web hosting

Managed or Unmanaged?

Managed or Unmanaged?

Posted on by admin

For people who are playing around in the virtual private or dedicated server world, the words “managed” and “unmanaged” must be very familiar. Yes it is the add-on service from web hosting provider especially for virtual and dedicated. In my opinion which i learned from purchasing a few virtual private server both managed and unmanaged recently, i can explain that managed service is the provider will take care all of your server management such as basic server related installation, modules, and security hardening. Managed service also includes updates, patches, and monitoring. Those are basic service that has to be provided from managed service. Furthermore, besides basic services, some provider also include 3rd party software installation and consultation for customer’s own software issue.

Now we are going to talk about the price. Managed service’s price ranged from $15 to infinite (i don’t know how much is the highest cost for managed service). There are providers which include managed service within their packages and also separated or add-on service if we purchase their virtual private or dedicated server. Here is the funny part, there are providers who have two kinds of package, for example: the smallest unmanaged package which costs $10 and managed plus free WHM/cPanel for $25. One day i asked one of them whether i can purchase the WHM/cPanel managed package without managed service to reduce the cost, and they said they cannot do that. I wonder why do they not allowed me to purchase with option like that, so i asked another provider who has two kind of packages alike, and the provider said that yes i can, but it will costs $22. Wow, if we calculate that, managed service only costs $3, that is very cheap. I don’t know whether it was very cheap or just a marketing strategy to pull in more customer with the words “Free WHM/cPanel”, because so far i know WHM/cPanel retail price for virtual private server is $15 and $25 for dedicated server, lol. So the conclusion is they don’t include WHM/cPanel for free in the package, but yes managed service is free, because they have to pay for WHM/cPanel license while on the other side managed service can be done by their own human resouce without responsibility to pay for self resource license – i don’t even know whether if it is exist or not -.

Moreover about managed service, it is very different from premium service, there are lots of provider misguided in the implementation.

“You are just paying five bucks for this vps, what can you expect? Fast speed? Good uptime? Great performance? Quick support response?”

That statement are totally not smart. We are paying five bucks for the service you advertised. Blahblahblah space, blahblah data transfer, and blahblahblah port speed, so we deserve to get those blahblahblah. If you advertised blahblahblah without the features like “We don’t guarantee the performance, we don’t guarantee for the uptime, we don’t guarantee for the support”, so please do not saying something like the quote above. The package should be only divided by server spec like space, data transfer, port speed, or another technical specification, not bad quality server or thousand years support response. Customer support for managed and unmanaged service only distinguished by the question level. Basic questions or requests like billing, service issues, add-on services, or general questions like that has to be answered with good response time, unless if the questions or requests are about install or update the server, that is managed service and the provider has the right not to answer or offering the customer to upgrade to the managed package. But if the illustration above is really happened, that should be exist between ordinary package and premium package with faster support response privilege. Remember, managed and premium is two different word with two different meaning.

So which one will you choose? Managed is good for someone who doesn’t really experienced with server but have an important purpose of the server, so it will be comparable with the extra money for managed service. Anyway how do we know how to choose the good managed service provider? I only have one answer, keep trying until you got the best one for you, don’t believe anyone until you experienced yourself.

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Understanding About Overselling In The Web Hosting Business

Understanding About Overselling In The Web Hosting Business

Posted on by admin

Have you ever heard about overselling in web hosting business? Generally, overselling means too much selling something, which can be the opposed of overstock. Okay, enough for scrubby talk, let’s get serious.

I maybe cannot explain deeply about this overselling business, but i can tell you this, when you have server that suppose to create or serve only 100 accounts or clients but you push it to create or serve for 200 accounts or clients, that is overselling. For instance, with the specification such 3.00GHz Processor, 4GB Memory, 120GB Disk Space, and 1000GB Data transfer, you can only sell or divide this server for maximum 60 clients. With these kind of spec divided by 60, each client will get (approximately):

1500MB Disk Space
15GB Data Transfer
60MB Memory Usage
40MHz CPU Usage

*I’m not counting this spec allocation with full resource, i assume the residual resource is reserve for server’s system.

So from my explanations above, you maybe do overselling by creating for example 200 accounts with that kind of server. You are expecting that your clients don’t use all of their resource, especially disk space and data transfer. And to prevent your client for using full resource of your package that you promised, you restrict them with general TOS like: prohibited to use for file hosting, peer to peer application, cpu large consume script such as CGI, Proxy, etc. Those kinds of TOS is very common and understandable in the web hosting business, but the disaster thing will come to you overselling provider when the client’s website is not use the restricted script or service but their website get about a thousand unique visitor a day and accidentally the website is full with large size of images, or simultaneously receive a thousand request. With the normal 60 clients, that kind of condition can overwhelmed the server, what about if you do overselling and you accidentally experiencing that kind of circumstances? Can be worst!

What would happens? Bandwidth limit exceed, fatal out of memory, slow response to the website (long time process), etc. Your email inbox will be full by your client’s tickets, complains, refunds, invectives, and another unpleasant emails. Is that good? Of course not! In my experience, good service provider will do response all of those ticket with good manner and resolve all of those problems, maybe upgrade the server spec or do refunds. But the bad or evil or terrible provider will not response all of the tickets, not do refunds, keep overselling until the server’s blow up and then dissapeared like they swallowed by the earth.

More about overselling, i will illustrate with these images below:

Non Oversold

Oversold

Non oversold server will stil be safe if their clients use maximum resource simultaneously, but in most case cpu and memory usage will sometimes exceed or boost to the top of your server’s spec limit, you just need to reboot your server to refresh cpu and memory, or maybe upgrade both cpu or memory. For the oversold server, you probably can also do reboot to refresh cpu and memory, but what about disk space and data transfer? Could you press reboot and refresh them? Haha… lol.

Is it good to do overselling? Or is it good to buy web hosting from the overselling provider? Overselling of course is good to maximize profit and it is not prohibited, but you service providers must keep in mind that you need to be ready to upgrade your server, especially disk space and data transfer in case your server is not enough no more to serve your client’s disk space and data transfer, if you don’t have problem with that, then you are a good overselling provider. For the customer, if you want to go with the overselling provider, then you must be looking for some good spec with very affordable price. You need to do research about the service provider candidate before you decide to go with them. Check how long they have been in business, testimonials, etc. Find all of those information in a community or forum which the provider sell their service, so if there is some trouble you can easily contact them in the forum or if in the worst case they do not respond your query, just post in the forum your testimonial about them with the proof or evidence like maybe screenshot.

One last important thing, i want to tell you that there is no such thing “Unlimited Disk Space” or “Unlimited Data Transfer”.

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