recovery times will take longer. 

UnitedLayer’s®
DR services enable enterprises to be resilient and respond quickly to these critical situations faster. So that you can operate your business without any interruptions. 

Ways to assess your disaster recovery process

Disaster recovery metrics can be straightforward and self-explanatory or complicated and multidimensional, which essentially means that their definitions might change based on the context in which they are used. There are two common indicators, nevertheless, that can help any business continuity plan:

• Recovery Time Objective (RTO): RTO, which is typically expressed in hours, refers to the longest period of downtime a system will experience. Therefore, if you give your content management system a 24-hour RTO, it means that if it fails at noon on Wednesday, your IT staff must bring it back online by noon on Thursday. This measure is very adaptable because it may be used with different operating systems, applications, and storage activities.
   
• Recovery Point Objective (RPO): RPO establishes the maximum amount of data that a system can lose, usually measured in hours. Consider giving your customer relationship management system a one-hour RPO. This calls for taking backups at least once an hour and stating that you’re only willing to lose data that was generated between the most recent backup and the failure event—a maximum of one hour’s worth of data. Depending on the application, this measure can vary significantly and may have a significant impact on how you restore your systems.

UnitedLayer’s® DR solutions offer solutions for business continuity with sub-minute response times, allowing customers to create unique Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) in accordance with their unique business needs. 

Ensure business continuity for your data with UnitedLayer®

With cloud disaster recovery-as-a-service, you get a lot of advantages such as saving time/capital, more data backup locations, ease of implementation with high reliability, and scalability. Modern network architecture at UnitedLayer® means that any problems or defects will be swiftly found and resolved by our experienced support and managed DR services.

The following is a simple cloud disaster recovery plan that will assist enterprises considering cloud disaster recovery for the first time and are unsure of where to start:

• Get familiar with your infrastructure and its potential risks: It is crucial to consider your IT infrastructure, including your resources, tools, and data. It’s also important to determine where all of this is kept and how much it’s worth. once you’ve resolved this issue. You must now assess the hazards that could have an impact on everything. Natural disasters, data theft, and power outages are just a few examples of risks.
   
• Carry out a Business Impact Analysis: The next item on the list is a business impact analysis. This can help you recognize the constraints on your company’s ability to operate after a crisis. With Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) you will be able to assess this factor.
   
• Conduct a DR plan depending on your RTO and RPO: You may concentrate on creating a system to achieve your DR objectives now that your RPO and RTO have been established. You can use approaches such as backup and restore, pilot light approach, full replication of the cloud, multicloud option, or warm standby to implement your disaster recovery management. To your advantage, you can combine these strategies or employ them solely depending on your company’s needs.
   
• Contact the right cloud partner: After carefully weighing your options, your next move should be to choose a reputable cloud service provider who can assist with the deployment. The disaster recovery (DR) solutions offered by UnitedLayer® are extremely safe and adhere to all the strict compliance regulations, including HIPAA and PCI. Additionally, hardware and software upgrades as well as 24/7/365 support and maintenance are offered for data housed on the UnitedLayer® infrastructure.

These procedures also lessen the probability of emergencies occurring and the risk of data loss, both of which contribute to preserving and even enhancing the organization’s reputation. Learn more about UnitedLayer’s® disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) today and improve your business resiliency disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) today and improve your business resiliency today! 

Data centers are at the heart of the digital transformation movement. According to recently released data from the global data center market, the sector will increase from USD 3.8 billion in 2020 to USD 5.9 billion in 2025. Businesses have opted to secure their data in remote off-site locations owned by third-party colocation providers. The reason is simple – colocation offers companies access to basic facilities including physical building space, power, cooling, physical security, and telco access for WAN support. However, as a business owner, you might have concerns regarding the services available to maintain your data performance and security once they’re housed elsewhere. As per ITIC’s 2021 Hourly Cost of Downtime survey, a single hour of unplanned downtime costs $300,000 or more for 91 percent of mid-sized enterprises. Remote hands services offer remedies in such situations. 

Inner Workings Of Remote Hands Services

Remote hands data center services empower companies to assign IT management and maintenance tasks in a colocation facility to technicians hired by the provider. These are physical services where specialized, always-on-site data center experts maintain servers, cabling, and other owned hardware on your company’s behalf. Remote-hand services can replace or collaborate with staff or outside contractors. It allows customers to use the on-site labor and expertise and ensures that environments are highly optimized, constantly accessible, and robust. 

Data center staff can typically provide IT remote hand services including installing new equipment, replacing a failed drive, verifying the state of equipment, or even cycling a server’s power. However, these services may vary depending on the supplier. When it comes to UnitedLayer®, our remote hand services consist of inventory audit, rack installation, cabling and wiring, shipping, and receiving for equipment/inventorying boxes of the data center. 

Need To Use Remote Hands

• Minimize downtime threat: There will be engineers on-site for troubleshooting situations like server refreshes or reboots, power supply failures, thermal management, and others. Without remote hands, these instances could affect business revenue and the ability to deliver services to customers. For example, when implementing mission-critical activities from servers in a colocation facility, such as ERP software, CRM software, remote collaboration tools, secure payment processing, or eCommerce websites, a response delay (easily brought on by backed-up traffic) is problematic. With remote hands services, experienced, highly skilled data center engineers are on-site around-the-clock; they can respond quickly when an alert is raised and complete scheduled maintenance on time.

Additionally, a deep understanding of the colocation tenant environments enables remote hands teams to optimize hardware more effectively. A value analysis may reveal that a remote hands service is a lower risk, more affordable way for an organization to maintain server uptime and excellent performance, guaranteeing superior performance all the time.

• Manage colocation budget efficiently: Businesses benefit from a specialized, 24/7 service at a lesser cost by being in a shared building, as opposed to having to pay salaries for a maintenance team or suffering premium emergency call-out contractor expenses. 

Your prearranged fee with a colocation provider will cover the costs of maintenance and emergency response. Since colocation tenants continue to be the owners of their own equipment, the only additional costs you will incur when using a remote hands service are those associated with replacement hardware. 

• Secure data based on industry regulations: There are many laws and regulations put in place for the technology industry every now and then. One such law is the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) which says that the data must be secured at all costs. This regulation includes – securing and encrypting data at rest, securing and encrypting data in transit, and not using shared hardware and services.

Securing data also entails protecting the hardware that houses the data, essentially caging your servers. Controlling who gets access to the cages and the facility where they are kept is also necessary. Colocated data centers with remote hands services are used to comply with these laws and regulations.

• Give priority to resources: IT departments maintain corporate operations, and as digital transformation develops, they take up a crucial position at the strategic table. Therefore, instead of regular tasks and firefighting, organizations’ technical teams should concentrate on high-value jobs that contribute to sustainability and competitiveness. A company using colocation services can accomplish this by using remote hands services to handle the day-to-day operations and response.

A colocation remote hands service and a resilient and redundant infrastructure are recommended and necessary. Remote workers will decrease downtime for your organization and save you money. They will also free up in-house IT staff members so they can concentrate on managing important projects, optimizing IT operations, and more. This will enable you to offer greater levels of client service.

Choosing The Remote Hands Way

There is more to remote hands services than just a haphazard line item on an order sheet. It might be a useful service financially and in terms of advantages. You can decide what is ideal for your demands and budget using your own analysis. Once everything is documented, your data center maintenance costs will be more than planned. By utilizing your colocation provider’s on-site engineers and technicians, remote hands can provide a method to lower that cost and refocus your own resources. 

Not all colocation providers offer remote hands services and even the ones that do will have some limitations. UnitedLayer® fills these gaps making sure that you get access to competent engineering and technical resources anywhere on the globe. We also have a complete set of managed services offering that empowers companies to get their hands off non-strategic operational tasks to our team of skilled engineers. Reach out to us today to learn more about how our remote hands service can fit your business needs. 

What is Server Colocation?

In server colocation, the server remains with the clients but it is stored, managed, and controlled by the Managed Service Provider (MSP) or cloud service provider. Modern data centers are typically extensive facilities that house many servers while also providing storage and access to multiple businesses. The global market for server colocation is growing at such a rate that it will nearly double between 2022 and 2025.

Server colocation is similar to dedicated server hosting. In a dedicated server hosting, the server is hosted by a Managed Service Provider (MSP) facility or a data center. However, in server colocation, the server is provided by the customer as the customer’s organization retains the ownership of the server.

One of the most significant advantages of server colocation is reduced costs. Because the client organization does not have to invest in and maintain power backup equipment, it saves a considerable amount of money. Server colocation also enables the client organization to take advantage of an optimal data center environment that is highly scalable to meet the client’s business demands.

What are Server Colocation services?

Data centers that offer server colocation are set up to provide organizations with safe access to private servers. Standard colocation services include leasing server cabinets and cages, which are secured and inaccessible to other colocation clients. Connecting the ISP network and physical IT infrastructure, as well as server status monitoring, are additional services.

The backbone of any corporate network is its servers. Businesses have always had to make considerable hardware investments to implement, operate, and maintain servers that support operations. From email to document storage and everything in between, this hardware powers the company’s everyday operations.

In addition to the direct costs of owning and operating servers, a company faces a host of additional costs. Electric bills to power and cool servers, rent related to the servers’ physical space, equipment maintenance, and IT staff time are just a few examples.

What are the benefits of Server Colocation?

• Cost-Effective: Server colocation can save your business money in terms of running costs and lost productivity from your IT team. The services provider bears the financial cost of maintaining the hardware (and supporting infrastructure), securing the servers with software, and providing physical structures to house the equipment. As a result, your company has more financial flexibility to concentrate on its core operations.With UnitedLayer, you can deploy and manage your existing hardware in our premier Tier-3+ data center facility while still maintaining the level of access, control, and security of a data center that resides entirely on your premises. With our colocation solutions, you can eliminate the hassle and cost of running your own data center while setting yourself up for a future in the cloud.

• Greater Uptime & Security: Compared to having servers in the office, server colocation provides your company with the potential for greater uptime and data security. Because your colocation servers include quality backups and power redundancy, you can be confident that your data will be protected in the event of a data center power outage. To prevent server downtime, many server colocation providers employ load balancers. This means that if one server fails, the network traffic load is distributed across the remaining servers. Your critical services and programs remain operational during this process even if a server fails. In the event of a power outage at your site, your servers will remain operational at the data center.
  UnitedLayer offers a Tier-3+ data center with superior outage protection to avoid any unplanned downtimes. With a 100% uptime guarantee, greater than N+1 architecture for uninterrupted power and cooling, our N+2 redundant chiller configuration and redundant water sources ensure consistent temperatures are maintained throughout our facilities.

• Professional Technical Support: Server colocation provides your company with access to experienced technical support. If you ever have a problem with your servers, an IT professional is always on hand to assist you. These professionals maintain and monitor equipment, respond to employee inquiries, and intervene if a severe problem arises. With UnitedLayer you get a greater level of service and accountability. From master electricians to network engineers, we maintain a diversified and talented team. Our Managed Services are backed by onsite support 24/7/365 and are hosted in SSAE 18 certified data centers.

About Unitedlayer

UnitedLayer provides the Colocation services from one of the largest data centers in San Francisco, USA, at 200 Paul Ave. Our long list of managed services enables enterprises to modernize their infrastructure and improve their responsiveness, resource utilization, scalability, and agility resulting in better customer experience and faster time to market.

With more than two decades of experience and a pool of experts in leading technologies – we enable enterprises, SMB’s, government agencies, and start-ups to reap the maximum benefits from their multicloud investments.

Discover server colocation opportunities for your business by contacting our specialists by clicking here.