When it comes to web hosting, there are two types of people: those who want to manage their dedicated hosting server and those who could care less about managing their web hosting solution. Well, this article is for the later. For the web hosting consumers who either don’t have enough time to run a fully managed dedicated server on their own, who don’t know who to run fully managed web hosting by themselves or who just don’t want to run their own managed server hosting.
24 x 7 x 365 Managed Server Service
The first thing you need to look for when searching for fully managed hosting is the hours upon which your managed server hosting provider offers tech support. The general rule of thumb in the web hosting solutions industry is web hosting providers should provide round the clock support to their customers. Regardless of the time or the date, IT support for fully managed web hosting should be – needs to be – 24 x 7 x 365.
Major players in the web hosting industry, like RackSpace Dedicated Hosting and legacy players in the industry like DedicatedNOW, both offer 24 x 7 x 265 fully managed hosting. For prices, contact both companies.
The 80/20 Rules of Fully Managed Hosting
What, you thought 24 x 7 x 365 fully managed dedicated server web hosting support was the only concern for dedicated hosting? Nope. Getting more granular another aspect of managed server hosting to check into is your managed dedicated server providers support tech coverage. You have to make sure your colocation hosting service provider has enough support techs to supply you with the 80/20 rule of fully managed hosting. The 80/20 rules means 80% of the time you will receive tech support from the same IT professional you always deal with. The other 20% of the time, you will receive support from another colocation hosting dedicated support tech on staff.
The logic behind the 80/20 rule is simple. Web hosting solutions want to grow reltionships with their customers and there is no easier avenue to do this than by way of support. By dealing with the same highly trained support tech 80% of the time, customers and companies build relationships and have a full understanding of both sides abilities/needs. As the saying follows, “the more you know…”.
The SLA’s of Fully Managed Web Hosting
The last issue we are going to chat about is a web hosting providers SLA. What is an SLA you ask? An SLA is a Service Level Agreement. The SLA of a web hosting provider, fully managed hosting or unmanaged web hosting, are the terms of which your dedicated server provider operates under. For example, if the SLA of your managed hosting solutions provider states, “on a yearly basis, downtime limits equal 21 minutes” the most your server can be down for is 21 minutes. If per say, you experience more downtime than is allotted for in the web hosting SLA, you have the right to either A) exit from your signed contract or B) recoup the monetary value caused by downtime. Now, why are we bringing up web hosting SLA’s when it comes to fully managed web hosting solutions? The answer is simple. If your web hosting provider has a SLA (for fully managed web hosting you want a service level agreement) for their dedicated server offerings, all promises held within the SLA must be met. Anything not met – bandwidth rates, pricing rates, power requirements, support hours per month etc. – you have the right to seek another managed hosting provider.
More than anything, the SLA is a promise of the services you will receive. Without beating it to death, the SLA is very important and highly needed for fully managed hosting.
So there you have it, 24 x 7 x 365 managed server service, the 80/20 rule of fully managed hosting and the SLA of managed server hosting. When searching for a competent provider, look for these details.