Managed colocation: your hardware, our responsibility.
Colocation with management, up to and including the firmware.
With standard colocation, everything inside the rack remains your problem. Managed colocation takes that over: 24/7 monitoring down to component level, replacement of failed parts and firmware maintenance — for a fixed monthly fee, while the equipment stays yours.
Colocation with management — without handing over your hardware.
Most colocation ends at the edge of the rack: power, cooling and network are covered; everything inside is handled through remote hands requests — per incident, at an hourly rate. That works as long as someone on your team reads alerts, orders spares and drives to the data centre. Often that person does not exist.
Managed colocation puts the line at the hardware/software boundary. Everything on the hardware side — installing, cabling, monitoring, replacing parts, updating firmware — is permanently our job, in the BIT data centres in Ede and the Greenhouse Tier 3 data centre in Naaldwijk. Whatever runs on the servers stays yours. On a hardware alert we respond within one hour; the repair window is agreed per situation — opening up a production server mid-day is rarely the right answer.
Colocation, managed colocation or managed server.
Three models, three points where responsibility changes hands. Managed colocation puts the boundary at the firmware: everything below it is ours, everything above it is yours.
| Colocation | Managed colocation | Managed server | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ownership of the hardware | you | you | the provider |
| Rack & stack, cabling | you, or remote hands per request | us | the provider |
| Hardware monitoring and replacement | you | us — 24/7, via IPMI | the provider |
| Firmware and BIOS | you | us | the provider |
| OS and applications | you | you — or with us as a separate service | usually the provider |
| Who you call about a failed disk | the data centre, for remote hands on your instructions | no one — we saw it first and call you | the provider |
Hardware management as part of the service, not loose tickets.
Managed colocation suits organisations that:
- Want to run their own hardware, without a team to read alerts and drive to Ede or Naaldwijk
- Are done with separate remote hands invoices after every hardware incident
- Must remain the owner of the equipment for compliance or depreciation reasons
- Have OS management under control — and only want the physical layer off their plate
Frequently asked questions about managed colocation
What is managed colocation?
Colocation where the provider also manages the hardware: monitoring, replacement of failed parts, firmware updates and the physical work in the rack, for a fixed monthly fee. Our boundary sits at the firmware: below it is our responsibility; above it — OS, applications, data — is yours.
What is the difference between remote hands and smart hands?
There is no standardised definition. As we use them: remote hands is reactive — you file a request, someone carries it out. Smart hands is what managed colocation includes: we spot issues ourselves, diagnose via IPMI and act without being asked. Hardware incidents are never billed by the hour.
Who supplies the spare parts?
Your choice: your own spares in the rack (we track and fit them), or our stock of common parts: disks, PSUs, RAM. Combining works too — your spares for unusual hardware, ours for the rest.
Do I remain the owner of my equipment?
Yes, always. You buy, own and depreciate; we manage. That also holds for removals and decommissioning — you get everything back, or we dispose of it on your instructions.
How is this different from a dedicated or managed server?
With a dedicated or managed server you rent hardware from the provider, who chooses the configuration and owns the machines. With managed colocation the equipment is yours — you decide brand, configuration and depreciation, we keep it running. That matters when configurations are unusual or ownership is required.
Do you also manage the OS?
Not within managed colocation — the service deliberately stops at the firmware, so it is clear who is responsible for what. But we are Linux specialists: we gladly take on OS installation, patching and management as a separate service alongside it. You decide how much you hand over.
Your hardware, our problem.
Tell us what needs to go in the rack and how critical it is — we will work out a proposal with a fixed monthly fee. Colocation pricing itself is covered in the knowledge base.