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Does your company’s IT staff have the expertise necessary to manage and maintain servers, firewalls, switches, and other equipment in any data center? This includes everything from setting up the machines to installing OS patches to emergency troubleshooting. CeraNet has some of the most experienced staff available and is the only local provider to offer colo for anything from individual servers to multi-rack / cabinets. In addition, we offer full management services either by contract with in-house or as needed.
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How much rack space does your business need? Do you have an individual server? Have a server and a firewall? Need a rack, more than a rack, or a multi-rack cage? CeraNet is one of only a few public data centers in the area that will do individual servers. Does your business require a locked cage or a locked rack? Do you expect space requirements to grow? How much do you anticipate to grow and over what time frame?
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How much bandwidth do your organization’s servers and applications require? CeraNet offers a 10Mbps dedicated port standard with base service, low per Mbps pricing for unmetered traffic, and can run 10Gbps fiber directly to your equipment.
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How close to your company’s office building is the provider’s facility? Is it within driving distance so that your company’s IT staff can easily get to the building? Does your business need a facility that’s close to a major airport? CeraNet is centrally located in the mid-west and is only 10 minutes from a major intercontinental airport (CMH).
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If your company has offices in several locations, can you consider a facility in a less expensive real-estate market? For instance, choosing a provider in the mid-west will get you lower prices than one in San Francisco. Central Ohio has some of the most economical utility, space, and labor costs in USA.
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Is the provider’s colocation facility in a place with few natural threats, such as hurricanes or earthquakes? A provider in California, for instance, should have seismically engineered each facility to withstand earthquakes. Once again, central Ohio has some of the most stable enviornmental conditions in the USA.
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What does the provider’s network look like? Is it a Tier 1 network or does it connect upstream to Tier 1 providers? Does the provider have several network peering relationships with other providers? Does it charge for cross-connect services to access other networks? CeraNet does not charge for cross-connects, offers a Tier 1 network, and only works with the best Tier 1 providers.
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Is the provider carrier-neutral, or is it carrier-specific? A carrier neutral colocation provider will let your company connect to a wide variety of carriers’ networks, while a carrier-specific provider will lock you in with just one carrier. CeraNet offers direct connections with several providers, 3 seperate DMARCs, and premium blended connectivity.
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How does the provider guarantee that your business always gets the bandwidth it pays for in the colocation contract? Does your company get a dedicated circuit, or does it have to share access to the network with other customers? CeraNet provides a dedicated port with guaranteed bandwidth for each customer.
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Are all of the provider’s power, cooling, and other infrastructure components fully redundant? All critical systems are at least n+1 at CeraNet.
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Does the provider have an NOC on-site that monitors the datacenter — including your company’s servers and cables — 24/7/365? CeraNet monitors over 1000 individual items constantly (local and remote monitoring, manual operations and automated monitoring systems).
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What SLAs does the provider offer? CeraNet offers a full 100% uptime guarantee in an industry leading SLA.
- Does the provider offer a “remote-hands” service as part of its support options? Does your business pay extra for this feature or is it included in the basic tech-support package? CeraNet is the only provider in the area that offers full management services with in house staff (not through a third party subcontractor company) well beyond 'remote hands".
- Does the provider offer all of the services that your company needs, such as hosted Exchange, in a bundle for one rate? Can your business get a discount if it signs a contract for longer than one year? CeraNet offers a 5% standard discount on multi-year agreements and a 10% discount for one year payment at a time - both discounts can be applied to the same service.
- Do you think that your company may also want managed hosting services or help as needed at some time in the future? CeraNet is the only local public data center that offers full management services either by contract or as needed
