Guide To Managed Hosting

Over the past few years Managed hosting has become increasing popular as businesses look for higher reliability for their mission critical or high-traffic Web sites.

Managed hosting is different from standard dedicated server hosting in that customers are supplied not only with their own server, but with a full array of management services included. Depending on the hosting provider these additional management services can range from simple OS updates to full management including backup and disaster recovery.

Service Levels
The better service providers will offer 24/7 support as standard. On top of this the number and type of services vary between hosting providers, customers can generally expect to be offered at least three basic tier levels:

Full Management: With full management, the managed hosting provider promises to take care of virtually all server management tasks including monitoring, software installation, server updates and security patches. In addition backup and disaster recovery can usually be purchased as an add-on service. This leaves the customer to focus on their strategic business aims rather than routine maintenance so is often the preferred option.

Standard Management: With a standard management plan, the customer will usually still receive basic server monitoring, and server updates, but the onus is on the customer to make sure the server is performing optimally. This will include making sure the latest security patches have been applied and that the server has not developed any faults. This level of service is ideal if you have technically skilled IT staff that are happy to manage a server as it will usually be at a reduced cost to full management.

Self Management: This is essentially a dedicated server offering. The hosting provider will deliver a server configured to your requirements and hand it over to you. If you opt for a self-management plan, you should have a significant amount of technical expertise on hand. Some services will be made available, but it will be up to your IT staff to handle the installation, configuration and other tasks.

Benefits

The main advantage of managed hosting is that it takes away the technical expertise required in house to manage a server. With the service provider assuming all responsibly of installation, monitoring and maintaining all of the hosting operations, the customer is free to focus on more business oriented matters.

For most customers, particularly SMBs (small to medium sized businesses), managed hosting can therefore lead to substantial cost savings as the cost of in-house IT staff can be prohibitive. SMB's are also spared the high up-front capital expenditure associated with purchasing, deploying and maintaining expensive servers and their associated services. Equally important is that managed hosting gives customers confidence that their vital Web site is getting a high level of technical expertise and attention they require.

Drawbacks

The main disadvantage with Managed hosting's is that it removes the customer from direct control over its web server. This means that key tasks are left in the hands of the service provider and tis can cause problems if the provider doesn't respond as quickly or professionally as circumstances arise. For this reason it is vitally important to choose a respected hosting provider with a good service level guarantee.

The service level guarantee is the provider promise to you for how it will react according to various system failures. The very best providers will offer a 100% availability guarantee on their products which means they guarantee you won't be left without internet connectivity or power due to problems on their infrastructure. There is often a small premium to be paid for such providers but it is often beneficial in the longer term.

Managed hosting is continuing to gain popularity as more businesses deploy increasingly complex Web sites. In addition more and more revenue is generated for companies online and an outage can have serious financial consequences. While not all companies will need or want to take advantage of managed hosting, most organisations are happy to have the burden of responsibility for their web hosting infrastructure looked after by experts.