Tangent Thought Gallery

Finding the right web host (part 2)

Some things just aren’t as easy as you’d think they should be. If you’ve been involved with web hosting much, you know it fits that scenario well. Assuming you’ve gone over the info in part 1 of this series (which is a fairly high level view of things), let’s do a fly over still another upper level issue: “Precisely what type of hosting are you looking for?”

There are essentially three options:

1. Self hosting
2. External hosting
3. Blended (some degree of both)

I believe there are few instances where self hosting makes sense. If you think your business case is one of those unique situations that call for it, you’re probably wrong. Sorry. Please contact me and I’ll be glad to try to dissuade you.

Options with External hosting broaden the choices even further. At the outset, your basic hosting options are:
1. Shared—the hardware is transparent to you; you’re just buying a service level agreement (SLA); your site may be in the same hardware as Sally’s Muffin Boutique & Laundry or less socially innocent entities, however, that shouldn’t be a concern (the servers are probably virtualized at this point anyway—but that’s something you should check out)
2. Dedicated—the hardware is yours (leased) and yours alone; you needn’t be concerned with anyone else being on your hardware-BUT-you need to handle or arrange with your provider for all hardware contingencies such as DR, fail-over, hardware failure, etc.
3. Collocation—this can be interpreted as just space in a rack where part of the SLA is power, environmental (temp, humidity, security), and telco connectivity; it can also be expanded to include cages for your equipment at the hosting site, even rooms full of your equipment if your demands are large enough

The complexities swoop in almost immediately. Trying to make things simpler, however, in the next post of this series I’ll directly dive into the type of hosting in which 80%+ of most business are interested; if you’re looking to simply set up shop on the net with some added content management functionality and you’re looking for only a moderate investment and want to avoid recurring IT costs, stay tuned. I’m hoping to make that simple(r) for those in this camp. Until then, let’s take a peek at just a few (there are a lot more than those shown here!) of the tangent considerations with hosting…

Required service level (e.g., “four 9s”, or 99.99% uptime? More? Less? Perhaps better asked: “How much will that downtime cost my business annually?“)—be sure to read and understand what your hosting provider means in their SLA statement. You don’t want surprises, particularly if your revenue stream is coming through that channel.

Managed Services—this is where you can leverage your provider’s talent pool so you don’t need to staff up. Sure, you’ll want them to handle the hardware on the inside, especially if you’re not doing collocation, but to what extent? Backups, disaster recovery, etc.—to what degree are they involved? How about security patches? If you’re systems get a little trickier, let’s say with clustering and virtualization, what’s their involvement? There’s really a continuum here, from rudimentary hdw/OS admin support to comprehensive application support outsourcing. Get that nailed down clearly in any contract before signing; you don’t want confusion downstream. Also be sure you know how and who to call, along with who is empowered on your side to contact the provider and what type of support to expect.

Facility Access—this should only be a consideration for collocation or, upon rare occasions, dedicated hosting but you’ll want to understand the processes involved as well as which members of your team can get access, how they get access, and when.

Package Options—this can get tricky in its own right but basically, if you’re dealing with managed solutions, you have to determine what you’re leasing, from hardware to application software. It can all be accommodated for a price.

You should note that as the optional hardware, OS, utilities, and application packages mount up, so do associated costs for support. It’s still typically more cost effective than staffing for this yourself.

Almost a given in web hosting is that you’ll change your provider more than once and your model of operation more than twice so all this becomes relevant sooner or later. In the next post well cover shared hosting consideration since it’s probably the most popular.