In managed hosting, customers can rent equipment such as a dedicated server, memory and network equipment; operating system; and system software. The rented equipment serves only one customer – or “tenant” because the clients are called the architecture of one tenant. What is managed hosting?
Managed hosting is an IT sharing model in which a service provider leases dedicated servers and related equipment to one client and manages these systems on behalf of the client.
What services are covered by managed hosting?
Services offered vary from company to company. However, most service providers divide their services into six layers of management before reaching the client’s business process. These service layers help define what is managed by the customer compared to what will be the owner of the supplier. You can see these six layers of management in the diagram below.
Managed hosting provides support for the operating system and application infrastructure, while unmanaged hosting does not. Over the past few years, many managed hosting providers have increased the scope of support, including application management. For example, Rackspace provides support for applications between SAP, Oracle and MSSQL.
The benefits of managed hosting vary due to differences in owned or leased or licensed hardware and software. However, the basic questions that influence the decision to go to the cloud via managed hosting or other cloud platform never change.
- Does moving to the cloud make business sense?
- What are the investments, expenses and payments?
- How long will the migration / transition take?
- Does your team have the required skills?
- What are the business risks?
- How will this affect existing cost structures?
These are all important questions that need to be answered before deciding whether managed hosting or another cloud platform is right for you.
Do they all manage hosts the same?
Of course, you know the answer is “no”. Some specialize in a specific space. Over the past seven or eight years, we’ve seen many players entering the Managed WordPress hosting game. These companies provide managed offers that pay attention to the details of WordPress, unlike other managed hosts such as Rackspace, which are happy to help you add more RAM, but don’t know much about the applications you run
So when you are looking for a managed host, you want to make sure it offers the right management features you care about. Of course, I can’t give you a checklist because it is different for each person, and really for each website managed. But asking questions in advance (not only about features, but also about technical support) will help you find the right one for you.
One question that I recommend, if it concerns your situation, is the same question that I asked hosting companies (long before joining Liquid Web six months ago):
- What if I need more than one type of managed service?
- What if I need more than one type of offer?
- What if I need different technologies to work together?
Yes, these are three questions, but they hit the heart of one question – are you so specialized that you put me in a box that I can’t leave?
I’ve worked with medium and large clients who not only need a host for their WordPress site, but also need a dedicated image manipulation server. Or they need a video processing server. Or they mainly need PHP / WordPress, but they need a .NET server for something.
Knowing in advance whether the managed host you are talking to can meet all your needs, will help you prepare for your own future.
