How much support do you need?
I just got off the phone with a potential customer for our virtual private servers, and he suggested I put the discussion we had into this blog. He's technically capable, but not trained in all of the details of maintaining his web application, and he wanted to know how much support he could receive from ENKI if he purchased our virtual private server product.
ENKI's VPS products are primarily aimed at people such as this customer, who don't need extensive handholding, yet want a partner to be available in case something goes wrong with their hosted environment. For non-technical customers requiring more support or even fully outsourced operations, we offer our Outsourced Operations (OaaS) services. But this customer just wanted the occasional helping hand. At ENKI, our primary concern is that our customers' businesses are successful, since we see our own success flowing from theirs. As a result, we've avoided having too restrictively defined "packages" of services that might put off potential business or even worse, prevent a customer from calling for help if they needed it. We rely on negotiation and saying what we think to each other, rather than restrictive contracts. But his question was valid: what is the right level of support for a leased server?
As I see it, to succeed with a leased server powering your website, you will need three types of services: application programming and maintenance, provided by a programmer; system administration, provided by a system administrator; and hardware maintenance, provided by your hosting/colocation company. At ENKI, our hardware is essentially self-maintaining, healing itself within minutes after any failure. So our customers don't need to have staff available to service hardware failure requests. We also expect our customers to have application programmers available to them, or we can provide them as part of a consulting or outsourced operations package. This makes sense, since your business runs on your software, which you would want maintained or extended by someone who understood your business in detail.
So what remains is system administration, which your hosting or colocation provider should be able to provide if you need it. But what's the right balance between administration that you do and they do on your server? I think that the general guideline for making such decisions is that if it relates to your particular business or setup, you should either find a trusted partner that takes the time to understand your business or do the work yourself. This way, you know what's happening with your server, and you know how to set it up to meet your needs. Otherwise, if the setup or management has nothing in particular to do with your business, the service provider should do it for you. I have some thoughts on specific cases:
- Operating system and middleware installation: Your provider should offer you the option of pre-installing this software so you can get started faster.
- Operating system and middleware (including database) updates: your provider should perform this work, but only when you ask for it. You should be able to have the option of doing it yourself if you prefer.
- Backups: Since you need to set the policies (when and what gets backed up) the provider should only give you access to backup software and assist you in operating it. You should retain responsibility for doing backups.
- Installing new application software: If the software is middleware (mail servers, etc.) the provider should offer you the option of doing it for you. Otherwise, you should do it yourself since you will be operating it, and you'll need it configured for your specific needs. Again, your mileage may vary: if you're not software-literate, perhaps you can work with your provider to do it together.
- Application software updates: This should be done either by you, or by your operations provider, when you ask for it. In the case of production systems, it makes sense to set up a policy where the application software update is tested in a "sandbox" environment first, then moved to the production server when it is ready (and so are you!)
- Performance and security problems: This is almost always a joint exploration between you and your vendor, and they should be able to help you with this when you request it.
ENKI's support policies for virtual private servers mirror this philosophy. As always, I welcome your thoughts on the matter.
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