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Ensure that an order for support is placed along with your dedicated server.

This is an unpleasant situation that we experience quite often with clients who haven't slept in day, are stressed out and at their wits end, striking out with verbal abuse. At the core of this melt down - their website is experiencing major problem and their customer are demanding resolution.

Don't get the wrong idea, this is not a confession of being negligent, not giving support or systematic troubles at Anchor in any kind of way - if these kinds of troubles existed I seriously doubt that I would be writing down the information.

The dejected support calls are likely to be played out somewhat in this way:

Customer: It has to be your fault that my service has been out for x number of days. Anchor: Well, this is actually the first time that you have registered a complaint. Customer: I really don't care, it has to be your fault since you are the provider of the server you are the ones that should monitor it. Anchor: Sir, the plan that you have selected is a self managed plan, you chose the service where you are responsible for this. Customer: Could we go to backups to fix the problem? Anchor: Sir, unfortunately when we sold you the server you determined at the time that it was too expensive to have backups. Customer: Surely you can do the backup anyways, can't you? Anchor: No, actually we don't do that. We can have one of our system administrators take a look at the problem and get it fixed up, but of course there will be a consulting fee involved with this. Customer: What the blankity blank are you talking about. My server doesn't work and now you want more money from me? How am I supposed to afford this? Don't you understand that I have an international company on this server and because the service is down I have literally hundreds of people who can't get any work done? Yes, there are actually calls that come through exactly like this.

At this stage, we're a bit perplexed. For a group that works with administrating system for high access services on a daily basis it makes sense that if someone is highly dependent on a site or any sort of service that there needs to be a likewise significant amount of money spent on maintaining, monitoring, and planning in order to reduce the likelihood of errors and result in a quick solution when an error does happen.

This article deals with the support component of the dedicated service, since I feel this is the most typically observed among trouble spots. Additional parts are explained in our dedicated server buyer's manual (http://www.anchor.com.au/hosting/dedicated/Dedicated_Server_Purchasing_Guide).

Theoretically, there is probably one of two explanations that would show how the customer got into this negative situation.

They were was sold the wrong level of support - ie, based on what we knew about their requirements we sold them the wrong support plan, or The customer having been made aware of the support options was not prepared to purchase a suitable level of support. Unlike other companies, we're pretty up front about our support plans. They're detailed and priced on our website. I like to think that we do a reasonable job of making the options known to the customer. Let's examine point 2 first by considering some of the reasons that the customer may not have been prepared to purchase the correct solution:

They were provided with a variety of options for support, but they were unable to understand them. Since they thought that they were being offered something unnecessary they avoided taking the service. It was sort of similar to super sizing your combo meal at McDonald's. They didn't comprehend the different aspects of hosting services, budget limitations were involved, a startup company that just didn't have the resources, or the budget wasn't properly allocated, or they thought that the less money they spend the more profits they will see. They were completely unaware of how risky it was to not spend money for support. If we can validly address this last point, which is the need to not underestimate the value of the proper level of support service, then the entire problem can be solved. The previous eight years of experience in the industry have taught us that customers who are properly aware of the risks involved with a lack of support never hesitate at support costs. When they appreciate the risk it means that they understand what they are purchasing, and that they understand how important it is.

How do we get customers to understand the risks? We write articles like this and hope that they will read them.

Not long ago, we wondered why it was so difficult for clients to realize how risky it is to function without a ready, reliable support system. We finally concluded that it was because they don't actually see what it is we do that would help them. Our service offers an intangible benefit that they will be charged for but don't truly comprehend. Therefore, they are highly dubious about the whole thing.

My background is engineering so I love analogies, diagrams and pulling things apart. I'll spare you the diagrams but we'll work on some analogies for now.

Consider an automobile. You drive on the weekends. Most of the time you use your car to travel to social activities occasionally and shop every now and then. You are concerned about the environment and this is the reason you ride the train to your job everyday. This car is new, nothing elaborate but it functions well. You have it checked out one time a year and except for a rare flat tire it does not disappoint you. The rank of your dependence - low.

The dependence level of a person on the home PC is low. It may not seem like it but look at it thoroughly. Everyday you use it to check your email, do a little facebooking- even if you won't admit it, read the paper, or use skype to chat with friends when they are overseas. Don't forget you only get to use it when you can get your kids off of it. It barely works because your lovely children have downloaded it with anything they can find, including viruses. When it eventually does fall over, the kids will go outside to play and you will just use your mobile. Eventually you will remember to take it to the computer shop and when it is fixed a week after you drop if off you have not missed it, started to read a book and the kids went outside and got some exercise.

Therefore, every automobile and computer is identical, isn't that so? NO!

Consider a thoroughbred race horse. Owners go to great expense to make sure that this one horse, irreplaceable and one of a kind, reaches its peak performance capabilities at certain weekends of the year, for a race that will last only a couple of minutes. The time and money spent on trainers, housing, transportation, feed, jockeys, vet bills, all comes down to a few minutes on the track, then it's win or lose.

The web server that is responsible for running your online application. It is imperative that it remains running at all times, 24 x 7. The amount of time that it works is measured each month as a percentage above 99.8%. If the server stops running, your business will stop selling. If it goes down, your clients will be forced to stop working, as they are not getting what they are paying you for. It is important that while making changes, adding new features and tweaking the server that service delivery I not interrupted. A constant changing factor for your server is its load. If it so happens to go down at 3am in the morning, it is not possible for you to wait until the morning to fix it. Your level of dependence - high.

Yes, your home PC might run Windows and your server might run Windows, but the things you need to do to look after them both are very, very different. The whiz kids that we have looking after your machines didn't spend 4 years at university playing games or hacking - they picked up the skills which lets us achieve uptimes of 99.8%.

By the time you're on your own server, whether your wallet believes you or not, your level of dependence on your server is high. What I hope is quite clear by now is that if you have a high level of dependence on something you need to spend the money to get a level of support that will deliver a level of service that is inline with your expectations. If you skimp on the support, or don't find a provider that can deliver the right level of support - chances are you'll be enjoying one of those conversations above sometime soon.

Some food for thought:

Were you aware?

That we see on average over 100 attempts to break into every server every day. We've seen dedicated servers with no publicly advertised services hacked within 3 hours of going live due to easily-guessable passwords. That hundreds of security holes are found in common web applications every month that could let someone hack you server. Most hacking attempts are automated - you don't have to be high profile to get targeted. Have you thought about:

What occurs if alterations are performed without a change management strategy, with unintended results? What would be the outcome for your company if an error rendered your online service out of commission for 24 hours, or even more? What is the price of downtime to you, either as sales lost or damage to your good name? Do you possess:

A single IT person looking after support on your server? Are they on call 24 x 7? What happens when they're sleeping? In the pub? Partying? At the footy? On holidays? A plan for dealing with outages on your web service? Monitoring of applications in place so that you know if there is a problem? Monitoring of the load on your hardware? What happens if you run out of disc space? A plan for applying updates to applications to maintain security? A firewall in place? A policy for ensuring only strong passwords (http://www.anchor.com.au/hosting/dedicated/Securing_Remote_Access_via_SSH_and_Server_Security) are used? A preventative maintenance plan in place to stop problems occurring in the first place?

Jim Hawkins is a member of Anchor web hosting. Anchor is an quality Australian provider of dedicated servers (http://www.anchor.com.au/dedicated-hosting/dedicated-servers.py) and web hosting (http://www.anchor.com.au/) services that prides itself in technical ability and focused customer support.