IDC knowledge base
Practical guides to data center management, bandwidth billing, remote operations and IDC billing systems.
- Data center
19 inch rack standard: what the 482.6 mm width really measures
In the 19 inch rack standard, 19 inches (482.6 mm) is the equipment panel width, not the cabinet. Rail holes are 465.1 mm apart, the opening is 450.85 mm, cabinets are usually 600 or 800 mm wide, and 1U = 44.45 mm with three holes per U.
- Server rental & colocation
Bare metal vs virtual machine: performance, isolation and licensing compared
A bare metal server is a whole physical machine dedicated to you, provisioned like a cloud instance; a virtual machine is a slice of a host carved out by a hypervisor. No hypervisor means no virtualization overhead, no noisy neighbors and licensing by real cores, at the cost of less elasticity.
- Server operations
What is BMC in server hardware? The out-of-band management chip explained
What is BMC in server hardware? The Baseboard Management Controller is a small computer on the motherboard with its own processor, memory, firmware and network port that runs whenever the server has power. IPMI and Redfish are protocols for talking to it; iDRAC and iLO are vendor names for it.
- Data center
What is CMDB? Configuration items, relationships and what it is for
A CMDB (configuration management database) records what each configuration item is, where it sits, what it connects to and what depends on it. An asset register answers "what do we have"; a CMDB also answers "what breaks if we touch this", the question behind change assessment and troubleshooting.
- Server rental & colocation
Colocation vs dedicated server: five differences and how to choose
With colocation you buy the server, ship it to a data center and pay monthly for space, power and bandwidth; the hardware is yours. With a dedicated server you rent the provider's machine by the month. That difference in ownership drives upfront cost, who fixes failures, flexibility and exit cost.
- Security & compliance
How to prevent DDoS attacks: layered defenses and what to do when you are hit
There is no single fix for DDoS. Host firewall and kernel settings handle small floods, anything above your port speed needs upstream scrubbing, and beyond that a DDoS-protected IP or CDN. Under attack: identify the type, switch to protection, call your provider, preserve evidence.
- Networking & IP
How to fix an IP address conflict: diagnose, trace and prevent
To fix an IP address conflict, find the second MAC address answering for the same IP, look it up in the switch MAC table to locate its port, then correct the misconfigured device. In a data center, an IPAM record for every address and IP source guard on access ports keep it from coming back.
- IDC business & buying guides
Colocation vs cloud: costs, break-even point and how to choose
Colocation vs cloud comes down to what you are buying: colocation gives you rack space, power, bandwidth and whole servers on a monthly or annual contract; cloud gives you virtualized compute billed by the hour. Steady, bandwidth-heavy workloads are cheaper in colocation, spiky ones in the cloud.
- Bandwidth & billing
What is 95th percentile billing? Rules, formula and examples
95th percentile billing is the standard way IDC, CDN and cloud providers charge for bandwidth. It bills the highest sample left after discarding the top 5%, which tolerates occasional spikes while tracking real usage better than a fixed commit.
- IDC business & buying guides
How to choose an IDC billing system: 8 key points on billing, provisioning and reselling
An IDC billing system is a provider's till and ledger: pricing, provisioning, renewal reminders and agent payouts all happen here. Choose the wrong one and every month's reconciliation becomes painful.
- IDC business & buying guides
What does an IDC management system do? 10 questions to ask before you buy
"IDC management system" covers a lot of ground: to some it means data center asset management, to others a sales and billing platform. This guide splits it into its two parts, then lists the questions worth asking one by one.
- Server operations
What is IPMI? A complete guide to remote power, OS install and console
IPMI lets you power a server on and off, see its screen and reinstall it even when it is off, frozen or has no operating system. This guide explains how it works, the commands you will use, and what to watch for when using it at scale in a data center.
- IDC business & buying guides
Server rental management systems: a guide to automating dedicated servers
Renting out dedicated servers sounds simple: the customer pays and you hand over a machine. But from order to delivery and from renewal to reclaim, there are more than a dozen steps. This guide walks through them and shows which system handles each one and what can be automated.
- Data center
What is DCIM software? How it differs from environmental monitoring
DCIM and environmental monitoring are both called data center management systems, but they solve different problems: one tracks what is in the data center and how it is used, the other checks that power and conditions are safe. Knowing the difference helps you choose the right system.
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