Servers & hosting

When the server is everyone's and no one's

Somewhere there is a server that matters: the file share, the accounting package, the website, the database behind the shop. It was installed years ago, it runs, and nobody wants to touch it. Updates are postponed because the last one broke something. The back-up runs every night — or so everyone assumes, because nobody has tried to restore from it.

Whether that server stands in your own cupboard or with a hosting company makes less difference than people think. The question is the same: who is watching it, and what happens when it stops?

How we approach it

We take stock of what you run and where: hardware, virtual machines, operating systems, applications, back-ups and the people who depend on them. For each system we ask what it would cost you to be without it for an hour, a day or a week.

On that basis we advise where each workload belongs — on your premises, with a hosting provider or in the cloud — and we build and run it:

• Servers and virtual machines set up to a documented standard, not by hand each time.
• Updates and security patches on a fixed schedule, tested before they reach production.
• Back-ups to a second location, with restore tests that prove they work.
• Monitoring of availability, disk space, load and certificates, with alerts that reach a person.
• Migrations planned in steps, with a way back if a step fails.

What you get

• An inventory of every server and what runs on it.
• A back-up and recovery plan with tested restore times.
• A regular report: availability, updates applied, incidents and what was done about them.
• Managed hosting for your website or application, if you want everything in one place.