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The Lease-vs-Buy Decision That Most IT Teams Get Wrong
Ask an IT manager whether colocation or on-premise is cheaper, and you will get a confident answer in five seconds. Ask them to show their math, and most cannot. The real comparison is not about square footage or kilowatt hours — it is about what happens in years three, four, and five, when on-premise cooling systems need maintenance, colocation cross-connect fees compound, and the hardware refresh cycle resets the playing field.
Here is a five-year comparison using real server configurations, real power numbers, and real pricing — no vendor bias, no hand-waving.
The Scenario: A Mid-Market Deployment
| Параметр | Ценить |
|---|---|
| Server fleet | 8x Dell PowerEdge R760 (2U, 2x Xeon 6454S, 1TB DDR5, 8x 7.68TB NVMe) |
| Rack space | 1 full rack (42U), 16U occupied by servers, 26U for switching, UPS, and patch panels |
| Power draw (measured) | ~4.8 kW peak, ~2.8 kW average per rack |
| Сеть | 2x 100GbE uplinks with BGP, 1 Gbps committed, burstable to 10 Гбит/с |
| Location | Tier III facility, 100 km from headquarters, or equivalent on-premise build |
| Staffing | 0.5 FTE for remote hands (colocation) vs 1.0 FTE (on-premise, includes physical access) |
Год 1: The Setup Costs
| Cost Line | Colocation | On-Premise |
|---|---|---|
| Server hardware (8x R760, configured) | $240,000 | $240,000 |
| Rack space (1 full rack, 5 kW power, Tier III) | $1,800/month | — |
| Facility build-out (HVAC upgrade, raised floor, fire suppression, physical security) | — | $85,000 (one-time) |
| UPS and power distribution (N+1, 10 kVA) | — | $35,000 |
| Cross-connects and initial setup | $3,000 | — |
| Network hardware (switches, SFP+, structured cabling) | $18,000 | $22,000 |
| Год 1 total (excl. shared hardware) | $282,600 | $382,000 |
Colocation wins Year 1 by nearly $100,000 — the on-premise build-out and UPS investment are front-loaded. But this is not the whole story.
Годы 2-5: The Operating Costs
| Annual Cost Line | Colocation | On-Premise |
|---|---|---|
| Rack space + власть | $21,600/год (1 rack, fixed) | — |
| Electricity (at $0.12/kWh) | Included in rack fee | $4,200/год |
| Охлаждение (electricity, ~40% of IT load) | Включено | $1,700/год |
| Пропускная способность (1 Gbps committed, 95th percentile billing) | $800/month ($9,600/год) | $1,200/month ($14,400/год, carrier-grade, SLA-backed) |
| Remote hands / smart hands | $2,400/год (24 incidents) | — |
| Staffing (0.5 vs 1.0 FTE, fully loaded) | $45,000/год | $90,000/год |
| HVAC maintenance contract | — | $8,000/год |
| UPS battery replacement (год 3-4) | — | $12,000 (one-time) |
| Insurance (свойство, business interruption) | $3,000/год | $6,000/год |
| Annual operating total | $81,600 | $124,300 |
Annual operating costs favor colocation by ~$43,000 per year — driven primarily by staffing (0.5 vs 1.0 FTE) and the bundled electricity and cooling that on-premise operators pay separately.
Five-Year Cumulative Comparison
| Год | Colocation (cumulative) | On-Premise (cumulative) | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Год 1 (setup + ops) | $291,600 | $506,300 | Colo saves $214,700 |
| Год 2 | $373,200 | $630,600 | Colo saves $257,400 |
| Год 3 | $454,800 | $754,900 | Colo saves $300,100 |
| Год 4 | $536,400 | $891,200 | Colo saves $354,800 |
| Год 5 (before refresh) | $618,000 | $1,015,500 | Colo saves $397,500 |
At the end of five years, colocation saves approximately $400,000 on a $240,000 server investment — nearly double the hardware cost. The gap widens every year because on-premise staffing, maintenance, and bandwidth costs are recurring and scale with inflation, while colocation contracts lock in pricing for 3-5 year terms.
When On-Premise Wins
Colocation is not always the answer. On-premise makes financial sense when:
- You already own the facility: If the building, cooling, and power infrastructure are already amortized and in good condition, the Year 1 build-out cost disappears from the equation. In that case, on-premise operating costs may beat colocation from Year 1.
- You run more than 5 racks: Colocation pricing scales linearly. On-premise fixed costs (cooling, UPS, staffing) spread across more racks. The crossover point is typically 4-5 full racks — above that, owning the facility becomes the cheaper option.
- Latency is measured in microseconds: High-frequency trading, real-time industrial control, and certain HPC workloads cannot tolerate the 1-5 ms latency of a colocation facility 100 km away. For these, on-premise is not a choice — it is a requirement.
- Data sovereignty or compliance: Some regulated industries (defense, правительство, certain healthcare) require physical control of the data center. Colocation contracts include SLAs, but they do not include jail time for compliance failures.
How Server Hardware Choice Impacts the Equation
The R760 is the right server for this comparison because it is the workhorse of the mid-market — powerful enough to run databases, виртуализация, и вывод ИИ, but not so power-hungry that it tips the colocation power budget. A fleet of XE9680 GPU servers (8x H100 each, ~10 kW per node) would change the math dramatically — colocation power pricing for 10 kW+ racks is a different conversation. For GPU-heavy deployments, on-premise or dedicated cage colocation becomes the more likely answer.
On the other end, consolidating 8x R760 onto 3x R770 nodes (as we covered in our consolidation analysis) reduces the colocation rack footprint from a full rack to a half rack, cutting the Year 1 cost by roughly $80,000 and the annual operating cost by another $10,000. The server you choose changes the colocation math as much as the colocation contract itself.
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