Instance Management – Server Management

Do any of these pithy catch phrases sound familiar?

  • I don’t have time to do ______________ right now.
  • I’ll get to that next week.
  • I’m putting that off until the next revision is released.
  • I started that last month, I’m almost done.
  • I’ll deal with it later.
  • I don’t want to admit it, but I don’t know how.
  • We’re secure. (our personal favorite)

Does it feel like you’re constantly fighting fires? Do you wish you had a few more hours in the week? Are you putting off needed upgrades because you just don’t have time?

Sometimes you need a little outside perspective. A second set of eyes can be the difference between a smooth project and a disaster. How many times have you put off that upgrade because you just don’t have the time to commit to it? All you need is a little help getting the job done.

Our staff has the expertise and experience to move your projects off the “to-do” list onto the “Done!” list. If your project is large or small, we’re here to help.

ipHouse Instance Management lets you concentrate on growing your business, not on patching your server. ipHouse Instance Management delivers the full care and attention your hosting environment needs to be secure and stable. ipHouse Instance Management is available for vmForge Virtual Data Centers, stand-alone virtual servers and Enterprise Hosting platforms.

Instance Management (OS Instance1) Includes

  • Your choice of ipHouse-provided Windows, FreeBSD, or Ubuntu operating system installation and initial patching.
  • The initial Managed Instance is allocated 60 minutes per billing period. Each additional Consecutive Managed Instance allocated an additional 30 minutes per billing period. Time consumed beyond the allocated amount is billed at the Engineering Rate using the time minimums from the table below.
  • Scheduled patching and updating of server operating systems and approved server applications.
  • Initial installation, administration, and management of server applications:
    • IIS / Apache
    • MS SQL / MySQL
    • Exchange / Postfix
    • PHP / PERL / Python / ASP / .NET
    • Remote Desktop Services (terminal services)
  • CrashPlan PROe backup service – 100 GiB of space included per instance managed.3
  • DNS administration (registration fees not included)
  • Email administration (excluding SPAM filtering)
  • Hardware maintenance and support.
  • Implementing SSL certificates (SSL certificate fees not included).
  • Managed Fortigate hardware firewall to protect your server
  • Log rotation.
  • LogicMonitor monitoring for service availability:
    • Server uptime
    • PING response rate
    • HTTP statistics
    • Apache statistics (if implemented)
    • Database availability and statistics
    • CPU
    • RAM
    • Storage
  • Support assistance for technical contacts.
  • System performance monitoring.
  • Trouble-shooting of server OS and server applications (from approved list).
  • Trend Micro Antivirus service for Windows servers
  • User administration (add or subtract), disk quotas, and access control

Services not included with Instance Management

  • Customers end user support.
  • Trouble-shooting customer programming or customer applications.

Advanced Instance Management

Advanced Instance Management allows for ipHouse to provide additional engineering services that support custom configurations. Advanced Instance Management services include specific applications installed on your platform, VPN setups or migration of virtual machines between platforms. Please contact our team for full details and fees.

A partial list of Advanced Instance Management items:

  • Anti-virus solutions other than Trend Micro.
  • ColdFusion.
  • Compliance auditing – HIPAA, PCI, etc.
  • Configuration of customer applications.
  • Cross realm trusts for Active Directory.
  • Data retention policies.
  • Data or content migrations.
  • Database Replication.
  • File servers or large data stores.
  • Integration with outside infrastructure.
  • Integrity tests of backed up data.
  • Load Balancing.
  • Management/manipulation, importing, exporting, or backup/restoration of customer data.
  • Tomcat.
  • VPN configuration.

All engineering tasks and services are subject to ipHouse approval, policies and best practices. ipHouse will not install applications or manage instances with applications that ipHouse determines grant excessive access to the managed OS, applications that are out-of-date or applications that have dependencies on software that is out-of-date, or applications that have known security risks.

The ipHouse Instance Management fee covers the first 60 minutes of engineering services per billing period. Each consecutive instance adds 30 minutes per billing period. Time does not carry forward from month to month. Additional time is billed in accordance with the table below. Speak with your sales representative for further details and hourly rates.

  Scheduled event time minimum and increment Emergency event time minimum and increment
Monday - Friday 8:00 am - 5:00 pm 15 Minutes / 15 Minutes 30 Minutes / 15 Minutes
All other times 60 minutes / 60 minutes
  1. An instance is any server, whether physical or virtual, with its own distinct operating system. A physical server or a vmForge VDC may have multiple instances, each of which, if managed, will incur a monthly management fee. No discounts are available for customers who choose to not use specific management services.