Server management and monitoring
From experience we know that it is very hard to find a company that can efficiently and effectively maintain your cloud infrastructure. From experience we know that there is a disconnect between the high-tech cloud based services and hosted solutions available and the high-touch aspect required to put your mind at ease, to understand what it is that you need and to be able to communicate on a level where the technical jargon actually makes sense.
That is exactly what we do, but the proof as they say is in the pudding and the only way you can "taste" the pudding in this case is by means of reference. For that reason we work very hard to make sure each and every client is at least 100% satisfied with what we do. We have numerous references available and since it would not be nice of us to list their contact details on a public website please contact us, discuss your need and we will point you to some references as close as possible to your particular need.
Why all this before we get tot he technicalities of what we do - well because trust is everything when it comes to guarantees, there is no use in guaranteeing you something if you do not trust us to deliver.
Server management
We take your unmanaged server, servers or clusters - lets call it your "environment" - (whether it is provided by ourselves or someone else) and turn it into a fully managed solution where you need not worry about a thing. We provide a 99.9% uptime guarantee, on-line service level agreement and all the products and services you need to have complete peace of mind 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Why get server management:
- You get a dedicated contact and priority support.
- For a flat fee per month there will be absolutely nothing that will prevent your "environment" and therefore business from running when it should, we focus on that while you focus on what you do best.
- This is the ideal partner to any custom hosting solution.
- There are a lot included in our server management and any custom configuration can be catered for.
Features and guarantees:
- We guarantee that your "environment" remains secure through proper security best practices, proper firewall configuration, maintenance and software security patching on a regular basis.
- Our monitoring solution and management thereof is included in this service free of charge and provides monitoring on a service level, network port level and OS level that captures all kinds of data and also store that data for historical reference.
- Our solution provides us with alerts based on the above data collected - server uptime, process count, performance, service history, hardware resources etc.
- We set-up critical alerts for critical instances - a web server as an example that becomes slow to respond on web requests or if the SQL service on a server that serves SQL goes down - those are seen as critical events. Our support team then receives a SMS to pro-actively resolve any issues even before that server/servers or cluster is critically effected.
- We generally know when there is something wrong at the data centre before the data centre providers do ;)
- 99.9% uptime guarantee for the environment OS and associated services (IIS, Apache, MS SQL, MySQL etc.) dependant on the particular environment and what it serves.
- We guarantee proactive best practice scheduled maintenance of the "environment".
- All labour required to provide the service to you is included in the monthly fee, additional configuration or expansion outside of the existing environment scope is billed separately.
Terms and restrictions:
- All guarantees exclude anything not directly under our control - should the data centre burn down as an example, we cannot guarantee the uptime of the environment in such a case. Should you make use of our cloud backups we do however guarantee the backed up data so even then you will be safe!
- Any guarantees do not include security vulnerabilities or instabilities of third party tools or applications - an example being a developer that uses a framework that has a vulnerability allowing a hacker to hack a website, our measures guarantee that the hacker cannot hack past the website to any other part of the "environment", we however do not do platform and framework updates inside a developer's scope.
- We cannot guarantee an environment if we do not have sole "root" or "administrative" access to it, for that reason we do not share root or administrative level access with the client or third parties on fully managed solutions. A third party can be granted temporary administrative access (for updates or maintenance as an example) but that time will be monitored by us and billed at our normal hourly rates.
- Any work required that is not directly linked to maintaining or providing the services the environment provides is not included in the monthly fee.
- This is a monthly service and can be cancelled with a 30 day written notice.
- "Maintenance windows" are scheduled as follows:
- Linux servers and clusters - every first Tuesday of each month.
- Windows Servers and clusters - every second Tuesday of each month.
- Time window 6PM to 6AM the following morning.
- This is when critical updates will be installed and services restarted if needs be. Your managed environment can be intermittent at this time and based on the amount of environments attended to before your environment it could be that yours is only attended to later during this maintenance window.
- We try to only do anything that will interrupt the services provided by your environment like reboots and service restarts later at night but some patch installations can also effect those things during its install.
- Making use of our world class cloud backup solution is highly recommended but not a requirement - we do not guarantee third party backup solutions or applications but can monitor and maintain them if required.
- If our cloud backup platform is used, we manage and guarantee those backups as part of this service at no additional costs.
- Making use of server provided by us or Hetzner is highly recommended but not a requirement, we do however reserve the right to not manage an environment where we are unable to provide our guarantees due to third party intervention.
- Everything on our site including this service is governed by our terms and conditions.
- To be able to fully manage and guarantee an environment we need to configure it - it is very difficult if not impossible to guarantee someone else work.
What are the costs:
- We also provide a semi managed solution - please see that tab for more details
- A flat fee of R 1 575.00 per server per month is charged - this is based on the time required to completely manage a single server set-up
- Custom solutions with more servers generally require less time per server and therefore cost less per server
- Custom solutions running diverse applications, non standard configuration or unstable software sometimes require more time
- Backup space and licensing for our cloud backup platform is not included in this fee
- Each managed environment will also incur a set-up fee which will be determined and quoted on individually prior to it becoming a managed solution.
Server semi management
Almost like our fully managed service offering, we take a non managed server and apply the critical parts to it so you can focus on your business. There are differences between the semi and fully managed solution, if you are unsure what to take please don't hesitate to call us to discuss your needs and remember - semi management means there is at least someone that looks at your server every now and then - it is better than nothing!
Why get server semi management:
- You get priority support.
- For a flat fee per month the most important parts of your server or cluster infrastructure is taken care of.
- Peace of mind.
Features and guarantees:
- We verify that your "environment" remains secure through proper security best practices, proper firewall configuration, maintenance and software security patching on a regular basis.
- Our monitoring solution is not included in this service, should it be taken (it is highly recommended) management thereof will be included in this service.
- Should our monitoring solution be included, we will set-up critical alerts for critical instances - a web server as an example that becomes slow to respond on web requests or if the SQL service on a server that serves SQL goes down - those are seen as critical events. Our support team then receives a SMS to pro-actively resolve any issues even before that server/servers or cluster is critically effected.
- We guarantee proactive best practice scheduled maintenance of the "environment".
- Any labour required to ensure the uptime and security of the environment apart from the scheduled maintenance and security related duties will be billed at our normal hourly rates on an ad hoc basis.
Terms and restrictions:
- All guarantees exclude anything not directly under our control - should the data centre burn down as an example, we cannot guarantee the uptime of the environment in such a case. Should you make use of our cloud backups we do however guarantee the backed up data so even then you will be safe!
- Any guarantees do not include security vulnerabilities or instabilities of third party tools or applications - an example being a developer that uses a framework that has a vulnerability allowing a hacker to hack a website, our measures guarantee that the hacker cannot hack past the website to any other part of the "environment", we however do not do platform and framework updates inside a developer's scope.
- We can share root or administrative access with the client or third parties as part of this service.
- This is a monthly service and can be cancelled with a 30 day written notice.
- "Maintenance windows" are scheduled as follows:
- Linux servers and clusters - every first Tuesday of each month.
- Windows Servers and clusters - every second Tuesday of each month.
- Time window 6PM to 6AM the following morning.
- This is when critical updates will be installed and services restarted if needs be. Your managed environment can be intermittent at this time and based on the amount of environments attended to before your environment it could be that yours is only attended to later during this maintenance window.
- We try to only do anything that will interrupt the services provided by your environment like reboots and service restarts later at night but some patch installations can also effect those things during its install.
- Making use of our world class cloud backup solution is highly recommended but not a requirement - we do not guarantee third party backup solutions or applications but can monitor and maintain them if required.
- If our cloud backup platform is used, we manage and guarantee those backups as part of this service at no additional costs.
- Making use of server provided by us or Hetzner is highly recommended but not a requirement, we do however reserve the right to not manage an environment where we are unable to provide our guarantees due to third party intervention.
- Everything on our site including this service is governed by our terms and conditions.
What are the costs:
- A flat fee of R 900.00 per server per month is charged - this is based on the time required to perform the required actions
- Custom solutions with more servers generally require less time per server and therefore cost less per server
- Custom solutions running diverse applications, non standard configuration or unstable software sometimes require more time
- Our server monitoring solution is not included in the above fee and it is highly recommended for any server or cluster.
- If a client makes use of our cloud based backup solution we will manage and guarantee those backups at a nominal monthly rate.
- Each semi managed environment will also incur a set-up fee which will be determined and quoted on individually prior to it becoming a semi managed solution.
Monitoring
Our monitoring solution is critical to knowing what your server/servers or cluster (environment) is up to. It consists of our monitoring servers (who itself are also monitored by another server based in the USA) that listen for specific data either by polling a host or by means of a tiny client monitor application installed on the server or workstation. It has a lot of features, here are but a few:
- All data captured is stored against time to be able to generate graphs and provide reports as required.
- Performance data is captured including CPU usage, memory usage, disk usage, network usage etc.
- Uptime statistics for services on the "environment", any service the OS can run can be monitored.
- It is completely cross-platform and can monitor any workstation on server OS, it is non obtrusive, runs in the background and uses minimal system resources.
- We have exceptional gearing towards monitoring "web servers" as it can monitor things like response times, HTTP return codes, HTTPS performance and service availability without actually being installed on the server serving that particular website.
- Log file monitoring is available on any platform or OS - imagine a Windows server that logs disk errors - this will detect it and alert the appropriate contacts.
- Built in "auto heal" functionality that can restart a service or run any special command should a specified predetermined event occur.
- Trigger configuration that will perform a task should a specific criteria be met - as an example "email user a if server a is unreachable for 5 minutes and it is not within the scheduled maintenance times for server a"
- Trigger severity levels with different alert groups and types - as above but "generate SMS to user b if server a remains unavailable for another 10 minutes"
Cost:
- R 50.00 per month per server/workstation.
- Bulk discounts are available for more than 10 clients.
- Once off standard set-up of R 450.00.
- Customised configuration is available at additional cost.
