Hosted Server
Services

Usually, one working day. There are factors such as custom configurations, add-ons or additional applications that could take a bit longer.

Yes, absolutely. You can upgrade (or even downgrade) to another plan at any time.

Since your server is a virtual machine that runs on a massive server network, we can upgrade it within minutes. Turnaround time is usually one working day or less, depending on workload and whether there are any additional requirements for your new server.

Cloud-hosted servers are linked together in ‘clusters’ – a bit like a team of horses pulling a wagon. If one horse gets sick, it can be unhitched and the rest of the team are still strong enough to pull the wagon.

Similarly, if one physical server in a cluster fails, the other servers simply carry on providing the service. In fact, the clusters are set up in such a way that the servers can even switch themselves off during times of low demand, which helps us reduce our electricity consumption and carbon footprint.

A hosted server is a virtual machine and the computing power of creating all these virtual machines is spread over several physical server clusters. In the event of one of these physical servers failing, the other servers will simply pick up the slack and continue as normal. This is called ‘failover.’ Our data centres are monitored 24-7-365 which means that even the tiniest problems are immediately spotted and addressed in order to provide continuity of service.

We have three (3) main data centres, a bit like having 3 teams of horses pulling the same wagon. Wherever you are – in Scotland, Northern Ireland, England and Wales – we’ll replicate your data will and store it across 3 separate geographic locations in London, at Manchester Airport and in Salford. As a result, in the incredibly unlikely event of one or two entire data centres going down, the remaining ones will continue to provide service.

From your perspective, there will be no difference whatsoever to the performance of your virtual server, even though, behind the scenes, we will be hard at work repairing the broken physical server, cluster or data centre. That is the true magic of cloud computing.

Yes and no. If required, you can have root access to your hosted server (i.e. your virtual machine). However, you can’t have root access to the bare metal physical servers, for the rather obvious security reason that they’re locked away in our secure data centre.

Our technicians here at Venom IT in Manchester will create your hosted virtual server, install the operating system, assign an IP address and hand it over to you. From that moment onwards, the server is yours. You will have full admin rights to do additional software installations, configurations etc. and responsibility for its administrations shifts to you.

Yes, of course. We can either do a roll back (at no charge) or provide you with tech support, per-hour.

In short, the answer is ‘yes’ to both questions. Moreover, this assistance is free.

It depends largely on the workload you need it to handle. Shared hosting is cheaper but for a reason.

In contrast, dedicated hosted servers offer so much more:

• First, they provide better performance;
• Second, they offer better security;
• Third, we can customise it;
• Finally, you get full admin and control.

Apart from the virtual server itself, you also get:

• Internet connectivity to the server;
• Firewall;
• Unlimited bandwidth;
• 2 IP addresses, with additional IP addresses available upon request.