# What is colocation?

Source: https://www.colosolutions.com/answers/what-is-colocation/
Updated: 2026-08-27
Reviewed by: James San Filippo

Colocation is renting space, power, cooling and connectivity in a data center for servers you own and manage yourself. The provider supplies the building and everything that keeps it running; you keep the hardware, the operating systems and the data. Colo Solutions has provided colocation in downtown Orlando since 1997, in cabinets from one-third rack (12RU) to full rack (42RU) and private cages.

## Key figures

- **You provide:** Servers and storage, and you administer them
- **The provider supplies:** Space, power, cooling, physical security, connectivity
- **Cabinet sizes at Colo Solutions:** One-third rack (12RU), full rack (42RU), private cage
- **Operating since:** 1997
- **Redundancy:** N+1 across power, cooling and connectivity

## The short version

Colocation — often shortened to "colo" — means putting **your** equipment in
**someone else's** building.

You buy and own the servers. The provider supplies the rack space, conditioned
and backed-up power, cooling, physical security and network access. You keep
administrative control of everything running on the hardware; the provider never
logs into it.

That boundary is the defining feature, and it is what separates colocation from
both cloud and managed IT.

## How it works in practice

You rent by the cabinet, or a portion of one. A one-third rack gives you 12 rack
units; a full rack gives 42. Larger deployments take a private cage.

Your equipment is delivered and racked, connected to power — usually two feeds,
from separate paths — and to whichever network provider you choose. From then on
you administer it remotely, and visit when hardware needs hands.

The provider is responsible for keeping the environment within specification:
power available, temperature and humidity controlled, and the building secure.

## What a colocation data center provides

- **Redundant power.** Utility feeds, UPS to carry the gap, and generators for
  extended outages. Colo Solutions runs two independent utility feeds, one on the
  Priority 1 hospital grid, with three diesel generators in an N+1 farm.
- **Purpose-built cooling**, with humidity control, monitored continuously.
- **Physical security.** Dual-factor access, a mantrap, uniquely keyed cabinets
  and recorded video.
- **Connectivity.** In a carrier-neutral facility, a choice of carriers reachable
  by cross connect rather than a single provider you are stuck with.
- **Fire detection and suppression**, plus water and environmental monitoring.

## Understanding data center tiers — and a common error

Facilities are often described using the Uptime Institute's four tiers. These are
routinely misquoted as describing how long a site survives a power outage. **They
do not.** The tiers describe redundancy and maintainability:

- **Tier I — Basic capacity.** Single path for power and cooling, no redundant
  components. Maintenance means shutting down.
- **Tier II — Redundant capacity components.** Redundant components, still a
  single distribution path.
- **Tier III — Concurrently maintainable.** Multiple distribution paths, one
  active. Any component can be taken out of service for maintenance without
  shutting down IT equipment.
- **Tier IV — Fault tolerant.** Multiple independent, physically isolated
  systems. Any single failure occurs without impacting IT equipment.

Two things follow. A tier is a **certification** awarded to a specific facility,
so "Tier 3 design" and "Tier 3 certified" are different claims — ask which is
meant. And a higher tier is not automatically better for you: it costs more, and
what most tenants need is redundancy across the components that fail in practice,
which is why many facilities, Colo Solutions included, are built and described as
**N+1**.

## Colocation versus the alternatives

**Versus a server room in your office:** you get infrastructure you would not
build for one company's equipment, and carrier choice you cannot get on a single
commercial street.

**Versus public cloud:** you keep the hardware and the control, and the cost is
predictable rather than usage-metered. You also keep the responsibility — nobody
else is patching those machines.

**Versus managed hosting:** in colocation the equipment is yours to administer.
If you want somebody else accountable for the operating system, that is a
different service.