Here are the answers to some of the Frequently Asked Questions about our VMware Cloud Hosting. If your question is not answered, please contact our sales team, who will be happy to help.

With cloud hosting your virtual server is not tied to a particular piece of hardware. Disk space is held on mirrored SANs, and processing power is run on multiple machines, which are linked together in a resilient grid.

There are numerous benefits to this architecture:

• Scalability: You can increase or decrease RAM, Disk space and processor capacity without needing to move or reinstall your server.

• Hardware failover: Should a physical machine fail, your server will automatically start up on a spare machine, minimising downtime.

• Flexible contracts: No need for an annual contract, you can pay for what you use on an hourly basis.

• Quick set up time: Get a Windows server up and running in minutes. There’s no need to wait for new hardware to arrive and be installed.

• Better use of resources: As you can scale your server to meet your needs there is more efficient use of power, processing time, RAM and other resources. That means the service can be run more cheaply for you, whilst providing the benefits of Firstserv cloud computing.

Firstserv cloud runs on a platform produced by VMWare. The majority of our previous Virtual Servers were run on Virtuozzo. Virtuozzo is a server virtualisation technology manufactured by Parallels. Virtuozzo is a less flexible and less reliable item of software but it can be run more cheaply, as the software costs less and more virtual instances (VPSes) can be run per machine.

• Virtuozzo VPSes are less portable than VMware – i.e. it is more difficult to migrate a VPS from one server to another.

• Virtuozzo works by sharing the operating system. VMware creates a different operating system copy for every instance. With Virtuozzo, nodes can affect others on the same hardware; this doesn’t happen with VMware, as each one is separate. This provides better security and better reliability, but the downside is that it uses more hardware resources on each server.

• Virtuozzo can crash and corrupt data without warning, so backups become essential. VMWare is much more stable, although backups are still provided.

• VMware is the market leader in virtualisation.

• VMware cloud is scalable beyond the resources of one server. Virtuozzo can only grow to the maximum size of the server it is on.

• VMware’s grid architecture can “self heal” – i.e. fail over to spare hardware, whereas Virtuozzo cannot.

Cloud hosting is not appropriate for all users:

• High traffic database use: VMware is accredited for Oracle, MySQL and PostGres. However, Microsoft recommends that SQL server is run on its own dedicated hardware rather than VMWare cloud. In testing we have not found any problems running databases server in a cloud environment, but the official advice is to run the SQL server separately. If you wish to discuss this further with us, or to mix dedicated servers with cloud architecture, we will be able to assist.

• Due to internal policy: Some companies have IT policy which requires that data is run on completely separate hardware from other users. In such cases a private cloud or dedicated server would be provisioned.

Yes, if you wish to run dedicated cloud servers then we can set this up for you. Your servers will be separate from all other Cloud Infrastructure.

Individual site monitoring and backup are available as optional extra services, as not all users require them.

Site monitoring will depend on your needs - for example, we can check a specific page on your website and notify you by SMS should it fail to respond.

We can also back up your server space daily, so that should you accidentally delete a file, or need to recover some data, it is available.

An application refers to software running on your virtual instance. For example, IIS, Apache, or a tomcat program you’ve written.

The answer is no, the cloud will not stop applications from crashing. The cloud architecture provides scalability and protection against hardware failure. However, if your program crashes and corrupts data at the same time, (e.g. damages the registry), the cloud can’t protect against that. In such cases you would need to ensure you had a backup of your data, and may need to correct the bug in the application to prevent a repeat.

A typical problem might be the spawning of too many processes when accessing a database. Once there are too many, the application will crash. This could be resolved by increasing resources such as RAM and

CPU availability, but the better solution would be to ensure processes are terminated when no longer in use, thus keeping the number manageable.

Yes, please send your VMware image to our support team who will import it for you. A standard system admin charge would apply.

Firstserv’s data centres are in London, situated at Sovereign House and Harbour Exchange. More information is available here

Firstserv is proud to host your website. Our platform is fast, secure and resilient, so we can promise you the service level you expect. Our service level can be found here

Managed Server

With a managed server, the work and worry of keeping your applications running is with Firstserv.

We will patch your server, back it up and monitor it 24 hours per day, in addition to ensuring that the hardware is in tip top condition. If there is a problem, then we will rectify it automatically. If it is something that we can't fix, e.g. something in your application, then we will escalate this to you or your IT department.

This is the option that we would recommend for the majority of customers, as server maintenance is our job and something we do every day, every hour.

Unmanaged Server

With an unmanged server, we supply the hardware and ensure that is running correctly. Once the operating system is installed, the responsibility to patch, monitor and generally keep it running is your own responsibility. We are aware that some hardware problems can give the symptoms of a software problem, so our support team will always help in the first instance if you need them.

If you require some features of a managed server, such as improved backup or monitoring, then these may be added to your plan.