Hello everyone,

Are there any companies that offer fully managed servers? What I mean by fully managed is a hosting company that pretty much supports everything, acting as your system admin, and therefore bypassing the need to hire one yourself.

If so, what should I expect in costs for such a service, and are there any reputable companies that you know of or would recommend?

Thank you.

Greetings:

Yes, there are companies that provide complete management of the server including day-to-day server administration tasks.

Yes, there are companies that will proactively take care of the server to the point where you just manage your business.

The investment generally runs several thousand per month on up.

Please note there are a number of "managed hosting" providers who are in the hundreds, but generally they do not provide full management.

Some of the companies that fall into the range of providing fully managed servers include the following:

Divine, Inc.

EDS

Intensive (which is a division of Rackspace.com; please note rackspace.com itself does not provide 100% managed servers).

IBM

Thank you.

I did a quick search for 'managed servers', using google and a few hosting directories (tophosts, hostindex) a few weeks ago and found prices ranging from $189 to over $2000/month. The low end typically offered server management as an optional add-on with a limited # of hours of management available. The real high-end (EDS, Digex) don't even really publish pricing as far as I can tell.

Re: rackspace - what server management does rackspace not offer?

Greetings:

"Re: rackspace - what server management does rackspace not offer?"

* Proactive security patch applications with a guaranteed SLA.

* Database Administration (DBA) work in the areas of SQL server and Oracle.

* Day to day proactive server administration.

* Specialized server monitoring.

* Responding to monitoring alerts.

* List goes on.

Please note buying time and telling them what to do is different than fully managed. It presumes you know what to ask for, and it presumes that you can ask fast enough that it is sort of proactive.

Please note rackspace.com is among the best at what they do. However, their main areas of managed services are managing the network and the hardware.

Thank you.

Hey, Callum! I remember when you left us this spring to get your own reseller/dedicated server. Modwest is growing by leaps and bounds, things are going really great. Thanks!

dynamicnet, thanks for the clarification about rackspace. I always assumed they provided a similar level of dedicated server management to us (applying all security patches, upgrading software, 24/7 monitoring & response), but for a lower price and with more bandwidth... glad to hear we're competitive after all. Or at least that we're in different markets.

Greetings John:

"dynamicnet, thanks for the clarification about rackspace. I always assumed they provided a similar level of dedicated server management to us (applying all security patches, upgrading software, 24/7 monitoring & response)"

They do provide monitoring, but the customer is expected to respond to the monitoring alerts.

They can provide patch application; but the customer has to request it.

They do have 24x7x365 technical support; but the customer has to contact them.

There is a huge difference between proactive and reactive.

Fully managed means the customer should rarely have to contact the provider for support issues.

Thank you.