Managed Servers and Dedicated Servers

The Server acts as the heart of any business. For simple environments, a Domain Controller acts as central user management (Active Directory) that is used for password, group policies, setting security rights, and other common user management features. If you have a failing Server, it is critical to address the Server issues but ensure that the fix provided is a permanent one as it can impact your entire business. Replacing a server is not a simple task and takes a lot of pre-planning, staging as well as advanced knowledge is needed to design the correct Server for your business to meet today's and tomorrow's needs. An under resourced main server can negatively impact your business and decrease the performance and productivity of all your users in your company; thus, it is critical you are working with a team of professionals that can intelligently design, setup, and cutover to a new server while minimizing downtime.

• End of Life Operating Systems (OS): Microsoft has officially stopped supporting Microsoft 2003, XP, 2003 SBS, and 2003 Exchange in 2015; thus, if your business utilizes one of these operating systems now is the time to replace your server.
• Chronic or Recurring Problems: If your server has experienced a high amount of failures this is a good sign to replace the unit.
• End of Warranty: Manufacturers typically do not extend warranties past 7 years.
• Storage and Capacity: The cost of storage comes down every year; while, the needs for MORE storage increases. Cheaper storage solutions that perform better have become available.
• Operating System Not Compatible: Line of Business application providers introduce new versions of application software that are only supported and compatible with newer versions of OS.
• Performance: As your business grows and/or you add applications to your Server(s), the performance of that unit decreases as when you initially designed the solution you build it around today(s) needs with little room for growth.
• Cloud Technology Advancements: With the onset of cloud technologies, it gives clients more options for Server solutions.

Many businesses for whatever reason fear migrating from physical servers to virtual servers. The benefits of migrating from physical to virtual servers provides a reduction in energy costs, decrease in expensive hardware maintenance and provides better resource allocation; ultimately optimizing your investment. In addition, virtual machines are less susceptible to viruses and can restore quicker from a failure, leading to a decrease in downtime. Virtual machines can also be moved quickly in cases of a disaster and/or replicating at another site. Clients with multiple virtual servers (ie. hypervisor hosts) can successfully perform maintenance on an application server while continuing to run the application from the secondary location; thus, successful providing load balancing and less downtime.

A cloud server is that is located off premise and at a data center. Cloud servers can be managed or unmanaged, depending on your business needs. The following servers are considered to cloud servers:

• What is a Dedicated Server?

  A dedicated server is where a physical server appliance is dedicated to your business for clients that need more customized options. This dedicated server is typically front-ended by a dedicated firewall to build a private infrastructure as a service for the client. Ultimately, a dedicated server is strictly for your business and not shared with other businesses, giving full customization capability so that business needs are met. You will have full access to ROOT level and all other typical server functions.

• What is a Managed Server?

  A managed server is a server that is fully managed by another company. This can include break/fix labor as well as labor for moves, additions or changes. Utilizing a managed server allows clients to maximize resources for most efficient allocation of both time and energy. With a managed server, businesses are typically relieved of any maintenance or upkeep of their servers.

• What is a Cloud Virtual Server?

  A cloud virtual server allows companies to gain access to a virtual server in another company's data center. Typically, this cloud virtual server provider slices up resources and shares them amongst a handful of clients to drive server costs down. You will not gain access to ROOT level as that is managed by the hosted cloud provider.

Our team of experts can help design, build, configure, install, cutover and migrate your server infrastructure. We review how you utilize your servers today and make educated recommendations based on resource allocation, end user performance samples, and a number of other metrics to build the correct solution for your needs. Contact us today at sales@convergedsystems.com or call us at (877) 598-3999.