> I was thinking maybe we could offload non-critical systems to our own colocated servers onsite Definitely have a strategy for cooling the servers in place.

> I was thinking maybe we could offload non-critical systems to our own colocated servers onsite Definitely have a strategy for cooling the servers in place. If you put two dozen servers of a certain type in a room, how much are they going to warm the room up? How are you going to cool the room off in the summer (and other seasons), and what will the temperature of that room be in the summer on Saturday at 6 PM, and will anybody be around on Saturday at 6 PM, or Sunday at 4 AM if needed? If you have a ventless portable air conditioner in the server room (not that I am recommending it, but I have walked into many on-site server rooms with them), does condensation form in it? If it drops condensation into a bottle, who empties the bottle? What do you do if the condensation bottle fills up at 6 AM on a July Saturday and A/C goes off and then the temperature rises through the July day? It's good you are thinking about this and planning this, because I have seen this happen in an unplanned manner many times. Two or three "non-critical" (until they crash) systems are put in a room on-site. Then without much planning, another server is added, and then another. Then it starts to get too hot and a ventless portable air conditioner is put in. Then the condensation bottle fills up and you suddenly have a meltdown in the room as one server after another overheats and goes on the fritz. I have seen this happen at small companies, I have seen this happen at Fortune 1000 companies. So my advice - have heating fully planned out, and be aware that once you set a server room up on-site and its working, other divisions will start wanting to put servers in there, so pre-plan the rooms maximum capacity. I suppose electricity and racking and access and security and such need to be planned out as well. The main problem I have seen is overheating, as people, without planning, keep squeezing just one more server into the room.