Server Rack Rental and Colocation

Server colocation in Istanbul: Equinix infrastructure

Server colocation (rack rental) means housing your company’s own servers and network equipment in a rack at a professional data center. MAV Cloud provides server rack and colocation services in Istanbul on Equinix Istanbul data center infrastructure. Your equipment runs in an environment with redundant power, cooling, physical security and multi-carrier connectivity, and your data stays in Türkiye.

The most common goals when moving from an in-office server room to a data center are eliminating the risk of power and cooling outages, improving connectivity and moving hardware to an environment monitored 24/7. For servers placed in the rack, 24/7 System Monitoring and backup services can be combined under the same contract.

Service assurance: Support requests from rack customers are handled according to the priority levels in the service level agreement: first-response targets of 15 minutes for critical situations, 1 hour for serious performance degradation and 4 hours for partial impact. MAV Cloud’s information security and business continuity management systems are ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO 22301 certified (see our certifications).

What determines colocation pricing?

The cost of server rack rental depends on the space and power used in the rack, together with the scope of services. The following details are clarified before a quote:

• Space: a full rack, half rack or space by rack unit (U).
• Power: the total power consumption of the equipment and the need for redundant (A+B) power feeds.
• Connectivity: bandwidth, number of IP addresses and cross-connect requirements.
• Remote hands: on-site tasks such as cabling, disk replacement and reboots.
• Additional services: monitoring, backup, firewall and managed services.

Rack option	Monthly starting price
1U	From USD 100
Quarter rack	From USD 400
Half rack	From USD 800
Full rack	From USD 1,150

Rack prices do not include electricity; power consumption is billed separately. The final price depends on rack type, power requirement and add-on services and is set in the quote.

Your own server room, colocation or cloud?

If you have already invested in hardware and it still has useful life, colocation is the quickest way to move to data center standards while protecting that investment. If a hardware refresh is approaching, Dedicated Server Rental or moving to a cloud server removes the hardware maintenance burden entirely. The topic is covered in detail in our what is colocation guide.

To estimate kW load per rack, U requirement and the circuit type for A + B feeds from your server and device count, use the rack power and space calculator.

Rack colocation options: 1U, quarter, half and full rack

Rack colocation is sold by space: a single rack unit (1U), a quarter rack, a half rack or a full rack. The right size depends on how many devices need to be housed, how much power they draw and how much room is needed for growth.

A rack unit (U) is a standard height of 1.75 inches (44.45 mm). A full rack is commonly 42U, and quarter and half racks divide that space; the exact usable units vary by data center and are confirmed in the quote. As a generic guide:

Option	What usually fits	Typical use
1U	A single 1U server	A web or application server, a VPN gateway, a backup target
Quarter rack	A few servers plus a switch and firewall	Small businesses moving an office server room
Half rack	Several servers, storage and network devices	Growing infrastructure with virtualization hosts
Full rack	A complete stack with redundant network and storage	Corporate core systems, dense or GPU-heavy hardware

Space is only half of the sizing. Power density often decides the rack type before U count does: a few GPU or high-core servers can need more power than a full rack of lighter devices. Quarter rack colocation is a common starting point because it leaves room for a second server, a switch and a firewall without paying for a full rack. MAV Cloud colocation starts from USD 100 per month for 1U, with electricity billed separately.

How server colocation works, step by step

Server colocation moves company-owned hardware into a data center rack while ownership and administration of the servers stay with the company. The data center provides space, power, cooling, physical security and connectivity. A typical move starts with an inventory of every device, its height in U, power draw and network ports. Power and network design follows: A+B redundant feeds, bandwidth, IP addresses and any cross-connects. A downtime window is then agreed, fresh backups are taken and every cable and disk is labelled. On installation day the hardware is mounted, power and network are cabled and airflow direction is checked. Connectivity, remote management access and services are tested before traffic is switched. After go-live, remote hands handle reboots, cabling and disk swaps on request.

Support requests from rack customers follow the priority levels in the service agreement, with first-response targets of 15 minutes for critical, 1 hour for high, 4 hours for medium and 1 business day for low priority. At MAV Cloud, colocation runs in the Equinix İstanbul data center.

Power, cooling and network in a colocation rack

In most colocation projects power, not space, is the first limit. The power each rack can draw and the redundancy of its feeds shape how densely servers can be packed, and cooling capacity follows the same figure.

Redundant A+B feeds let dual power supply servers keep running if one circuit fails, so devices with a single power supply need a transfer switch or a planned replacement. Because electricity is billed separately from rack rental, measuring real consumption instead of using nameplate values keeps both the circuit choice and the monthly bill realistic. On the network side, the questions are uplink speed (10 Gbps and 25 Gbps options are available), the number of public IP addresses, whether the company brings its own IP space over BGP, and whether cross-connects to carriers or cloud platforms in the same building are needed. Airflow matters too: front-to-back cooled devices mounted in the wrong direction raise inlet temperatures for the whole rack.

To estimate kW per rack, U requirement and A+B circuit type from a device list, use the rack power calculator; the basics are explained in what is colocation.