Monday, March 14, 2011

What is Managed Hosting?

There was a time when hosting companies offered dedicated servers where for the most part, the hosting company did not manage the hosting services that their clients were receiving through the use of the dedicated servers. Businesses and other hosting clients were maintaining and managing the operations of their own servers. This was often difficult and expensive for the hosting clients. A demand arose for hosting providers that would offer a variety of technical and other services with the dedicated servers. This demand brought about the start of managed hosting services. Managed hosting is a form of dedicated server hosting.
The first step in deciding if managed hosting would you is to decide if you need dedicated hosting. Dedicated hosting is often used for websites with a high volume of traffic. Websites that use very large amounts of disk space often need or can benefit from dedicated hosting. Some websites require custom applications and advanced e-commerce features and can therefore benefit from dedicated hosting. These are a few reasons as to why you might need managed hosting for your website. If you come to realize you need dedicated hosting, then you can decide if you will need managed hosting.
Consider the services that you want to be provided by your web hosting company. Do you want them to back up your data for you on a regular basis? Does your website need firewalls and other security measures that you want to be set up by your hosting provider? Do you want your web host to monitor your server for you? If the answer to these questions is yet, you will want to think about using managed hosting services.
Managed hosting can be beneficial for companies. They are able to have their websites hosted and servers maintained by their hosting provider. This can save a business money n the long run. They are paying for the managed hosting services, but will not have the cost of hiring IT people to handle the hosting aspect of their business website. Having people on staff that are able to mange the hosting end of the websites can be costly and time consuming. Allowing the web host to handle these tasks can therefore save a company time and money.
It is important to know that managed hosting does not mean the same thing to every hosting company. Some hosting providers will offer more services than others. For this reason you should look carefully at the managed hosting services provided by any web hosts you are considering to host your website. Make certain you know what services are included with your managed hosting plan. There are several services you are likely to want for certain with your managed hosting package. You will probably be looking for a company that offers server management and monitoring, security measures to protect your data, data backups, hardware and software updates and excellent customer support. As with any form of web hosting, you should shop around to find the host that offers all the services you need and want for your website. Source
There are lot of  Faqs available on managed hosting
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