After searching for a reliable Windows host for a while I have two requests that no one has been able to fill. Maybe you guys can help me out.

1. Does anyone offer a SHARED Hosting solution that is FULLY redundant. Meaning: paired hardware load balancers (preferably F5 BigIP's), multiple application servers replicating content, multiple network connections from end to end. All in a SHARED environment to keep costs down.

(I know this can be done in a single managed server environment, but it is then very expensive.)


2. If I prefer to be hosted at NAC. Who is the best reseller of their infrastructure for Windows/ASP. My main concern would be technical support turn around and knowledge. NAC has great bandwidth and reliability already.

Thx!

Generallly the costs of providing this setup far outweigh the income generated from potential customers.

This is because:
1) The customers who want a fully redundant system will go for a managed cluster.
2) Customers who want this in a shared setup generally aren't willing to pay the costs involved in option 1.
3) There aren't many customers who want this in a shared setup.

Originally posted by ice53ltd
3) There aren't many customers who want this in a shared setup. [/B]
Does this mean there are SOME customers who want this setup, and that therefore this is a market niche waiting to be filled?

You may take a look at http://www.maximumasp.com , they have a load-balanced VPS solution with I believe the F5 BigIP's controlling the stuff.
I have been thinking about this too, but especcially on the Windows platform you end up investing lots of money into hardware and pay license fees for all of your servers. Besides, MaximumASP has taken a large chuck of this market which means it is very hard to enter this market. And you have the find the customers who actually want such a setup :D

Originally posted by garrence
Does this mean there are SOME customers who want this setup, and that therefore this is a market niche waiting to be filled?

From the limited market research we've done we don't believe there are enough potential users who want this type of setup for it to be profitable.

So yes, it is a niche, but hard to fill unless you can somehow get the infrastructure at a low cost.

Since a setup like this usually requires some pretty immense investment, most of the companies offering this are the bigger fish; interland has something like this, as do a few others.

According to this (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=129059) thread, AlwaysWebHosting.com has a setup like this. You might want to ask them about their setup; it might be just what you're looking for.

Personally, I see setups like this being the wave of the future. They offer considerable reliability advantages, but they're far more complicated to set up correctly and require a considerable initial investment.

But then again, I'm working on setting up an environment like this, so maybe I'm a bit biased. :)

Data Return's old shared setup was exactly what you were looking for. Too bad you didn't need it 3 years ago.