What is collocated hosting?

[Ritu]

Hello all,
I am looking for good hosting packages. Some providers are suggesting me to choose standard hosting or collocated hosting. But when I asked my friend she said dedicated is also a good option. I am confused, is collocated hosting same as dedicated hosting? If not then what is it?

[Gandhar Kulkarni]

Hello all,
I am looking for good hosting packages. Some providers are suggesting me to choose standard hosting or collocated hosting. But when I asked my friend she said dedicated is also a good option. I am confused, is collocated hosting same as dedicated hosting? If not then what is it?

A colocation or collocated hosting is a data center facility in which a business can rent space for servers and other computing hardware. More commonly, a colo provides the building, cooling, power, bandwidth, physical security that means it serves all the infrastructure while the customer provides servers and storage.

[Pallavi]

Colocation or co-located hosting is a type of hosting in which the privately-owned servers and networking equipment is housed in a third party data centre.

For the companies to 'co-locate' their equipment, have to rent space in a colocation centre. 

With colocation the customer already owns the server and rents the required physical space to house it within a data centre instead of renting space on a server owned by a hosting provider unlike other kinds of hosting.

How does Co-location work?
There is a colocation provider that rents out space in a data centre where customers can install their equipment. But the provider also has to provide the power, bandwidth, IP address and cooling systems that the customers require for successful deployment of their server.

The colocation providers also offer high levels of security, including security guards and even biometric access control. Additionally, data centres also offer backups and UPS devices to secure against outages, including those caused by natural disaster, fire or flooding.

Racks and cabinets are used in order to rent the space. A rack is a standardised frame to mount the equipment and hardware, usually horizontally.

[Krishnan]

In dedicated hosting, you use an exclusive server provided to you by your hosting provider. Which means that you don't own that server but some dedicated resources are fixed for your usage.
Whereas, in collocated hosting, you own the server and are allowed to place it on someone else's rack and share their bandwidth as your own.

[Keeran]

In easy words, I'll say in dedicated hosting you rent a server whereas in collocated hosting you rent a space for your server.

[Ritu]

Thanks, everyone for educating me. I think dedicated hosting will be a good choice for me.