Main features of colocating servers with Advantagecom:
Flexible service options based entirely on your needs Select the equipment that best suits your needs	Rent as many or as few rack units as you need 30 day money back guarantee Pricing begins at $50 monthly
Click for more...   overview & features | pricing | add-ons | order

Colocation In Depth Information
Colocation, by its very nature, is a highly custom service. We expect that nearly every colocation customer will have slightly different needs than our other colocation customers. For this reason, we don't try to force anyone into a specific "plan" or service that may not be an exact fit for your needs.

To that end, we sell colocation separately from data transfer or bandwidth or other services like server monitoring and etc.  You simply choose the amount of space you need, choose how you want to be billed for data transfer or bandwidth, and select any add-on services you need.

Determine your needs
To get started with colocation at Advantagecom, just answer these simple questions.   If you're unsure of the answers, please contact sales@advantagecom.net and we can walk you through the process to find what will work best for you.

1. How much space do I need? 

   We measure this in rack units. We use industry standard 19" wide equipment racks which have 40 usable rack units, after taking into account Advantagecom supplied network and power receptacles which your equipment will plug into.

   If your server or equipment is rack mountable, you probably already know the exact number of rack units required by your equipment. It is usually directly stated by the manufacturer.

   If you don't know how many rack units your equipment needs, it is fairly easy to determine. One rack unit is 1.75" tall, 18" wide (19" including rack mount bracket area), and up to 36" in depth. Measure the outside dimensions of your equipment, not including rack mount brackets.  If it is under 1.75" tall, under 18" wide, and less than 36" in depth, you will need one rack unit.  If your rack mountable equipment is more than 1.75" tall, simply divide the actual height by 1.75 and round up to the next whole number.  The result is the number of rack units you will need.

   If your equipment is not rack mountable, we will supply a shelf upon which to set the equipment inside the rack. For equipment that isn't rack mountable, we use the number of cubic inches used by your equipment to approximate how many rack units will be used. A single rack unit is 1134 cubic inches.  To determine how many cubic inches your equipment uses, multiply the width times the length times the height, in inches. Then, to determine the number of rack units you need, divide the number of cubic inches you need by 1134 and round up to the next whole number.  The result is the number of rack units for which you would be billed.  In general, you will find that rack mountable equipment is much less expensive to colocate because it makes much more efficient use of space than a tower server, for instance.

   If you need more than 40 rack units of space (more than one full equipment rack), you will additionally need to decide whether you want your racks dedicated to your company or shared with other Advantagecom customers.  If the racks are dedicated to your company, there is an additional fee to have them grouped together and segregated from other racks with a lockable cage.

2. What type of equipment rack should I use for my equipment?

You have two choices. An open 2-post rack or a 4-post enclosed rack. The 2-post open racks are more economical, but require that the equipment have mounting brackets that are compatible with a 2-post rack.  For instance, many Dell servers have the option of getting rack mount rails designed for 2-post racks.  These rails allow the server to balance front to back and attach to the rack at the mid-point of the server.  They are also sometimes called center mount rack brackets.  Some equipment cannot be mounted on 2-post racks due to its weight or other engineering considerations.  If the equipment is designed for a 4-post rack, you will need to select that.  If your equipment is not rack mountable, it really is just a matter of preference.  Equipment in a 4-post enclosed rack is generally better protected from accidental button pushes, bumps, scrapes, and other physical activity in the vicinity, though it is not entirely immune.

3. Do I want to pay by the amount of data I transfer or the speed at which the server can be accessed from the Internet?

   If you choose to be billed for data transfer, we will monitor exactly how many gigabytes your equipment transfers to and from the Internet and bill you each month for the total usage from the previous month.   This is great if you want your equipment to have full speed access to the Internet, but the downside is that you could end up with a large unexpected bill if you use a lot more data transfer than you anticipated.  This can sometimes happen with extremely successful advertising, sudden publicity, or a denial of service attack on your server(s) by unscrupulous individuals.

   If you choose to be billed for the speed at which your equipment is connected to the Internet, your billing will be a simple flat monthly rate. Please see the pricing page for details.

Included Colocation Features
Colocation service plans come with the following:

• Initial physical installation and cabling of hardware
• Periodic server reboots by our support staff as necessary and basic connectivity troubleshooting during regular business hours
• One 100Mbit/sec full duplex fast ethernet switch port per rack unit purchased. Gigabit ethernet ports available for applications in which 100Mbit/sec is inadequate.
• Optical backbone connectivity to major IP carriers
• Hundreds of Gigabits per second capacity available to our facility through unlit fiber optics terminated at our facility
• As many IP addresses as you can legitimately justify using ARIN rules
• DNS for the main site on the server (primary and secondary)
• Basic attack firewalling (not dedicated, not customizable)
• Physical space as defined by you.
• Each rack unit includes cooling, remote controllable power outlet, and up to 5 amps of 120V AC electrical service.
• Battery and generator backed up power
• Escorted walk-in access to equipment - great if you're in eastern Washington and need frequent hands-on access to your equipment

Colocation Features Available for an Additional Fee
The following are NOT included with the basic colocation service plans, but may be added for additional cost (see service add-on table for a complete list):

• Hardware to be used in provided space (servers, ethernet hub/switch, tape backup systems, etc.). We provide sources for rack mountable hardware for retail purchase (see below) or you may want to consider purchasing the server of your choice from us. If you don't want to own a server, you can rent a server designed to your specifications from us (see the add-on services table).
• General technical support (see below for included aspects of support)
• DNS entries for sites other than the main site on the server (primary and secondary)
• Additional installation and cabling beyond initial setup
• Dedicated firewalling (fully customizable)
• Data backups
• Additional electrical capacity beyond the included amount

Certain restrictions apply to the usage of the service. We do not allow pornography, anything related to the sending of spam, or IRC clients/servers to be hosted on our network, among other things. Please see the Terms of Service.

Need a custom quote? Have questions?
Need a custom colocation quote or have questions? Please contact our sales staff today.

Next: click here for colocation pricing

General technical support (an add-on service for colocation)
General technical support includes best effort resolution to software, hardware, server configuration, DNS, and network issues encountered in the course of using the colocation service. "Best effort" means that we will do whatever we can to help you resolve the issues, but there will be some things that are not within our realm of knowledge or control that we may not be able to resolve. It should be noted that our areas of expertise are Linux, FreeBSD, and other Unix-like operating systems, though we do have some limited experience with other operating systems in a server environment. General technical support can be provided on an unlimited incident per month basis or on a per incident basis. Server reboots and basic network troubleshooting (pings, traceroutes, backbone routing issues) during business hours are included with the co-location service and do not require the purchase of the technical support add-on service. 

About additional data transfer
Additional data transfer is billed in arrears in full 1GB increments.  For instance, the bill you receive on March 1 would reflect additional data transfer for month of February. Real time data transfer statistics are available upon request to help you manage your bandwidth costs. If you are concerned about variable bills, we can limit your data transfer by placing a bandwidth limit on your server at your request.

Equipment purchases and leasing
For a quote to purchase a rack mountable server, please contact our sales staff. Our volume purchasing with server manufacturers often enables us to provide you a lower price than you could get directly from the manufacturer.  If you're unsure what kind of server you need, contact our sales staff and they'll be glad to work with you to select a server that will suit your needs well.

The equipment you purchase should be rack mountable, if possible. We primarily use Dell for servers and network equipment, but we can also source equipment from HP, IBM, Apple, Cisco, and just about any other well recognized brand.

If you'd rather spread the cost of the equipment out over time, you can still purchase from us, but you'll need to use an equipment lease company to provide financing to you. There are many leasing companies that will be happy to service your needs:

• Yahoo list of computer leasing services

If none of those suit your needs or you'd rather just be referred to a reputable leasing company, contact our sales staff and they'll be glad to give you the contact information of one or more reputable lease companies that we have worked with when obtaining our own equipment.

Click for more...
overview & features | pricing | add-ons | order