Windows Web Hosting On LiquidWeb

Introduction

Liquidweb offers a range of hosting services. It starts with completely dedicated hosting using their datacenter server resources. This is the premium end of the service. On the lowest end they have the shared hosting. Somewhere in the middle are the shared private servers. The shared hosting on Liquidweb seems to be geared to Linux/Unix hosting only. We shall, therefore, explore the dedicated servers and virtual private servers offered by the provider for Windows based hosting facilities. A 100% uptime guarantee and 30 minute hardware replacement SLA is offered across all the service offerings.

Fully Managed Dedicated Hosting

Services are offered in four different classes. As we have mentioned before, dedicated service offerings are about exclusive servers being made available to you. Besides the computing resource in the form of a server box, they’ll provide you the power, cooling and housing in a controlled environment. Liquidweb also makes available maintenance professionals 24/7 at their data centers.

The four offerings are (a) Webmaster series, (b) Professional series, (c) Enterprise series, and (d) Colocation. The Colocation option is a little different. In this case, even the computing box, the server, is owned by you. They just provide the location space with the power, cooling, housing, and so forth. Prices for the Webmaster series start at $149 per month, Professional series at $234 per month, Enterprise series at $364 per month, and Colocation starts at $150 per month.

Dedicated Hosting Facilities

There are certain common facilities across all plans available. These include 24/7/365 phone and email help desk support as well as pro-active service monitoring, 100% up time guarantee and 30 minute hardware replacement SLA. A defined amount of bandwidth availability is also committed. There are extra facilities available through server upgrade/dedicated add-ons for servers across the plans. These include hardware firewall, load balancer, back-up/storage, private switch, remote KVM and PCI compliance. These are available for extra payment of course.

Beyond this processor power, amount of memory, disk space, back up options, control panel, etc. are the options available. As is usual, some of the choices are default and others are available at an extra price. The plan/configuration you choose should be based on not only the current performance but should take care of the scalability requirements in the short term future, too.

At the minimum end, the CPU is a hyper threading Intel processor or AMD dual processor. Webmaster, Professional and Enterprise series plans offer increasingly powerful CPU options. Multiple options of memory are available. There are two kinds of options in storage – one with increasing capacity and the other set that gives you increasing performance. A back up disk is offered as standard, an additional remote back-up can be chosen, too. There’s a choice for OS. Since you need Windows-based hosting, the choice here is clear. The control panel that will be available for you once you log in to the service providers site is the Plesk 8 Unlimited for Windows option and is charged extra. You may choose not to have a control panel when everything is done by the Liquidweb people. A fixed bandwidth is offered at no additional charge but an unlimited bandwidth at a maximum data rate also is offered at a fixed price. The default option for a set up fee is zero, but if you do agree to pay a fee upfront, you can take a discount on the monthly charge.

Colocation options are for rack space and bandwidth as well as a similar kind of set up fee options. Choose one of two options depending on if you need 2U/ 1 tower or 10 U/ 3 towers rack space. Bandwidth of 1000 GB to 2000 GB per month is offered. The set up fee for this option is higher compared to other services.

Virtual Private Servers (VPS)

Dedicated hosting gives you complete control over your hosting servers. However, it is expensive. If you are just starting out and huge traffic is not yet your problem, then you want to spend less on this recurring expense, if possible. VPS plans start at $100 per month.

In the VPS arrangement, a part of a premier server resource is dedicated to you. Under no conditions will your resources fall below this minimum even though the total physical resources are shared between multiple virtual servers inside the one physical server provided by Liquidweb. You have total control over this piece of the server, which works as a server by itself, since it is available for you to set up and operate. There’s only one plan available under this scheme, the Windows VPS Premium. The resources available are 40 GB RAID protected storage with option to go up to 100 GB; 768 MB RAM guaranteed with the option to go up to 1024 MB memory and bandwidth of 350 GB per month with upgrade to 700 GB per month. The OS provided is Windows 2003 Server.

The Plesk 8 control panel is provided to users. Set up fee options are similar to what we discussed across other plans. It is zero by default, but you can take a discount if some fee is paid up front.