Leveraging the Private Cloud as an MSP
Dedicated servers, also referred to as private cloud, are a very valuable component for many businesses. Unlike shared hosting services, such as those utilized by WordPress to offer their blogs for example, having a dedicated machine means that you as a company have complete control over the software installed on the machine. It also means that all resources on the device are dedicated to your company – there is no risk of a ‘noisy neighbor’ because when you use a dedicated machine, you own the whole block.
This also means that you will have administrative access to your server, which sounds small but for many companies that lease ‘access’ to a server instead of providing a full dedicated machine, it’s actually a big difference. In most web hosting companies, you may receive space to store website resources, and that will be about it – usually these services don’t discuss processing power because you will get what you get; it splits the resources with everyone. It also means that if the company doesn’t support the application you want to plug-in to your website, then you are sunk. Not so with dedicated machines – since you have complete administrative access, just about anything that you might want to do on the server can be done. We encourage all customers to get the most out of their machines, and to do that you need complete access!
‘Noisy Neighbors’ are another concern with shared environments, which refers to other organizations eating up larger amounts of resources than normal. When everyone is eating at the same section and bringing the actual infrastructure near maximum load, then everyone’s performance will suffer. This can even result in environments crashing, meaning your website might go down through no fault of your own. Of course, if you aren’t using a hosting service and instead have complete access to your machine, that is a non-issue, and you have complete control over the resources that have been made available for your machine.
Finally, there is a matter of regulatory issues that may apply. Depending on the industry, there may be regulations in play that either discourage or flat-out disallow having private information in multi-tenant environments. This means that using this type of solution for those customers is a receipt for catastrophe, so it would be highly recommended to move your solution as soon as possible! There are no regulations for everything to be outside a private environment for any industry, so this issue simply ceases to be one when you use a dedicated server to handle your hosting needs.
Of course, our dedicated servers aren’t just for web hosting. Regardless of the type of solution you want to implement in your private cloud environment, you have the freedom to apply custom solutions and software to your server. So if you want to add a CRM tool, feel free to use SugarCRM. Have a customer in the education space? Install Moodle to give them collaboration tools and the ability to provide online testing. Interested in hosting online games? SmartFoxServer provides great tools to allow players to communicate with one another as well as providing administrative tools.
Dedicated servers give companies the freedom to do what needs to be done without anyone draining productivity away from the infrastructure. To learn more about our private cloud solutions, or to learn more about the software options Vault Networks can provide, you can reach out to us by calling (305) 735-8098 option 2 or by emailing sales@vaultnetworks.com. We will be more than happy to provide a free consultation to help you simplify your IT solution, and to help in moving you to your own private server.