How to Choose the Best Web Hosting Service

Choosing the best web hosting service isn’t easy.

Different companies may see different priorities in this and of course we here at Server Sentry aren’t going to apologies for the fact that we are biased.  We believe we offer incomparable web hosting (Melbourne and elsewhere) and that we can prove what we’re saying to be the case.

Even so, we can be objective and comment on a few of the variables you need to consider when looking around:

1. Availability statistics.  Web hosting is going to count for nothing if the servers are down and neither you nor your customers can get into your website.  So, make sure you’re dealing with people who can offer high availability on a guaranteed basis.

2. Backup and contingency plans.  Things can go wrong in any data centre.  If your web hosting provider is unlucky and suffers a problem, will all of your data and systems be quickly restorable?

3. Track record.  It’s easy to make promises but the only way you can be sure that the company is capable of delivering against theirs is by looking at how long they have been around and how many satisfied customers they have.

4. Bundled software.  Just what additional facilities are offered apart from basic web hosting itself?

5. Software supported.  Strange as it may sound, you may wish to put software on your web hosting provider’s service that they just can’t support.  That’s going to be an expensive mistake to discover for the first time when you are trying to move your systems onto your provider’s machines.

6. Price.  This isn’t just a question of looking for the cheapest ticket price but trying to ascertain just what your money is buying you and comparing that against other options in the marketplace.

If you look closely at these areas during your evaluation of providers, you’ll see that not all web hosting services are by any means up to scratch!

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Questions on Web Hosting – Melbourne and Elsewhere

We are justifiably proud of our web hosting solutions but we also recognise that you may want to be able to compare our offerings against those of other companies.

To show you how confident we are in our services, we will gladly outline a few of the questions that you should be asking of other potential providers, as well as of Server Sentry.

 1. In terms of Web hosting Melbourne companies may wish to ask potential providers just how quickly they could make technical support consultants available in the event of a problem.

2. What are the hosting company’s published statistics for ‘up-time’ – in other words, for what percentage of a 7x24 period are their servers typically up and running?

3. What arrangements do they have in place for emergency standby service provision in the event that they suffer a major environmental or technical failure of their services?

4. Can they offer website import services for customers who may have existing sites on other web hosting services? If they can’t, you may be facing significant cost and effort to move your website to them.

5. What Security Systems do they have in place? Remember that they will be the custodians of your website and possibly data and those things are typically considered to be prime targets for hackers and criminals.

6. How long will their price be locked into place and will they agree to constrain any future price increases to specified levels that you can tolerate?

7. Are they able to provide reference sites of other customers who will be willing to act as unbiased commentators on the services they have actually received over time as opposed to what they were originally promised?

These are all very basic questions that any potential provider of website hosting should be able to answer easily and quickly – just as we can at Server Sentry!

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Deferring Expensive IT Upgrades

Hardly a month goes past without some manufacturer announcing a new device or new piece of software aimed at business users.

There is nothing unique in manufacturers trying to sell things but the rapid pace of technological change means that it is perhaps rather more frequently seen in IT than other domains.

Another thing that makes Information Technology slightly unusual is that much of it is marketed on the basis not of offering competitive advantage but fear.  The fear stated is that if you don’t upgrade or purchase that new piece of kit, your existing equipment may shortly start to creak and groan at the seams and be unable to cope.

In fairness, to some extent, that has some foundation in fact.

Whilst many businesses marvel at what technology can now do for them, the price being paid for that increased sophistication is usually that ever higher-specification equipment is needed to achieve it.
So, should you be running out every 12 or 18 months and replacing your file servers and PCs?

At Server Sentry, we don’t believe that is necessary and we welcome the opportunity to explain why in the context of the following:

• We believe in cost justification.  That new technology may appear very sophisticated but will it generate business benefit for you?

• Even if your existing systems are becoming a little elderly in terms of their performance or storage capacity, there may be far more cost-attractive options available to you than buying all-new kit. Examples might include buying additional disk storage or upgrading your processors.

• If you build the big resource-consumption components of your IT systems on the Cloud, you are future-proving yourself to a large extent from growing demands for more capacity and processing power.

So, don’t just reach for the chequebook because your existing architecture is proving to be a bit sluggish.  Call us instead and let us do a full analysis for you.

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Business IT Support Services and Integration

Are you disappointed with what you’re getting out of your IT?

Perhaps those new super-powerful PCs and servers you purchased just are not doing much to improve your overall software performance.  Are your efforts in videoconferencing still being stymied by pixelated screens and major lags between voice and video?  Do you keep getting error messages on your screens from certain of your applications?

It’s possible that you’re experiencing any of the above or indeed one or more of many other potential problems with your IT.  What’s going on?

Of course, we at Server Sentry Business IT Support Services cannot answer the question without knowing a lot more about your installation and business.  However, it’s possible that you have simply purchased solutions that are not optimal for your needs or perhaps they have been poorly installed and configured to begin with.

The good news though is that sometimes Business IT Support Services can make a huge difference to the way your technology systems work and without involving you in huge expenditure on revised approaches.  In the past, following a short survey of a customer site and changing a few relatively minor parameters, we have been able to resolve long-standing problems that the company had assumed they just had to ‘live with’.

In other situations, we may be able simply to recommend that you change certain of your approaches to the use of your technology and you might find as a consequence that things are far more efficient and successful.

The bottom line is very simple.  You don’t have to put up with Information Technology systems that are holding you back or simply not delivering the benefits you anticipated.  There is almost always something that can be done about such problems and often without large-scale expenditure.

That’s why we would welcome the chance to demonstrate our Business IT Support Services to you in terms of helping you integrate your processes and technology into optimum configurations.  Why not give us a call for an initial entirely free and non-commercial discussion of your requirements?

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How do you see data recovery solutions?

Companies come into one of several categories where data recovery is concerned:

• Those that realise that their business is largely data-driven and that the loss of their data would cripple their operations – possibly fatally. They take steps to protect themselves against such a possibility

• Companies that know nothing of the risks involved and as a result, who take no preventative measures

• Those that think they have protection in place but which, in reality, is woefully inadequate.

• Organisations that think the risks are not significant and that the area is hyped-up through scare tactics in order to sell expensive data recovery solutions Melbourne.

Here at Server Sentry, we know with a sad certainty that companies in the last three categories are sooner or later going to have the reality of their vulnerabilities made only too clear to them after a disaster.

In some cases that’s going to lead to regret, recriminations, post-mortems, firings and in extreme situations, the end of their business.

So, what is the solution?

We make no apologies for continually preaching the need for increased corporate awareness as far as data recovery solutions are concerned. It’s one thing to realistically assess the risks to your organisation arising from a catastrophic loss of data then decide to do nothing. It’s entirely another to do nothing through a lack of awareness.

Nor are data recovery solutions simply a case of copying files and information onto another secure site.  For example, there are issues to do with cycles of backup and currency of data.

So, if you ask your provider of data recovery solutionsto restore your files as they were at the end of your last financial quarter for audit purposes, you might not want to hear at that stage, for the first time, that they only keep backups for 30 days.

Equally, if you lose an entire day’s work at say 4pm, would you prefer to restore your data to the last time a backup was taken at say five minutes before, 12pm that day or perhaps at 8pm the day before? Keep in mind anything done between your last backup and your disaster may be irretrievably lost.

That’s why professional data recovery solutionsand their analysis are critically important.

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Web hosting, Melbourne and your FAQs

Here are some of the questions on this subject that we see regularly at Server Sentry.

What is web hosting?

Strangely, this can sometimes mean slightly different things in the IT Services industry.

Typically it means that your website and associated services, including data, reside on a third-party’s equipment and at their site.  It means you don’t have the bother of needing to buy and maintain your own servers, arrange for backups or put into place IT disaster recovery plans etc.

Sometimes, it can mean splitting your technology components between your own premises at a third party’s.  So, your data may be on your premises but your website and applications on a provider’s physical premises and servers.

Is physical proximity essential? 

In purely technical terms no.  Your hardware and software could be anywhere.

However, in terms of support to web hosting Melbourne companies may prefer to have a local services provider. Apart from anything else, it means that if a quick site visit or meeting is required, then it’s easy.

Is my data safe if it’s on somebody else’s equipment and site?

Yes, extensive safeguards are taken but this is an important subject and you should take this into account when selecting a provider – e.g. by asking what backups and disaster recovery plans they have.

Note that in some relatively rare cases, there may be legal issues to do with custody of data, for example, in situations relating to personal financial information.

These are relatively rare though and can be discussed with providers as required.

Will my hosting be available 24 x 7?

If that’s a service you have selected and paid for, then yes.

Make sure though that service availability promises are backed up by firm guarantees rather than just pious statements of good intent.

In the domain of web hosting, Melbourneproviders may be only too pleased to welcome you for a site visit and to run you through the specifics of their service availability hours and post-implementation support capabilities (e.g. their helpdesk services).

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