Colocation services let you place your own servers inside a purpose-built data centre and rent the space, power, cooling, connectivity, and physical security that keep them running. You keep control of the hardware. The provider is accountable for the facility. Amanah delivers colocation services from two private suites at 151 Front Street West in Toronto, behind a 99.99% uptime SLA.
This guide covers what is included, what the models cost, how colocation compares to public cloud, and what to check before you sign. Every figure below is a real published number rather than an industry average.
- Colocation services split responsibility cleanly: you own and manage the hardware, the provider is accountable for power, cooling, connectivity, and physical security.
- Amanah’s published colocation pricing runs from $149/month CAD for a single U to $1,999/month CAD for a full 44U rack. Every tier includes 1Gbps unmetered transit, a /29 IPv4 subnet, and DDoS mitigation.
- Carrier neutrality is the biggest differentiator. Amanah’s suites reach 400+ networks through MMR1 and MMR2 and peer directly with TorIX at 100G.
- Canadian data sovereignty is contractual, not a marketing line. Amanah keeps all infrastructure in Ontario with no cross-border transfers, backed by SOC 2 Type II, PIPEDA, and PHIPA.
- AI and GPU workloads now need up to 25kW per rack, which most legacy colocation floors cannot feed. Amanah’s TOR2 suite can.
What are colocation services?
Colocation services are the rental of secured data centre space, power, cooling, network connectivity, and physical protection for hardware you own. The provider delivers a rack, a dedicated circuit backed by UPS and generator, a network port, and controlled floor access. You install and manage the equipment. Amanah hands over a rack with power and network already live, typically within one business day of signing.
That division is what separates colocation from every adjacent model. In public cloud you rent someone else’s compute. In managed hosting or a dedicated server the provider owns the hardware.
In colocation the capital asset stays on your balance sheet and under your control. The facility risk moves to a specialist. Amanah sums up the split on its colocation service at 151 Front Street West as your hardware, our facility.
What is included in colocation services?
Colocation services include physical space, redundant power, mechanical cooling, network connectivity, and multi-layer physical security, with 24/7 facility monitoring. What separates providers is how much of that is included by default rather than billed as an add-on once you are committed. Amanah includes the following with every rack size, from 1U to a full cabinet.
- 1Gbps unmetered port, dedicated to your hardware with no data caps or burst charges. Multi-homed across five carriers and upgradeable to 10, 25, or 100Gbps.
- A /29 IPv4 subnet with five usable addresses, expandable to a /24. IPv6 and BYOIP over BGP available on request.
- Always-on DDoS mitigation, active from day one at no charge and with no setup step.
- N+1 redundant power, UPS plus a diesel generator with on-site fuel, behind a 99.99% uptime SLA.
- Enwave deep lake water cooling, drawn from Lake Ontario at a constant 4°C from 83 metres down, roughly 5 km offshore.
- Multi-layer physical access control, biometric entry, 24/7 CCTV, and on-site security personnel.
Interrogate power and cooling hardest. They are the two things you cannot retrofit later.
Redundancy topology matters more than the headline uptime percentage. The Uptime Institute Tier standard defines Tier III as concurrently maintainable, with redundant distribution paths to the critical environment.
Tier III facilities “require no shutdowns when equipment needs maintenance or replacement.” – Uptime Institute, Tier Classification System
Tiers I and II do require a shutdown for maintenance. So if a provider quotes an uptime number without describing its redundancy paths, the number is unaudited. Amanah’s engineering position on this is set out in its explainer on the Tier III data centre standard.
What types of colocation services can you buy?
Colocation is sold by the space and power you take, from a single rack unit up to a private room. Retail colocation covers per-U through full rack. Wholesale colocation covers cages and suites. Amanah publishes rates for all four retail tiers and prices cages and suites on request, all inside 151 Front Street West.
Pick the tier that fits current draw with roughly 30% headroom. Moving between tiers later means re-cabling.
| Model | Space | Power | Amanah price (CAD/month) | Best fit |
| Per U | 1U lockable | 1 Amp (110V) | $149 | A single focused application or a Canadian point of presence |
| Quarter rack | 10U lockable | 20 Amps (110V) | $749 | Several web applications with room to grow |
| Half rack | 21U lockable | 20 Amps (110V) | $1,299 | Production plus staging and backup targets |
| Full rack | 44U lockable | 2 x 20 Amps (110V) | $1,999 | A complete environment under one lock |
| Multi-rack | Two or more private racks | Per rack, upgradeable | On request | Growth deployments needing adjacent space |
| Private cage | Fenced or walled enclosure | Custom | On request | MSPs and regulated workloads needing their own boundary |
| Private suite | Fully private room | Custom power and cooling | On request | Maximum physical isolation |
Two upgrade paths matter more than rack size. The first is power. Higher amperage, 208V, three-phase, and a B feed for dual-corded hardware are all available on request, and every Amanah add-on is co-terminus with the original order rather than a separate lock-in.
The second is density. GPU, AI, and HPC hardware routinely exceeds what a standard 20A circuit can feed. That is why high density colocation up to 25kW per rack in TOR2, with in-row cooling and hot and cold aisle containment, is a separate product rather than an upgrade. If your roadmap includes model training or inference, confirm density first.
For deployments needing a hard physical boundary rather than a lockable rack, a private cage on the data centre floor gives you dedicated access controls around your own racks.
How much do colocation services cost in Canada?
Colocation pricing in Canada is built from three line items: space in rack units, power in amps at a given voltage, and bandwidth or IP transit. Cross-connects, remote hands, extra IP space, and secondary power feeds bill on top. Amanah’s published entry point is $149/month CAD for 1U and $1,999/month CAD for a full 44U rack, with annual billing saving 10%.
The figure worth scrutinizing is not the monthly rate but what the rate excludes. Providers that price aggressively on space frequently meter bandwidth, charge per cross-connect, or bill remote hands against a mandatory retainer.
Amanah includes 1Gbps unmetered, the /29, and DDoS mitigation at every tier. It charges remote hands from $100/hour with no retainer, and levies no cross-connect fee between its own TOR1 and TOR2 suites. It also beats any comparable quote from another provider at 151 Front Street West by 10%, with a response inside one business day.
To compare quotes accurately, normalize each one to a single figure that includes:
- Space at the same U count.
- Power at the same amperage and voltage, including any B feed.
- Committed bandwidth on the same terms, metered or unmetered.
- Every cross-connect you will actually need, to carriers and to cloud on-ramps.
- An honest estimate of annual remote hands hours.
- Setup, cabling, and any early termination exposure.
Colocation vs cloud: which one fits your workload?
Colocation wins on predictable, sustained workloads where you already own hardware or where egress and compute have become the largest line on the bill. Public cloud wins on bursty, short-lived, or geographically scattered workloads. Most Canadian organizations run both, which is why Amanah treats the interconnect between them as part of the colocation product.
| Consideration | Colocation | Public cloud | Dedicated servers |
| Hardware ownership | You own it | Provider owns it | Provider owns it |
| Cost profile | Capex plus flat monthly | Fully variable opex | Flat monthly opex |
| Cost at sustained load | Lowest | Highest | Moderate |
| Time to first deployment | One business day plus install | Minutes | Hours to days |
| Egress and bandwidth | Unmetered at Amanah | Metered, often the dominant cost | Typically unmetered |
| Hardware specification control | Complete | Instance types only | Provider catalogue |
| Data residency certainty | Contractual and physical | Region dependent | Facility dependent |
| Who patches the OS | You | You | You or provider |
The decision is rarely all or nothing. Teams that have run the numbers on sustained compute are moving steady-state workloads out of cloud and leaving the elastic tiers where they are.
Amanah covers that pattern in its comparison of cloud repatriation against dedicated infrastructure. If you are weighing owning the hardware against renting it in the same building, the trade-offs are in colocation vs dedicated servers.
Managed colocation vs unmanaged colocation: what is the difference?
Unmanaged colocation gives you space, power, cooling, and connectivity, and nothing else. Your team racks the hardware and handles every reboot and disk swap. Managed colocation adds provider labour: receiving and staging shipments, rack-and-stack, cross-connects, reboots, and hardware checks. Amanah sells the labour separately, from $100/hour with no retainer, so you pay for it only when used.
| Factor | Unmanaged colocation | Managed colocation |
| Who racks and cables | Your team, on site | Provider technicians |
| Physical intervention | You travel to the facility | Requested remotely, hourly |
| In-house skill required | High | Low |
| Cost structure | Lower fixed cost | Fixed cost plus labour hours |
| Suits | Teams local to Toronto | Remote, distributed, or offshore teams |
Unbundling is the more honest structure, because a managed tier charges every client for labour most of them will not use. In practice it means a team in London or Singapore can colocate in Toronto without anyone flying in.
Hardware ships to the facility, and Amanah staff receive, stage, rack, cable, and cross-connect it. Organizations that would rather sign once for space, leased hardware, and managed services together can do that through Amanah ALC.
How do colocation services support Canadian data sovereignty?
Colocation gives you something no cloud region can: a verifiable physical address for your data. The hardware sits in a building you can walk into, in a jurisdiction you chose, under a contract that names it. Amanah keeps all infrastructure and operations in Ontario with no cross-border transfers, which removes the transfer question from the compliance conversation entirely.
Three frameworks matter for Canadian infrastructure buyers.
- SOC 2 Type II independently audits a provider’s controls across the five AICPA Trust Services Criteria: security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. Type II covers a sustained audit window rather than a single day, which is why enterprise procurement asks for Type II specifically. Amanah is SOC 2 Type II certified and releases the report under NDA for vendor reviews, as set out in its piece on SOC 2 compliant colocation.
- PIPEDA, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, is Canada’s federal private sector privacy law. It governs how personal information is collected, used, and disclosed in commercial activity.
- PHIPA is Ontario’s provincial legislation covering personal health information. It is the binding framework for hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, and any platform handling patient records in the province.
Amanah documents all three rather than asserting them. The full set of audit reports and frameworks sits on its certifications and compliance page.
If you operate in a regulated sector, ask for the SOC 2 Type II report under NDA before the contract stage, not after.
What should you look for in a colocation provider?
Judge a colocation provider on four things: the connectivity ecosystem in the building, the power and cooling topology, the audit evidence behind its compliance claims, and how it prices what you will need later. Location matters less for latency than the number of networks reachable from the floor. Amanah’s answer to all four is 151 Front Street West, the most densely interconnected building in Canada.
Carrier neutrality is the item most often underweighted. A facility with one or two carriers gives you no leverage and no failover diversity.
Amanah’s suites reach 400+ networks through cross-connects in MMR1 and MMR2, peer directly with TorIX at 100G, and multi-home IP transit across Beanfield, Cogent, Zayo, NetActuate, and TorIX. TorIX is a not-for-profit exchange with over 250 connected organizations, so peering there reaches most Canadian eyeball networks without routing through a US exchange point first. The full carrier mix is on Amanah’s network page.
A practical checklist before signing:
- Networks reachable from the floor. How many carriers, which cloud on-ramps, and what does each cross-connect cost?
- Power topology. N+1 or 2N? UPS runtime? Generator fuel on site, and for how long?
- Cooling method and density ceiling. What is the maximum kW per rack, today, in the suite you would occupy?
- Audit evidence. SOC 2 Type II report available under NDA, and current.
- Physical access controls. Biometrics, CCTV retention, on-site staffing hours, escort policy.
- Growth path. Is adjacent space available, and do you get first right of refusal on it?
- Add-on pricing. Remote hands rate, retainer or not, cross-connect fees, IP costs.
- Contract mechanics. Term, co-terminus add-ons, and what happens at renewal.
The growth question catches teams out most often. Amanah’s multi-rack clients get first right of refusal on adjacent space in TOR2, which is the difference between expanding in place and splitting an environment across two floors.
Check suite availability before anything else. Amanah’s TOR1, in Suite 341 on the third floor, is sold out. New deployments go into TOR2, Suite 616 on the sixth floor. The two are privately interconnected with no cross-connect fee between them.
How does colocation fit a hybrid cloud strategy?
Colocation is the anchor point of a working hybrid architecture. You keep the predictable, data-heavy, compliance-bound tier on hardware you own, and reach cloud services over a private cross-connect rather than the public internet. From any rack at 151 Front Street West, Amanah provisions that link directly, which removes the two failure modes that make hybrid painful: unpredictable latency and unpredictable egress bills.
Being in a carrier-dense building is what makes it practical. Amanah Cloud Connect provides private dedicated links at 1 to 10Gbps into AWS Direct Connect, Azure ExpressRoute, Google Cloud Partner Interconnect, and Cloudflare Network Interconnect. Traffic between your colocated hardware and your cloud estate never touches the public internet.
Three design patterns come up repeatedly:
- Steady state on-premises, burst in cloud. Databases, storage, and baseline compute colocated. Batch jobs, seasonal peaks, and dev environments in cloud.
- Compliance boundary in colocation. Regulated data stays on hardware in Ontario. Presentation and analytics tiers run in cloud, reaching in over a private interconnect.
- Cloud repatriation. Sustained workloads move out of cloud onto owned hardware, with the elastic layer left where it is.
If existing infrastructure needs to move into the building, Amanah supports consolidation, lift-and-shift, and hybrid migrations, with remote hands handling rack-and-stack and cutover at the destination.
Where is colocation demand heading?
Demand is being reshaped by power density rather than floor space. The Canada Energy Regulator reports that data centres consumed roughly 460 TWh globally in 2022, about 1.4 to 1.7% of world electricity, and that AI is expected to drive a cumulative 160% increase in data centre energy use by 2030. Amanah’s TOR2 suite was built for that curve, at up to 25kW per rack.
The Canadian picture is the same shape. Hydro-Québec alone anticipates a 4.1 TWh increase in data centre demand between 2023 and 2032, and the Canada Energy Regulator notes an average ChatGPT query draws roughly ten times the electricity of a Google search.
That creates a real engineering divide, not a marketing one. Feeding 25kW to a single rack requires 208V or three-phase distribution, in-row cooling, and hot and cold aisle containment. Most colocation floors were designed for a fraction of it.
Amanah covers the operational implications for GPU and HPC deployments in its piece on AI workloads meeting colocation.
The second shift is how facilities reject heat. Cooling is the largest non-compute draw in most data centres, so the cooling method sets both the environmental footprint and the cost floor.
Amanah’s suites use Enwave’s deep lake water cooling, which draws 4°C water from 83 metres down in Lake Ontario in place of the mechanical chiller plant a conventional facility runs year-round. As Canadian energy costs and disclosure expectations rise, how a facility cools becomes a procurement question rather than a footnote.
Colocating in Toronto with Amanah
Amanah operates two private suites at 151 Front Street West, Canada’s most connected address. Every rack runs on N+1 power and Enwave lake cooling behind a 99.99% uptime SLA, with TorIX peering at 100G, access to 400+ networks, and SOC 2 Type II, PIPEDA, and PHIPA compliance. Racks in TOR2 are typically live within one business day of signing.
Every plan includes 1Gbps unmetered transit, a /29 subnet, and DDoS mitigation at no extra charge.
Send the rack size. Get the number back tomorrow.
Send your rack size, power draw, and bandwidth requirement, and Amanah will confirm availability in TOR2 and return a quote inside one business day. If you already hold a comparable quote from another provider at 151 Front Street West, the price match beats it by 10%.
Questions about this topic
Colocation services are the rental of data centre space, power, cooling, network connectivity, and physical security for hardware you own. You buy a rack or part of a rack with a dedicated power circuit and a network port. You install and manage the equipment, and the provider is accountable for keeping the facility running. At Amanah that means a rack at 151 Front Street West with 1Gbps unmetered transit, a /29 IPv4 subnet, and DDoS mitigation included, behind a 99.99% uptime SLA.
Pricing is built from space, power, and bandwidth, with cross-connects and remote hands billed separately. Amanah publishes rates in CAD: $149/month for 1U, $749/month for a quarter rack, $1,299/month for a half rack, and $1,999/month for a full 44U rack, with annual billing saving 10%. Cages and suites are priced on request. The number that decides value is what the rate excludes, so always compare quotes with bandwidth, IP space, and cross-connects included.
For predictable, sustained workloads, usually yes, and the gap widens as egress volume grows. Colocation converts a variable cloud bill into a flat monthly facility cost plus hardware you already own. Amanah includes unmetered transit at every tier, which removes egress from the equation entirely. For bursty or short-lived workloads cloud remains cheaper, so most organizations run both and connect them privately.
It can, and unlike a cloud region it is verifiable. Amanah’s infrastructure and operations are entirely in Ontario with no cross-border transfers, which satisfies the residency requirements behind PIPEDA and Ontario’s PHIPA. Amanah is also SOC 2 Type II certified, with the report available under NDA for vendor reviews.
Yes. Remote hands covers receiving and staging your hardware, racking and cabling, cross-connects, reboots, and shipment tracking, so you can ship equipment from anywhere and never attend site. Amanah bills remote hands from $100/hour with no retainer, which suits distributed and offshore teams.
Retail colocation is space bought by the rack unit or the rack, typically from a single U up to a full 44U cabinet, with shared facility infrastructure. Wholesale colocation is space bought as a private cage or a fully private suite with its own boundary, access controls, and often custom power and cooling. Amanah offers both, from a single U at $149/month through to private suites at 151 Front Street West.
A standard Amanah rack includes 20A at 110V, with higher amperage, 208V, three-phase, and a secondary B feed available on request. For GPU, AI, and HPC hardware, Amanah’s TOR2 suite supports high density up to 25kW per rack using in-row cooling and hot and cold aisle containment. Confirm the density ceiling of the specific suite you would occupy, not the building, before committing.