Key Takeaways
- Colocation means placing your own servers in a professional data center instead of keeping them in your office.
- You own and control the hardware; the facility provides space, power, cooling, connectivity and physical security.
- It is not the same as cloud hosting — with colocation, the equipment is still yours.
- Facilities are engineered for continuous operation with redundancy an office simply cannot match.
- Pricing is based on rack space, power draw and bandwidth, for a predictable monthly fee.
- Remote-hands service means someone can physically attend to your equipment without you driving over.
- Southern Arizona has unusually low exposure to the natural disasters that disrupt facilities elsewhere.
- DakotaPro operates a purpose-built colocation facility in Tucson.
What colocation actually is
A colocation facility rents you space for equipment you already own. You supply the servers. The facility supplies everything around them — conditioned power, backup generation, cooling, fire suppression, physical security and network connectivity.
The distinction that confuses people is ownership. With cloud hosting you rent computing capacity and never touch a machine. With colocation the server is yours — you bought it, you configured it, and you can drive over and put your hands on it. What you are renting is the environment.
Space is measured in rack units. One rack unit is a single slot; a full rack is typically 42. Most businesses start with a few units or a quarter rack and grow.
The server closet problem
Most businesses that move to colocation are leaving an office closet, and the reasons are consistent.
Power. A data center runs on conditioned power with battery backup and generators behind it. An office server runs on the same supply as the lights, and goes down with them.
Cooling. Servers generate heat continuously. Office air conditioning is designed for people, and is frequently switched off at night and at weekends — exactly when nobody is there to notice the temperature climbing.
Physical security. In most offices, the server room is a locked door. A data center adds gated access, individually controlled credentials, intrusion alarms and video surveillance.
Connectivity. A facility carries multiple upstream connections from separate providers. If one fails, traffic moves. Your office has one.
Space. Server rooms usually occupy expensive square footage that could be doing something else.
What “highly available” actually means
Facilities advertise uptime figures, and the number only means something if you know what sits behind it. DakotaPro’s Tucson facility is engineered for 99.999% uptime through several independent layers:
- Generator-backed power, so an extended outage does not become a shutdown
- Redundant routing and switching, so no single network device can take the facility down
- Dual internet connections from separate providers
- Three fiber providers with diverse building entrances and redundant fiber rings — meaning a single cut anywhere outside the building does not isolate it
- N+1 environmental controls, so cooling capacity survives a unit failing
Diverse building entrances is the detail worth understanding. Multiple providers entering through the same conduit still share one point of failure; entering the building at different physical points removes it.
Why Southern Arizona suits disaster recovery
This is the argument most Tucson businesses have never considered, and it applies whether or not you are local.
Southern Arizona has very low exposure to hurricanes, and comparatively limited risk from major earthquakes, tornadoes and ice storms — the events that most frequently take data centers offline elsewhere in the country. A facility on the Gulf Coast plans around hurricane season; one in the Midwest plans around tornadoes and ice; one in California plans around seismic risk.
For organizations that need a disaster-recovery site geographically separate from their primary infrastructure, that low-exposure profile is a genuine structural advantage rather than a marketing point.
You keep control of your systems
A common concern is what access the facility has to your data. In a properly run colocation arrangement, the answer is none.
You retain control of your own servers and data, with authorized access to the facility whenever you need it. DakotaPro personnel generally do not require passwords or access to customer systems at all. The relationship is about the environment, not the contents.
Remote hands
The practical limitation of putting equipment anywhere other than down the hall is that sometimes it needs physical attention — a device that needs power-cycling, a console cable connecting, an indicator light checking, a drive replacing.
Remote-hands service covers exactly that. On-site technicians can visually inspect equipment, power-cycle a device, connect a console cable, verify status lights, assist with hardware replacement or carry out other approved work on your behalf. For organizations whose IT staff are in another city — or another state — this often makes the difference between an hour of downtime and a day of it.
It is also why proximity matters. From Tucson, a Phoenix facility is a round trip of most of a working day. A local facility is twenty minutes.
Colocation compared with the alternatives
Against the office closet: you gain infrastructure no single business would build for itself. You give up walking down the hall.
Against cloud: cloud is easier to start and scales instantly, with costs that grow alongside usage. Colocation has a higher entry point and predictable costs afterwards. Businesses with steady, known workloads and existing hardware often find colocation cheaper over three to five years. Businesses with unpredictable demand usually do not.
The common answer is both — core systems on hardware you control, cloud for workloads that spike.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between colocation and cloud hosting?
With colocation you own the servers and rent the space, power, cooling and connectivity around them. With cloud hosting you rent computing capacity on someone else’s hardware. Colocation gives you full control of the equipment and predictable costs; cloud gives faster scaling and no hardware to buy.
How much does colocation cost?
Pricing is built from rack space, power draw and bandwidth rather than server count, and is charged as a predictable monthly fee. Power is usually the largest variable, because two customers renting identical space can draw very different amounts. Ask for a quote based on your actual power requirement.
Is colocation worth it for a small business?
It can be, if you already own servers you depend on. The comparison is not colocation versus nothing — it is colocation versus a closet with office power, office cooling and one internet connection. For a few critical machines, a small colocation footprint is often affordable.
Can I access my servers whenever I need to?
Yes. You own the hardware and retain authorized access to the facility, subject to its security procedures. Remote-hands service also covers physical tasks carried out on your behalf, which is why proximity to the facility is worth weighing when choosing one.
About the Author
This article is brought to you by DakotaPro, a locally owned internet and technology provider serving Tucson and Southern Arizona since 1999.
Ask about a tour of our Tucson data center — dakotapro.biz or (520) 745-3900.
