The “Big 3” Colocation Monthly Cost Factors

Below are the “Big 3” colocation cost factors that will make up the majority of your monthly bill

Space

Space is the proximity that you will occupy inside of the colocation facility. Space is billed by the amount of rack space you occupy. It can sold in multi 1U, shared, or private half/full rack(s) increments.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is billed by megabits per second (Mbps) circuit (sometimes less) and can be served to your rack’s networking equipment over a variety of mediums (i.e. copper, fiber).

Colocation vendors typically offer two different billing methods: capped and burstable billing.

  • In the capped billing scheme, you are allotted a certain size network connection (i.e. a 5Mbps circuit). If you network activity exceeds the allotted threshold then you can expect to pay an overage penalty.
  • Bustable billing, on the other hand, is billed by sampling your network utilization over a timed interval then billing you based on 95% utilization. Wikipedia offers a more in depth definition. The advantage to this billing method is that you won’t incur charges from overages. However, this option can prove to be more expensive then the capped billing method.

Power>

Power is typically billed in AMPs. The standard rack power drop is between 20 & 30 AMPs.

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