Managed vs. Unmanaged Servers: What's The Difference?

One of the most important server hosting decisions you will make concerns server management. Will you manage your own server, or will you let a team of experienced server administrators carry some of the load for you? Your decision will have a big impact on the server hosting experience, so I’d like to explain what server management is and why you might prefer to have us manage your server.

Managing a server is time consuming: servers are complex machines with layers of even more complex software. There’s a lot that can go wrong if you don’t know what you’re doing. Managing a server for optimal performance, availability, and security requires a significant amount of expertise and experience.

Even technically knowledgeable people have trouble with this: developers who are perfectly capable of building applications and running them on a server make mistakes that leave the door open to criminals or cause performance problems.

In addition to the complexity of server management, it can be time consuming. Large enterprises have teams of server administrators available round-the-clock to deal with any issues that might arise. Smaller businesses may not be in a position to hire the necessary staff — and often they simply choose not to go that route. Outsourcing server management is less expensive than hiring server admins.

All Steadfast’s private cloud and bare metal dedicated servers include Steadfast Advantage, our premium managed services package that comprises a suite of services to help customers keep their servers secure, available, and running smoothly.

You can see all the included services on our managed services page, but I’d like to have a look at some of the highlights here.

1 Hour Support Response SLA. When you’re dealing with a server issue, you don’t want to be left waiting, especially if it’s affecting a critical service your business depends on. We guarantee a support response within one hour, every day of the year, and most of the time we respond in less than 15 minutes.

OS Patching. Patching is a vital component of server security, but it’s something that is easy to put off until it’s too late. We can take care of OS patching so that you’ll always be running the most secure software.

System And Network Monitoring. If something goes wrong, you want it fixed as soon as possible. Our monitoring technology keeps a close eye on your server’s performance, availability, and capacity, responding proactively to resolve issues if we can, and offering you a mitigation plan if we need you to be involved.

These services are just the tip of the iceberg. We will also handle server migration to our platform, security analysis and auditing of your server, and provide a trusted engineering advisor to consult with your team and design the ideal server hosting environment for your needs.

Some of our clients prefer to manage their own servers, but for those who want to leverage our experience, the Steadfast Advantage is a great option.