The whole category in one page.
WHAT YOU ARE ACTUALLY BUYING WITH HOSTING
The facility as much as the server: continuous power, controlled cooling, multiple network routes, physical security, and people present at all times.
POWER IS THE BINDING CONSTRAINT, NOT SPACE
Racks run out of power long before they run out of units, and every watt consumed becomes heat that costs further energy to remove.
Removing equipment that is powered and doing nothing saves twice, and there is always more of it than expected.
REDUNDANCY MUST BE GENUINELY DIVERSE
Two feeds sharing an upstream component, two fibres in one duct, two providers on one submarine cable, both switches on one power feed — none of those is redundancy.
The commonest version of this error: both power supplies of a server plugged into the same feed.
BACKUP SYSTEMS FAIL BECAUSE THEY ARE RARELY EXERCISED
Ask how often generators run under full load, when batteries were last tested, and whether cooling is on generator power.
Power restored without cooling buys very little time.
ASK FOR HISTORY, NOT COMMITMENTS
Uptime figures describe intent. The actual outage record describes performance, and service credits do not compensate lost trading.
LOCATION DETERMINES SPEED AND RESILIENCE
A locally hosted site is noticeably faster for local visitors, and stays reachable to them during an international cable fault.
WHAT REMAINS YOURS UNDER EVERY ARRANGEMENT
Your data, your access, your configuration, and your own backups.
A provider's backups protect against their failures, not your deletions.
