What is server management?
Server management is a type of service concerned with the maintenance, configuration, installation and upkeep of a server. It can range from simple monitorinng (checking whether the server's online and notifying an admin if it isn't) to the complex task of keeping a system up-to-date and resistant to attacks with an occasional installation and changes in configuration.
Why is it good for me?
Because it can save you a lot of trouble. You can fully focus on your business plan without worrying about keeping your site engine, backend or any other part of the system up-to-date and online. It's us who're having sleepless nights to make sure you don't.
What are the advantages of using your services?
First of all the fact that there's someone keeping an eye on your systems 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you also choose one of our proactive server management plans, you'll also have a software installed that will detect and prevent random attacts. There are some scripts running probably on thousands of servers that are pinging random IP addresses. If they get a response, they'll also probe for some exploits, such as this one and this one. With our intrusion prevention system not only such attempts can be thwarted, but also a lot of DDoS attacks can be mitigated too.
I have only a small server/VPS with only a few low-traffic sites on it. Can you manage my system too?
Yes. We'd be proud to have you amongst our customers regardless of the size, content or traffic of your Linux system. Please check our list of services to see if you find a plan that suits your needs.
All right, all right, but who do you recommend your service the most?
Probably the owners of high traffic sites. The reason for that is that even though small sites/servers get just as many random malicious activity (attemtps at a break-in, guessing the root password, access through "unused" accounts, exploits etc.) as the big ones, the more popular sites are more likely to fall victims of targeted attacks (DDoS, hacking attempts, deface etc.) so these sites (and their backends) are definitely recommended to get some sort of protection, either our services or some other.
Why are you so expensive? The guys at xy.com have much lower prices!
Yes, you are right. Our price is higher than some of our competitors'. Still, we prefer quality over any other motives. We also believe that it's preferable to employ only highly qualified professionals who only need a keyboard, an internet connection and an SSH/Telnet client to do the server management than individuals requiring control panels for the work.
While it is true that control panels are very useful tools for the laymen and novices to do most of the server management in, they are not omnipotent, far from that. They are also considerably slower than a simple SSH terminal even on a slow connection and if things go wrong, the control panel might be/become useless. Therefore even control panel admins need at least a single "real" admin who can fix almost everything.
The other drawback of the control panels is their narrow range of supported products. With a service relying solely on a control panel you might find that some of the "3rd party" software you'd want to have installed on your system just cannot be installed using the control panel. It might happen in such situation that the installation of your software is refused.
With no reliance on control panels, our company can install and configure 99% of the software out there, no matter how obscure it is. The only software support we are likely to refuse are the ones that lack documentation and/or need extensive changes in its source code. If you're unsure about your software, feel free to contact us prior to placing your order.
Which operating systems do you support?
We only support various Linux and Unix distros at present. The most popular one is CentOS 5, followed by Ubuntu, but we can also support SuSE, Knoppix, Gentoo, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva etc. We can also support diskless/read-only systems, albeit to a limited extent. Please contact us for more details and to see if we support your desired arrangement or OS.
Do you support Windows servers?
As of current we don't. In fact, because of its prevalence and user-friendly GUI Windows is much easier to configure even by novice users. All you need is some Remote Desktop/VNC access. Truth be said, we don't recomment using Windows server for production systems, considering its unreliability, susceptance to viruses and general lack of security. Nevertheless we may consider offering such service in the future. In the meanwhile please consider searching for "windows server management".
What's the difference between a VPS container and a "real" server?
VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. As far as the user itself is concerned, next to nothing. In both situations the user gets remote access to a system with full (root) access and can do pretty much anything. The only limit a VPS container has that it shares the kernel and the swapfile with the other VPS containers (used by other customers), therefore any change to these two can be done only in the hypervisor, and not the container itself. For this reason we can't provide any kernel modifications (adding new modules, kernel upgrade) nor create/use/change any awapfiles on a VPS container, since only the hosting company can do that.
Can you manage shared hosting accounts as well?
Yes, but only to a limited extent. Most of the companies offering shared hosting plans have no SSH access to the companies' servers making their management making their management very inefficient. We can only offer simple server monitoring for them. Customers with SSH access can take advantage of our shared hosting monitoring plan.
Can you set up a VPN connection on my system?
Yes, if you have a dedicated server. If you have a VPS container, then probably not. The reason for this is mentioned above. Well, to be more specific, almost all VPS containers lack the TUN/TAP interface that's necessary for any Linux VPN connection to work. Since most VPN hosting companies forbid the usage of VPN on their systems (for broadband and security considerations) anyway, chances are that they wouldn't allow it anyway.
What kind of security measures/monitoring tools do you offer?
Please see our comparison page for our plans and the services offered for each.
Why do you have all your contact details embedded in pictures? It's very annoying!
we're terribly sorry to inconvenience you, but we get a lot of spammy e-mails, IMs and phone calls as well. To increase the quality of our customer service, we've therefore decided to embed all of our contact details in images. We've also decided to use ReCAPTCHA for the contact form to protect our mailbox from spam/abuse and to help in digitizing books.