How to Choose a Colocation Provider: 8 Questions to Ask

Choosing the wrong colocation provider is expensive and difficult to undo. These eight questions — asked before you sign anything — separate providers who can meet enterprise requirements from those who cannot.

The 8 Questions

1. Is the facility carrier-neutral? A good answer names 15+ on-net carriers and available cloud on-ramps (AWS Direct Connect, Azure ExpressRoute).
2. What are the power redundancy levels? Verify UPS, generator, and PDU redundancy separately. N+1 is standard; 2N is required for mission-critical workloads.
3. What physical security certifications does the facility hold? SOC 2 Type II is the baseline. Ask for the full audit report, not a summary.
4. What are the SLA terms and penalty structure? Credit caps at 5% MRC are meaningless. Push for 25–50% caps for multi-hour outages.
5. What is the remote hands response time and scope? Commit to specific times in writing. Understand the difference between remote hands and smart hands tiers.
6. How transparent is the pricing? Request a fully itemized quote and the complete overage rate card before signing.
7. Can they provide references and case studies? Speak with current customers in your industry. Ask about the last significant incident.
8. Does the location fit your workload strategy? Latency, disaster risk, power cost, carrier access, and regulatory jurisdiction all depend on market selection.

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