Managed Servers

I have decided to possibly go with a Managed Server. 

What is the difference between a Managed Dedicated Server and a Managed VPS?  I am not sure I understand the dfference.

I plan to have employees who work from home or a remote location that will have to dial into the server.  I'm working on the budget and need to find a hositng company.

Thanks in advance

Kyra

Hi Kyra,

Typically a Managed Dedicated Server is hardware that a company will manage for you that you have all to yourself.  You don't share the hardware with anyone.  You usually have more control over what is installed.

A Managed VPS (Virtual Private Server) can be a vritual server that is sharing hardware with other virtual servers.  So the performance might be less.  You often have less control over what is installed, because installing some applications might not perform well and impact the other users poorly.

Hopefully others can chime in more...  I wouldn't rule out a dedicated virtual server, which is slightly different than the other two listed above.  Sometimes it depends on your budget.  In my opinion, Managed Dedicated Servers usually cost more but run better than Managed VPS.  ITs dependent on a lot of factors, though.

Thanks for replying...

How is the Dedicated Virtual Server different?

Also I was reading on a colocated system.

How do you find reviews on places or would I have to go by word of mouth?

Hi Kyra,

[ Here is a link to a wikipedia article ] on virtual machines.  The first paragraph has a decent explanation of the differences between a couple types of virtual systems.  The the virtual dedicated server is the first type, or system, and the VPS is the second type - configured to run a single program (rather a suite of programs in these instances).

With colocation YMMV - you'll have to find out some of their customers and ask them.  Colocation is a bit different, as you buy your own hardware and place it there.  Some have management agreements in place, others do not.  This might be a good way for your organization to take advantage of the Sun Server offering here on TechSoup - you can purchase a decent server for $225 and then colocate it some where.  The colocation facilities around me in Hartford charge $250 / month - this includes:

• daily backup services (I hae to provide the hardware, but they will change media and store it off site).
• managed firewall
• intrusion protection services
• anti virus / anti malware
• "unlimited" bandwidth

Also, what are you going to use this server  for? You mention dialing in, but we can advise you better based on what the server will be used for; if it's only light usage, a Virtual Private Server might be cheaper and serve you just as well as a dedicated server.