Any co-location facilities worth the effort?

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slayr281

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I've been doing some research on trying to get colo information, and it's not easy. The few that I've contacted have done nothing but turn us off from the idea. How hard is it to order a full cabinet and some basic things like getting them to bring network to it?

In my country, you can get a whole cabinet, they may have say, 20 different carriers, and you just plug in, and the colo provider worries about lines dropping and actively switching and rerouting everything, but it seems with where I've been looking, that's my responsibility... which on the other side of the world, is not an option.

Any helpful advice or suggestions?

Thanks in advance.
 
Thank you for the reply Tony.

In fact, I had them in mind when I was writing the initial post. In my prior dealings with DC/Colo's across the world (America, Europe, SE Asia), vendor/network neutral meant that they'd have 10-20 carriers supplying, and I'd have one or two ports inside the cabinet for simple redundancy policies. My initial response from a Teraco/NAP Africa rep made it seem as if I had to choose the network carriers I wanted, and then strike up conversations and contracts with them. To somebody a whole world away, you can see where there may be some confusion and hesitation with things.

If the DC is managing the power delivery (N+1, 2N, etc..), cooling/fire suppression, physical security, and even little services like remote hands, why not the networking? Did I misunderstand their rep, or did they misunderstand me? If not, is this the local/standard practice that I should be aware of beforehand?

I've been reading of some other companies (some of whom I have contacted) horror stories which and it seems that some are almost trying to scare away business, opting for big contract talk and little in the way of delivering. Most of whom I believe to be the global/worldwide DC/Colo leaders don't operate down there, and I'm just wondering if anybody can help perhaps paint a bigger behind the scenes picture for me.
 
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Teraco operates in a very similar manner to global players like Telehouse. They only provide the space, power and cooling and will refer you to third parties for anything else you might need.

We then have a few ISPs who own their own DCs and have very strict rules that make it difficult to use other providers within their facilities.

It sounds like what you need is someone who provides managed colo in one of the neutral facilities. If you like you can PM and I'll put you in touch with some guys who do this sort of thing.
 
ambo said:
Teraco operates in a very similar manner to global players like Telehouse. They only provide the space, power and cooling and will refer you to third parties for anything else you might need.

We then have a few ISPs who own their own DCs and have very strict rules that make it difficult to use other providers within their facilities.

It sounds like what you need is someone who provides managed colo in one of the neutral facilities. If you like you can PM and I'll put you in touch with some guys who do this sort of thing.
Click to expand...

Thanks much, you'll shortly have a PM.
 
slayr281 said:
I've been doing some research on trying to get colo information, and it's not easy. The few that I've contacted have done nothing but turn us off from the idea. How hard is it to order a full cabinet and some basic things like getting them to bring network to it?

In my country, you can get a whole cabinet, they may have say, 20 different carriers, and you just plug in, and the colo provider worries about lines dropping and actively switching and rerouting everything, but it seems with where I've been looking, that's my responsibility... which on the other side of the world, is not an option.

Any helpful advice or suggestions?

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Hi Slayr281, how many U's do you require and what are your bandwidth requirements?
 
Looking at their website it seems MWEB, IS and Webafrica all host their servers at Teraco. We've not made this move or tested them as yet. But I'm these older ISPs are there for a reason :) Just my opinion.
 
Hostking said:
Looking at their website it seems MWEB, IS and Webafrica all host their servers at Teraco. We've not made this move or tested them as yet. But I'm these older ISPs are there for a reason :) Just my opinion.
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IS most certainly dont host at Teraco, neither do MWEB :)
 
Hostking said:
Looking at their website it seems MWEB, IS and Webafrica all host their servers at Teraco. We've not made this move or tested them as yet. But I'm these older ISPs are there for a reason :) Just my opinion.
Click to expand...

Not sure what website you have gotten your info from but neither IS or Mweb host out of Teraco.
 
Also, thanks to all of you who have responded. Much easier to gather information than trying to fill out 20 different webpage forms, and of all those I've filled out, only two responded, so you can clearly see how little they care.
 
server-admins.net said:
IS provide connectivity services for Teraco clients :)
Have you seen the size of IS's MANY data center's, and compared them to Teraco?

IS > Teraco
Click to expand...

Teraco is more of a "carrier hotel" as they provide NAPAfrica in their JHB, DBN and CPT locations. This allows peering to major international carriers including SAT3/SAFE, Seacom, WACS and EASSy as well mobile carriers including Vodacom, MTN and Cell C; local carriers including Telkom, Neotel and Broadband Infraco and fibre infrastructure provider, Dark Fibre Africa and many more. All these network provides have routers/fibre at Teraco.

Many service providers make use of Teraco racks to house their routers which provide connectivity to local/international peering. Of course they also do co-location with 99.999% SLA, which comes at a cost ;)

Teraco has done well to promote open peering in my opinion :) There's a nice section here "South Africa: Gateway to Africa"
 
I agree, IS doesn't do hosting at Teraco. While they do have racks at Teraco to host their own networking equipment, they will only supply connectivity to others hosting in/at Teraco.

That said, IS's data centers are at least 10 times bigger than Teraco, in both Cape Town and Johannesburg where I have been. That said, you also get CINX/JINX at IS liek you get NapAfrica at Teraco, and IS do allow most carriers into their data centers, unlike Telkom who refuses any connectivity in their data centers except their own. Then again, Telkom's data centers are also in a league of their own.
 
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