Mark2
0
One of my clients has been with one particular hosting company for some time, which I recommended and continue to recommend. However they are expensive and the client is tentatively looking at cutting some costs.
Need firewall, 1 x Web Server, 1 x MS SQL Server, both at least RAID1, and onsite and offsite backups.
Doesn't sound like much of a challenge. You can get this for a couple of hundred a month. That is far less than the client currently pays. However the cheaper providers tend not to supply hardware firewalls and leave you to rely on the Windows one which I'm not prepared to sanction, nor the use of cheap "whitebox" machines.
The client's app is business critical though not enough to go for a High Availability solution (as in: redundant servers and kit on standby - at least, not at these prices)
Network uptime has been 100% for years, customer service is very good. Crucially, as a "Managed Provider" you're able to get some help if you need it - I rarely do, since I work for the client and am a fairly experienced server admin, but the provider has been able to help out with a few OS things in the past and we'd want that support, not "it's your server, we just rent it to you, so do it yourself". That is the approach I take for two cheap dev servers I run where nothing is critical.
Although I'm a developer with server admin capabilities I do not offer hosting to my clients, they take that themselves with the data centre and pay the bills. Hosting is too much of a pain in the backside overhead to deal with at my level relative to the profit it returns and the 24/7 nature of it so I'm a bit out of the loop.
Added to that, all the providers I'm coming across do not quote "menu pricing", which I find irritating. I have no idea of what they charge unless I ring them all up.
Where should I be looking for business critical managed hosting with a provider who is not a reseller?
Need firewall, 1 x Web Server, 1 x MS SQL Server, both at least RAID1, and onsite and offsite backups.
Doesn't sound like much of a challenge. You can get this for a couple of hundred a month. That is far less than the client currently pays. However the cheaper providers tend not to supply hardware firewalls and leave you to rely on the Windows one which I'm not prepared to sanction, nor the use of cheap "whitebox" machines.
The client's app is business critical though not enough to go for a High Availability solution (as in: redundant servers and kit on standby - at least, not at these prices)
Network uptime has been 100% for years, customer service is very good. Crucially, as a "Managed Provider" you're able to get some help if you need it - I rarely do, since I work for the client and am a fairly experienced server admin, but the provider has been able to help out with a few OS things in the past and we'd want that support, not "it's your server, we just rent it to you, so do it yourself". That is the approach I take for two cheap dev servers I run where nothing is critical.
Although I'm a developer with server admin capabilities I do not offer hosting to my clients, they take that themselves with the data centre and pay the bills. Hosting is too much of a pain in the backside overhead to deal with at my level relative to the profit it returns and the 24/7 nature of it so I'm a bit out of the loop.
Added to that, all the providers I'm coming across do not quote "menu pricing", which I find irritating. I have no idea of what they charge unless I ring them all up.
Where should I be looking for business critical managed hosting with a provider who is not a reseller?