New to Managed Server Hosting?

Choosing a dedicated hosting provider that is reliable, secure and gives you the right performance for your business critical applications is likely to be one of the most important decisions you make. The answers below will help you understand Managed Server Hosting and help you make the right choice for your business.

What is Managed Server Hosting?

Managed Server Hosting is a type of hosting that is dedicated to your business and not shared with anyone else. Because the server is devoted solely to your business needs the performance won't be compromised by other users.

The main components of a server are processor power or speed that your server can execute programmes, memory or RAM, or disk space to store your applications and programmes.

You can choose between a familiar Windows interface with Windows Server 2003 or Linux servers with RedHat 4 operating system - the world's most trusted provider of Linux and open source technology.

You'll get complete control of your server making it perfect for hosting larger, more complex pages, cope with large amounts of visitors, or even host hundreds of separate sites. Dedicated hosting is ideal for eCommerce sites or anyone who wants to start their own hosting company, selling on hosting services.

How is it different to shared web hosting?

Shared hosting is very common as it's a simple, low-cost way of publishing a website on the internet. Your website is allotted a set amount of space on a server in return for a set monthly fee. The downside of this method is that you will be sharing this space with lots, often hundreds of other businesses on the same server. This can cause reliability and performance issues if a company uses more than they should and essentially squeeze the resources of the server for the remaining websites. Due to the shared nature of this type of hosting, security can also be compromised by other users of the shared server.

If your website, customer database or email server is critical to the success of your business then shared hosting is not suitable. With a dedicated hosting solution you own the server and don't share your space with other businesses so that you get unparalleled performance and reliability. Your server with be hosted in a secure environment ensuring that your data or website is safe and keeps running no matter what happens.

How can you guarantee 100% availability?

We know how important business critical applications are to the success of your business. That's why we have invested heavily in our technical support teams, data centre, infrastucture and our dedicated hosting services to give you the peace of mind of our 100% uptime Service Level Agreement. Here are just a few of the reasons why we can offer you unparalleled performance and availability.

• Reliable state-of-the-art clustered server farm at Global Switch
• Fully resilient SAN's (Storage Area Network) backed up on a second data centre
• Best of breed infrastructure with N+1 redundancy design for zero downtime
• Unparalleled 100% uptime Service Level Agreement for your peace of mind
• Comprehensive backup system and disaster recovery procedures securing your data
• Tier 3 data centre to keep you running whatever happens

Is the service flexible to change with my business?

Your server requirements will change as your business changes and grows. That's why we offer a scaleable solution that will adapt to your changing business needs, saving you time and money.

• Scaleable solution that will adapt to your changing business needs, saving you money
• Full control over your server including root access to configure the operating system
• Seamless specification upgrades without downtime or the need to migrate data to a new server
• Access your server from any PC, giving access to your business applications

What operating systems can I use?

Windows Managed Servers are based on the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system. The following services are configured by default:

• Internet Information Server (IIS)
• Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) 6.0: www (asp & asp.net 1.1/2.0/3.0),SMTP,FTP (anonymous access disabled)
• Microsoft IIS 6.0 Resource Kit Tools
• Microsoft IIS 6.0 Diagnostic Tools
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP2 Support Tools
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools
• Microsoft Baseline Security Advisor 2.01
• 7-zip
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition with the management studio can be ordered online. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition with the management studio (charge applied) can be ordered at an additional charged by e-mail (customer@Eclipse.net.uk).

Linux Managed Servers are based on the Redhat Enterprise Linux 4 operating system. The following services are configured and available by default:

• Apache Web Server with PHP, Perl and Python support
• Support for secure SSL-based web hosting
• MySQL and PostgreSQL Database
• FTP Server
• Choice of Postfix or Sendmail mail servers

Why our Managed Servers?

We know that choosing the right hosting provider is never easy. We want you to feel at ease with your decision to host your business critical applications with us. That's why we have created our Service Level Agreement (SLA) around those components that matter most to our customers: uptime, support, backup and business continuity.

Specific benefits focus on guaranteed support and reliability:

• business availability - unparalleled 100% uptime Service Level Agreement and four hour fix time guarantee
• complete reliability - state-of-the-art clustered server farm at Global Switch and fully resilient SAN's (Storage Area Network) for ultimate reliability
• extra servers, no extra cost - in the event of a hardware failure your server will automatically reboot onto another piece of hardware
• reassurance - state-of-the-art backup system and disaster recovery procedures that give you the confidence that your information is in safe hands
• confidence - we only use branded, enterprise class hardware from a number of leading vendors
• peace of mind - calls answered in 60 seconds by our UK-based dedicated business support teams
• reduced costs - avoid the cost and complexity of running and maintaining your own server
• reliable and fully secure - virus scanning, spam protection, service maintenance and software upgrades that are centrally managed by us so you don't have to worry
• total control - you’ll have full control over your server including root access to configure the operating system
• seamless specification upgrades - there's no need to migrate data to a new server and no downtime
• flexibility - servers can be configured 'on the fly' to your specification

View all Windows packages and prices	View all Linux packages and prices

Full server control

You'll have full control over your managed server, from anywhere in the world. By logging on securely through any web browser to your managed server's remote console, you can manage every aspect of your server, including:

• performing hardware reboots
• installing software. Your server resources are available exclusively to you, so you can install whatever applications you choose
• 'root' access to the server to configure operating system features to your requirements