
GearHost does all this for you
When we released our CloudServer package, we decided to include a management package. This includes Windows Updates, Backup, Anti-virus, monitoring, and defrag. This decision came from a need by our support department, rather than sales. In support, we were getting requests from customers with servers that had never been updated. For example, a customer had a Windows 2003 server, in 2009, without a single service pack installed.
It wasn’t a lack of tech savvy on our customer’s part, in fact most of them readily admitted they knew the servers was out of date. They simply didn’t have the time to update the server and conduct regular maintenance. It’s in our best interest to make sure all servers are up to date. Regular maintenance on servers helps to keep them running longer and faster. In the end, that makes for happy customers.
It isn’t just updates either, you need to monitor disk space, RAM usage, CPU use, SQL performance, email service, web service, security, etc. It’s all of these little things most customers don’t think of. A server is like a ship at sea, there are a lot of things going on that need to be monitored and maintained to ensure it reaches port. When you charter that boat for a cruise, you aren’t thinking of all the details going into it’s operation, nor should you think about the details of your server. That’s what your hosting company should do.
But be careful about the level of management packages. We don’t offer CloudServers as fully managed, because they aren’t. Our management is actually preventative maintenance, and we have a separate fully managed service for customer that need it. We ensure our customer’s servers are running at peak performance and we make the time late at night to perform those pesky updates and maintenance tasks. Some companies offer this same server as fully managed, leaving you the impression they will handle the setup and config of your server as well. Normally, hosting companies leave these tasks to the customer.
With that said, why would you want to manage your server? In today’s competitive hosting market, almost all providers worth their bandwidth, offer server management. You should be worried about expanding your business, not about the latest service pack.
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