There are no industry standards to designate a good colocation facility, but key areas can help identify one: power, cooling, Internet connection, and service. Good colocation facilities offer reliability through redundancy, maintenance, and service, meaning more uptime for networks and longer equipment lifetimes. Ask questions, be prepared to research answers, and look for the facility that meets the needs of their customers.

Power A good colocation facility will have a power system with backup units not only for the generator, but also the universal power supplies (UPS) and transfer switches or circuit breakers.

• UPSs run the servers while power switches from regular electricity to generators. Regardless of quality, UPSs fail regularly, so facilities must have multiple UPSs running sufficiently below capacity to manage the total server load if one fails. Transfer switches or circuit breakers switch power to the generators.
• Circuit breakers are more dependable than transfer switches, but it is important to have a backup for either system so that power can be transferred regardless of equipment failure.
• As the primary source of power during an outage, the generator must be large enough to handle 1.5 times the total building load. If there are multiple generators, the colocation facility must be able to transfer the load between generators, otherwise a failure could disable all generators.