With colocation your hardware is where you are not. That is the whole point, but it also means you can no longer answer three questions by popping over to look: what is where, what does it use, and how do I get in when I need to? In our customer dashboard the answers live under Colocation, and this article walks through them.
What is where
The misconception is that your rack layout is something you keep track of yourself, in a spreadsheet or in a photo from the last time you were there. That photo is right until the next change, and the change you forget to note down is exactly the one you will be looking for later.
We document every device we install or you install, and the dashboard shows that documentation as it is, updated every hour. A shared rack is drawn with front and rear side by side, one row per unit:
- Your own equipment — with name, type and the units it occupies. A 2U server is shown as one block.
- Occupied — units of other customers. You see that they are taken, not by whom or what is in them.
- Reserved — space that has been promised but is still empty.
- Planned — equipment that has been registered but is not installed yet, drawn dashed and lighter.
The difference between front and rear looks like a detail, until you have a half-depth switch mounted at the rear and someone remotely concludes "U12 is free". If you plan a visit to install something, you see in advance whether the space is there and nobody has to shuffle equipment on site.
What it uses
Below the rack drawing each unit shows which PDU outlets it is connected to and how many kWh it used this month. Power is measured daily and summarised per month. Why measured consumption differs from the sum of your nameplates is covered in Power in the data centre.
That daily measurement is also what keeps power fair when things change. Take an extra unit halfway through the month, or hand one back, and you pay power for the days the unit was yours, not for the whole month. The handover day belongs to the new holder.
If a rack does not have a metered PDU yet, the dashboard says so. Consumption then follows the commitment agreed in advance, with a settlement based on actual readings later.
How you get in
How you arrange access depends on your agreement.
- Independent access — you register yourself with the data centre. For a rack of your own, the overview shows the rack code behind a Show code button: it appears only when you ask for it, not in an e-mail that is still sitting in someone's inbox months later.
- Access through us — under Data centre registration you request a visit: location, start and end time, everyone coming along (yourself included) and, if needed, licence plates for the site.
A request goes through three steps: Requested, Processed (we have registered you with the data centre) and Confirmed (the data centre has confirmed the registration). Only at that last step do you know for sure that your name is at the front desk. That is why you see the difference, instead of a single "sorted" tick.
If you need to get in urgently, call us; access can be arranged within five minutes. What we cannot arrange for you is your identity: everyone coming along must be able to identify themselves at the desk.
If it comes down to a server that has stopped responding, you may not need to go at all. With out-of-band management over WireGuard you reach your server's console even when the operating system no longer does.
Colocation at Xyphen IT
The dashboard comes with every colocation contract, from a few units in a shared rack to a private rack. If you want us to do the hands-on work on site as well, have a look at managed colocation. Need space? Request a proposal or get in touch.