On Site or Off Site?

These days there is a lot of talk about the efficiencies of on site servers vs the cost of off site or hosted solutions. Maintaining servers at your office is convenient, but the costs in electricity for keeping those servers as well as all of the related upkeep can be a killer on your overhead.  On the other hand, removing those servers to an off site colocation center can be equally expensive in terms of cost for the real estate at a properly equipped facility.  Lastly, a hosted server environment can be a good answer in terms of cost and maintenance, however you are dependent upon the reliability of the provider and have no way of getting to your servers in case of emergency.  So which of these solutions is really the best for you?


On Site Servers
Pros:
You have complete control of the machines as they are physically present at your location.
Cons: 
Takes up a lot of space in your office.
Requires a great deal of electricity for servers, network devices, power solutions, and cooling.
In an emergency you would also need to contract a remote location for hosting for business continuity (either a warm or cold site) which would entail an additional expense.

Colocated Servers
Pros:
Easily managed, secure facility specializing in hosting servers, colocation centers can provide for multiple redundancies as well as excellent backup and disaster recovery functions.
Cons:
Getting to your equipment can be difficult if you need to handle the physical components or perform repairs.
Most colocation centers require you provide your own internet connections.
Depending on the type of colocation center, you may need to purchase space at a secondary site for disaster recovery.
Very expensive.

Hosted Servers:
Pros:
Incredibly cost effective on a pound per pound basis.

Maintenance of hardware is completely the responsibility of the hosting company.
Most hosting companies offer help desk services for the servers that they host and will reduce your need for IT staff.
It is the hosting company's responsibility to handle disaster recovery and business continuity of your servers.
Cons:
You have no control of your hardware at all and are completely reliant upon the hosting company to ensure up-time and service.
Improperly secured connections to the hosted servers can leave you vulnerable to a variety of attacks.
Your proprietary data is not under your direct control.


The arguments go back and forth, but the reality of the issue is that it is completely situational as to which is the best solution.  Approached from a strictly budgetary point of view, Remote Hosting is probably the best way to achieve low cost of ownership and maintenance with reduced overhead and payroll, however security can be sacrificed in the name of least-cost advantage.  The key to the issue is making sure that your goals and expectations are reasonable.  Talk with your IT Consultant, or a member of the LAN Doctors team, if you are unsure, need guidance, or just think that making a change is a good idea.

LAN Doctors, Inc Launches New Programs

Always at the forefront of technological advances, LAN Doctors, Inc has paved the way in business, and now we are taking a larger step out into the world with bold new initiatives, including our new newsletter and this blog.

Starting in November and updating every Friday, the new LAN Doctors blog will be a venue for introducing new products, discussing technology trends, and continuing to lead the way forward with ideas to make your business better.  If you are interested in hosted services, secure file transfer, virtualization, managed services, backup, disaster recovery, business continuity, network security, anti-virus, anti-spam, storage solutions, power solutions, internet aggregation and fail-over, green IT products, and the latest in hardware and software innovations, or you just want to find our more about companies like Microsoft, VMWare, Eaton, EMC, dotHill, Navayo, Ecessa, Veeam, Barracuda, Kaseya, Tripplite, Lenovo, Hewlett Packard, Cisco, and so many others, then this is a good place to find out more.