A good colo provider can hook your machine to a masterswitch, serial console and put a PXE server on the LAN (or just stick an ubuntu livecd into the drive) so you can solve many problems on your own without relying on IPMI or asking remote hands to help you.
You'll still need a plan to deal with things that you can't do over a virtual console or IPMI and PXE. Replacing failed hard drives, power supplies, DIMMs, etc.
