Colocation pricing looks opaque until you understand that it is mostly a power calculation. When trying to decide if colocation is the right solution for your company’s data center needs, it can be hard to know what actually drives the price. To understand these factors, we will first look at what colocation services are and how the power ratings of hardware might impact the price of these services.
What is Colocation?
As business technology needs rise, colocation services are becoming a more popular option for businesses to turn to for their storage needs. In colocation, a company leases space in a data center for its own equipment. The facility supplies power, network bandwidth, and the other systems that keep it running. Generally the data center has no access to a company’s data, since it only provides space for the equipment.
Regulations and security concerns are pushing companies off third-party hardware, so colocation keeps growing. Modern best practice pushes companies to buy their own hardware. Owning it is the only way to verify the security of the data inside. Colocation lets companies own and run their own equipment. The power costs get shared with the data center and its other customers.
Differences in Power Ratings
Electricity can be measured several different ways, depending on the context. Watts and amps, or amperes, are two of the most common measures of electrical power. These two units set your hardware’s power ratings, which in turn set your power needs. Each piece of equipment in your setup will have different power usages listed in their documentation. Manufacturers usually list them in watts or amps. Watts are the real power a device draws while it operates. Amps are the apparent power in the current moving through the system.
Watts is known as real power, as they are the power that performs work or generates heat. Watts measure the rate at which your device consumes energy while running. To determine the watt energy costs of your equipment, you would combine the individual power ratings of each device to figure out the amount of wattage that you would need.
Amperes, traditionally shortened to amps is a measurement of power that functions much differently than the measurement of watts. Amps do not measure power delivered to your equipment directly. They measure the current your circuits, devices and cables draw as a whole. Your amp figure tells the data center how much current your devices will pull. That decides what it can safely power at once. It also decides which connections and lines you need.
Related reading
How Power Needs Shape Colocation Pricing
After discussing the different types of power and what they mean in regards to colocation services it is easy to see that your power needs are an important factor in the pricing of your colocation services. Since colocation prices are based on power needs, it is important that you assess all your equipment to be sure that your system is designed as efficiently as possible. Once you have assessed your equipment and the power that they draw, you will have a clearer picture of how your power needs affect colocation pricing.
Discover how Volico can help you with your Colocation Data Center needs.
• Call: (305) 735-8098
• Chat with a member of our team to discuss which solution best fits your needs.
