Why I colocate my hardware

I’ve had a lot of people ask me why I colocate my servers, and this post will explain the reason behind that!

Bandwidth

Where I live currently, we have stable but slow bandwidth, and there isn’t very good upload speed. I like to stream my music off Plex to myself and family – doing that on sub 15mbps network isn’t very reliable, and leaves the network congested at home.

IP Addresses

At my colocation, I’ve got a ridiculous amount of IP addresses available to me. In total, I’ve got three allotments that I’m paying nothing for: /24, /30, and /28. This means, if I need to setup more services on public IPs, I likely won’t run out.

Uptime

I strive for three nines, and when at home with non-redundant power and no reliable generator, this isn’t a viable option.

Noise

These servers aren’t very loud, but when I kick up the load, it’s loud. I’d much rather have a quiet environment when I’m working on the lab, so them being remote allows me to do this.

Security

At the datacenter, there’s on-site staff 24×7 and proactive monitoring, and on-site security. I feel better knowing it’s more secure than the shed my servers used to live in. It’s easy to break into a shed, it’s much harder to break into a datacenter (but not impossible!).

Easy to expand

It’s very easy and cheap to expand if the need arrives, additionally, I don’t have to pay any additional fees for units if they can rest on top of my existing machines, and I’m not metered by power either, the only real expense is the bandwidth allotment. Even at this, I’m contemplating downgrading the bandwidth significantly, but only time will tell if this is worth it!

That’s why I colocate my servers. Feel free to drop questions below and I’d be happy to explain further!