Cloud Computing, site monitoring and Internet Services in general

[Bill Campbell]

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010, Steve Parker wrote:
...
>Not sure I'm doing this correctly, it is my first submission, but I'm
>confident you will let me know if I have made a mistake anywhere! LOL!

Did you get these messages in digest form?  It came in with
multiple headers and looks a bit messy.

...
>But that aside, the first mistake I see in the above example is putting
>trust in the likes of "Go Daddy". Having dealt with them before in a simple
>inquiry (several people had referred me to them as an affordable source for
>WEB hosting!) I can certainly understand why nothing they attempted to
>support for you actually worked well. From my point of view, no chance that
>it could.

Godaddy wasn't my choice, but that of one of my clients (who will
never use them again :-).

...
>I have not looked at all of the dollars involved in "co-location" but I have
>looked at some numbers for "remote management". The service provider resells
>their services to someone like most of us, offering an assortment of
>software, tools and hardware that is monitored at their NOC. The reseller
>gets a "management console" to log into, that provides access to all clients
>and all of the various sites with information available for all equipment
>being monitored.

The major advantage of putting machines in a co-lo facility, as I
see it, is to take advantage of their physical plant, power, UPS,
Generators, and multiple Internet backbone providers.  We have
three racks here with servers, and a single T-1 with total costs
around a grand a month for the T, power, etc.  If I were to get a
1/3 rack at a local co-lo, I would most likely have better
service for the same or less money.  The biggest problem is that
I would have to do some major hardware purchases to replace the
rather large and old servers we're currently using, mostly 4U
rack mount chassis which eat up rack space quickly.

...
>Not sure what numbers you are looking at currently, nor exactly what you are
>trying to accomplish, but it sounds like this might be an option. And you'd
>actually have a physical address for your data, as well as technical
>assistance for assistance based right here in the Cleveland, Ohio area. They
>are currently offering this service for Churches, but are getting ready to
>"reach out" very soon!

Our primary business is providing general-purpose systems for
small-to-medium companies with e-mail, firewall, Samba, backups,
etc.  where we provide on-line support as necessary.  Generally these
are not 24/7 operations, and having their systems in-house makes
sense as they need something that Just Works(tm) without having
to deal with their own IT staff.

Bill
-- 
INTERNET:   bill at celestial.com  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
Voice:          (206) 236-1676  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820
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