Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Managed Hosting and Services : Quick question about server management companies

[295mfk]

Hi,

All of these well know companies (platinumservermanagement, acunett, touchsupport, etc) have 24x7x365 monitoring with immediate reboot in case of a ping/service failure. But what if the reboot does not solve anything, hard disk failure, for example? Do they then contact the datacenter and ask if there are any hardware problems, maybe even open a support ticket, or do they just notify the customer "we tried to reboot but that didn't help, seems to be a hardware problem, please contact the DC for further assistance"?

I don't want to contact the sales department of those companies, I would like to have replies from people who have actually experienced these issues.
Thanks!

[steven-v]

They will contact YOU and tell you that your server is screwed and YOU have to contact DC for hardware help.

[295mfk]

Well... that sucks. Are they all like that?

So if my server is down with a hardware problem while I'm sleeping, it stays down until I wake up and contact the DC? If the server management company can contact the DC for reboots, they should also contact the DC in case of hardware failures! At least they could open a support ticket like "Server is screwed, reboot doesn't help, please check if there are any hardware/network problems".

[rapta]

There are managed services that will call the DC that hosts the server and open a ticket. Best option is to find a DC that has managed services in house.

[SynergyWorks]

This entirely depends on the level of management and how much your willing to spend. For some clients we provide emergency response to hardware failure and despatch engineers within 30 minutes of failure... for some we just 'notify them'... its entirely dependant on what your budget will stand up to.

[jon-f]

I have a few clients I manage servers for, nothing big. But If there is a hardware problem I am the one to deal with the datacenter. If you do have a managed company some datacneters require you to add them to authorized user or admin. Or just turn over all support center logins, etc:
This being said that is why there are management companies, because on person or few people cannot properly deal with many servers at once. If they say they can they are bsing to make the sale. To give a customer with a busy server attention and take care of all upgrades and security you will have to work on that server at least a few hours a week. Some of these manged services I see are nothing proactive, they just do something when you submit a ticket to them.
Im still pretty new to that business but that is what I see from a lot of management companies.

[sprintserve]

It depends actually on how much you trust them. Generally clients will have to have trust and provide all the logins to the DC as well as relevant delegation / authorizations etc to allow them to act on your behalf. Once you have that down pat, the next thing is you simply need to look for a company that can allow you "escalations". What this mean is that you can define what you want them to do if something goes wrong. i.e. to first do this, follow by that etc. With that, you should not have any issues with your particular scenario.

We have on many occasions helped initiated reloads and restores from backups even before clients reply. A word of caution is to make sure that you do not have a trigger happy company working for you. You don't want your server reloaded because of a small issue that doesn't need it.

[ServerFixIt]

You will find that some management companies will require you to make contact with the DC, while others will do it on your behalf. I would advise you to ask this question to the management companies you are interested in using.

[wbpro]

The best choice is to get a server on a datacenter that can do the management for you, any other management company that does not have access directly to the server is very limited when it comes to hardware problems or if the server becomes unavailable.

[linux-tech]

They will contact YOU and tell you that your server is screwed and YOU have to contact DC for hardware help.

Actually, that is completely wrong in any professional (note: professional) management company's case.

When it comes down to it, you need to provide the proper authority for the management companies to do anything, but the management company can easily assist in resolving this problem with the DC. I've done this many times for many clients.

Best option is to find a DC that has managed services in house.

Actually, that is wrong as well.
Server management isn't just about hardware. it's about knowing exactly what's going on with your server at exactly what time. This is why DC based management just does not work. Unless this DC is receiving an email for each and every client exactly when something happens (someone logs in, brute force attack is blocked, etc), then they are not offering true management services. They are just providing software (and hardware) updates which anyione can do.

The place of a datacenter is to keep thousands of servers alive, and the network running smoothly. If they had to go through emails for all events for those thousands of servers, they would never, ever get their real job done. This is why it is always best to go with a 3rd party management company who knows exactly what is going on.

[osteoarthitis]

what dont you contact the experts you are seeking the services .they are in and they can do it better .hav'nt you see the add about a man with a fever gone to the animal's doctor

[295mfk]

Originally Posted by osteoarthitis

what dont you contact the experts you are seeking the services .they are in and they can do it better .hav'nt you see the add about a man with a fever gone to the animal's doctor

Do you mean to contact the management companies directly instead of asking here? Well, I prefer to ask here because sometimes the replies you get from the sales (aka marketing) reps may not be 100% true. They are trying to make a sale, so they will ocasionally tell you what you want to hear and not the whole truth.

I'm sure we will know companies that promise but don't deliver, and this applies to any other industry, not just the internet. I always ask friends, etc, for their opinions on products that I know they've used.

[sprintserve]

Originally Posted by wbpro

The best choice is to get a server on a datacenter that can do the management for you, any other management company that does not have access directly to the server is very limited when it comes to hardware problems or if the server becomes unavailable.

Generally DC techs are not real system administrators most of the time. While most DC have them, they are usually not 24/7 admins. The skill sets between a system admin and a DC tech is quite different. While there are DCs that actually keep both sets of admins 24/7, they are far and few between.

If a datacenter is not able to respond to a client's (and his nominated sysadmin) request in the event of a hardware failure, they certainly are not going to be proactively fixing it.

[steven-v]

I found many times that some DC's don't have quality 24/7 staff and MY admins have to tell them what to do - better DONT depend on "Remote Hands from DC" - expecially from small, private datacenters - phone usually answered by guys in their ????teens and they having hard time to figure out anything above reboot from console.

Better to find a DC with staff which you know and trust and deal with them directly, even if this cost more then working with company's from different locations.

I would suggest to check serverwizards.com if you are in Chicago/around area (they have their own cage/servers/management), webair.com in NY/NJ area or HE.net in Northern California or Rack911 in Southern California (they do management + servers).

[jon-f]

well some dont but then again some are simply on call. My datacenter rackmounted.com has went to the dc 2-3am in the morning to fix my stuff. And id like to add that when I wanted to upgrade stuff they dont make me get a new server, they take it offline and seat a new cpu or whatever in less then 20 minutes.
And when it dont perform just like I want it or if I can make it overload doing my crazy benchmark tests and stress tests then they go in and reseat it on a bigger motherboard. fan or whatever.
I never seen no dc do that, frankly I have been kicked off servers for less then that.
Im sure they do management to, that would be a 24/7 on call service. I know for a fact ive emailed them with MY screw ups (ie: messed up kernel panicking on reboot etc and within an hour I get an email saying, "its up, holler if you need anything else"
I would much rather manage a server in that datacenter then about any other. Although my company got a new unmetered server through aykhosting and their support is great too.
I have seen some bad dc support before, thank god I dont have to deal with it anymore. I am a high demand customer who is constantly experminting, messing stuff up, hack and dos testing my servers, so any dc that can hang with me and not kick me off is good by me.
The meaning of my post is that some dcs have killer 24/7 support so some are real easy to work with. As far as in house managed verses outside management, as long as the dc is good, helpful, and not jerks there shouldnt be a problem either way.