Most office server rooms were not built as server rooms. They carry equipment the organisation cannot operate without, on a single power feed, behind comfort cooling never rated for continuous full-load operation.
The Adelaide CBD facility is a purpose-built alternative: redundant A+B power, N+1 cooling, 24/7 access to your own locked cabinet, and thirteen carriers already terminating in the building. What such a move involves, and what commonly delays one, is set out below.
Why organisations move out
An office move or lease renewal
Relocating a server room is disruptive. Moving it into a facility once avoids repeating the exercise at the next lease event.
The air conditioning failed
Comfort cooling is not rated for continuous full-load operation, and a failure takes the room with it.
Power that cannot be made redundant
An office circuit cannot practically be given A+B feeds, dedicated transformers and N+1 generators. Past a certain level of dependence, the room cannot be improved enough to be adequate.
Floor space is expensive
A server room occupies commercial floor space at office rates. Releasing it offsets part of the colocation cost.
Security and audit
A room anyone can walk into, with no access log, is difficult to evidence against a security obligation. Individually locked racks, biometric access and a retrievable access report are not.
Connectivity has outgrown the building
Getting a high-capacity circuit into a suburban office is slow and expensive. In a facility the carriers already terminate in, it is a cross connect.
What the room costs you now
The in-house cost is mostly invisible because it sits in other budget lines.
| In-house server room | Colocation | |
|---|---|---|
| Floor space | Commercial office rent, plus the area cooling plant occupies | Included in the rack rate |
| Cooling | Capital cost, servicing, and replacement every several years | N+1 precision cooling, included |
| Power redundancy | UPS purchase plus battery replacement; generators rarely viable | A+B feeds, dual UPS, N+1 generators, included |
| Electricity | Metered to the tenancy, plus the cooling load to remove the heat | Within your kW allocation |
| Fire detection | Building smoke detectors, generally not room-specific | VESDA early smoke detection |
| Physical security | A door key, usually no access record | Biometric and card, logged, CCTV, locked rack |
| Connectivity options | Whatever is available to the building | Thirteen providers by cross connect |
| Monthly cost | Distributed across rent, facilities, power and IT budgets | A single published figure, fixed for the term |
Rack pricing → The cost comparison against cloud rather than against your own room is worked through separately.
What you are moving into
Colocation in the Adelaide CBD.
9RU, 20RU and 42RU with power allocations from 0.5kW to 6kW, in your own electronically locked cabinet. Rack pricing →
1RU, 2RU and 4RU in a shared cabinet, where a server room reduces to one or two boxes. Per-RU colocation →
A+B feeds from dedicated onsite SAPN transformers, dual UPS, N+1 generators and N+1 precision cooling. The facility →
Unescorted access to your own cabinet, with three people inducted free per rack.
A cross connect reaches any of them, so a circuit into the building is not a new build. Carriers →
Technician attendance at the rack, including receiving and racking hardware delivered to the facility. Remote hands →
The link back to your offices
Once the servers are no longer in the building, this link is the path everything depends on.
Dedicated strands between your premises and the data centre. No contention, no imposed ceiling, and consistent latency for applications that were previously on the LAN.
250 Mbps to 100 Gbps point-to-point, Layer 2 or Layer 3, SLA-backed and monitored. Guaranteed bandwidth without operating the fibre yourself.
Unlimited internet is included with every rack, with faster speeds available. Speeds and pricing →
Applications that ran on a LAN behave differently across a contended link, which is why a private path between the sites is usually the answer rather than the office internet service.
Frequently asked questions
-
Most of the in-house cost is buried in other budget lines: floor space at commercial rent, air conditioning and its maintenance, the UPS and its battery replacements, electricity, insurance, and staff time spent on the room. Against that sits a single monthly rack rate.
-
That depends on what stays in the office. If staff are accessing applications that have moved, the link between your site and the rack becomes the path everything depends on, and a shared internet service is usually not the right answer. Dark fibre or managed point-to-point Ethernet from 250 Mbps to 100 Gbps is quoted per requirement.
-
Most office server rooms fit a half rack — 20RU with a 1kW to 3kW allocation. A smaller room, or one that has already been consolidated onto a couple of hosts, often fits a quarter rack at 9RU. Where only one or two devices remain, space is available by the rack unit.
-
Yes. Equipment can be delivered directly to the facility and received on your behalf, with advance notice of the delivery and its contents. Unpacking, racking and cabling is available through remote hands.
More on leaving a server room
Planning a move out of your server room?
Colocation for a server room exit. Tell us the rack size and connectivity you need and we will confirm the cost.