What sensible and penetrating questions should I ask?

minimole · 20th June 2005

We're in the process of reviewing our hosting arrangements and will be contacting a shortlist of hosting companies.

I want to prepare a short document containing "sensible and penetrating" questions to submit to each company.

We want 4 dedicated and managed Windows servers, 1 for SQL db, 2 for general web, 1 for our own web apps.

I'd be very grateful for suggestions from this community as to what questions I should ask, based on your experience and knowledge in this area. For example, I'd like questions about the contract T & Cs, bandwidth, backup, management, support etc. Alternatively, if you've been through this process yourself and already have such a document, would you be prepared to share it? If there's sufficient interest and response, I'll colllate all the info and publish the results back to the forum.

Finally, we'd really like a company who would be prepared to "go the extra mile" in terms of putting in extra support effort, eg by running our own troubleshooting procedures when a problem occurs. Any recommendations along those lines?

Thanks very much.
Doug

chrisbyrd · 20th June 2005

i would say one of the most important things would be to try and talk to as many of their existing customers as possible and see what they have to say

AdamC · 20th June 2005

When I'm looking for servers I tend to think of the following

- Connectivity
- Backup solutions
- Physical Location
- Level of support (24/7? - how competent technicians are)
- How much bandwidth is available and what happens if you go over (how much is additional bandwidth?)
- With managed servers, I'd probably want to know how many hours they would be willing to spend on it if you needed something specific doing.
- How reliable is the hardware, is it new or has it been recycled many times?
- Get some testimonials from existing customers

The best way to find a hosting company is get to know there staff - you can be sure of reliability if you know you can contact them when needed. For example look around here - AGCC Limited offer managed servers (with windows - i had to login to their live chat to check though

) - there connectivity is extremely high speed as is there support.

Hope this help you.

markcastle · 20th June 2005

As above.. plus,
- Ask them if they would be happy to show you around their facilities, as this will ensure they operate their servers in a decent professional datacentre environment rather than a rack in the corner of a home office etc.
- Make sure the host has a Microsoft SPLA agreement.
- Ask them what their average response and resolution times are for support issues, and don't consider any that have initial response times of > 6 hours (personally i'd look for <1 hour initial response).
- Ask them some probing MSSQL questions to see if they know what they are doing with MSSQL.. lots don't.
- Make sure they actually run their own network (eg have their own Autonomous System) as the buck will then stop with them for any networking issues.
- Ask them how much they oversubscribe their bandwidth by (don't hold out much chance of getting a true answer from them... most know it would be impossible for you to verify this... but still get an answer for the record).
- Check with companies house to see how long they have been in business (and to make sure that they actually return accounts to companies house as per their legal requirement to do so... you'd be amazed how many don't).
- Make sure you compare like with like... lots of hosts will sell you a server with the latest CPU and oodles of disk space, but is it thrown together tosh from eBay (you'd be surprised at what some hosts put in racks and call servers - and thats another reason to demand a tour of their facilities). servers are cheap these days, decent service contracts aren't.

chrisbyrd · 20th June 2005

i agree with all the points raised so far

minimole · 21st June 2005

This is all very helpful and interesting guys, thanks. One further question, if I may - on the question of in terms of putting in extra support effort, eg by running our own troubleshooting procedures when a problem occurs.

What's a reasonable expectation? Should I expect a host to do that, or at least go some way to doing that, within the contract price? How would I phrase a question to them to see what they'd be prepared to do?

Thanks again - really helpful.
Doug

minimole · 21st June 2005

This is the list so far - comments anyone? Any obvious questions missing? Any that don't make sense (eg. I'm not too sure what to ask about bandwith / data transfer limits)

Mark Castle - you mentioned "probing MSSQL questions". We have our own SQL developers and DBAs. Am not too sure what questions would be relevant in a hosting context. Any examples you can think of?

Thanks guys.
PS I know the formatting is crap - but it looks fine as a Word doc. ;-)
__________________________________________________ ____________________

Hosting questionnaire
__________________________________________________ ____________________

Host:[insert name of hosting co] Package: [insert name/details of hosting package]

What is your company registration number?

How long have you traded as a web host?

How many clients do you provide hosting for?

What percentage are using dedicated servers?

May we contact some of your clients for references?
(If so, please provide a list of at least 6 contacts of whom we can pick 3)

What data centre do you use?

Can we visit your facilities?

Are you part of the Microsoft SPLA program?

What is the minimum contract length for this hosting package?

Notice period to end the contract?

Are prices fixed for the contract period?
If not, how might they vary?

Do you offer a money-back guarantee and/or refunds for downtime, loss of service etc? Please give details.

Please specify any setup fees

What make of servers do you use?

Will you provide us with new servers?
Bandwith limits (max / guaranteed)?
(please state the relevant period, eg monthly)
Data transfer limits
(please state the relevant period, eg monthly)

How much is additional bandwidth?

How much is your bandwidth oversubscribed?

Is your network your own (fully autonomous)?

What is the backup routine?

Where are backups stored?

Can we run our own backups? (if so, is there dedicated bandwidth / data transfer available?)

How long will it take to restore a backup?

What control panel do you provide?

What “server health monitoring” do you perform?

Can you detect a failed Windows service? How?

Can you detect a hung or crashed application? How?

What alerting facilities do you provide, if for example a server process fails or an application hangs?

What statistics and reports are available to us?

How will they be made available to us?

Will you carry out our own troubleshooting procedures to resolve application software problems?

Is there any further cost for this?

What UPS arrangements will our servers have?

What UPS failover arrangements do you have?

What is your hardware replacement policy?

How long will it take to replace a failed disk?

Will server downtime be required to replace a disk?

Will our servers have hardware or software RAID?
Please specify the RAID details.

How long will it take to replace a failed server?

How long will it take to restore a backup?

What is your average initial support response time?

Is your support 24/7?

Will there any periods (eg Xmas) when support will be unavailable or the response time stated above
significantly increased (ie over 50% longer)?

Can we set up a VPN between our own network and our servers?

How many support technicians are usually available?

Will it be possible to contact your technicians directly, by phone?

Will possible to contact your technicians directly, by other means, including email, MSN, etc. Please specify which other means.

AdamC · 21st June 2005

I'll say one thing - I'd hate to be host to have to answer all that - but well done very detailed and a useful resource for others looking for a provider.

Quote:

May we contact some of your clients for references?
(If so, please provide a list of at least 6 contacts of whom we can pick 3)

They can't - if they do then don't go with them as they would be breaking data protection legislation. They may publish some on their website though with their clients permission.

chrisbyrd · 21st June 2005

well... you'd expect a host to have a significant amount of that information on their website already

maybe another thing to add to your list - how quickly, detailed, and enthusiastically each host responds to your enquirey

chrisbyrd · 21st June 2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by aTech

They can't - if they do then don't go with them as they would be breaking data protection legislation. They may publish some on their website though with their clients permission.

we have a respresentitive 'pot' of customers that have allowed us to give their details out as referee's specifically for this reason\purpose

minimole · 21st June 2005

Well, if they can't spend 30 mins (max!) filling that in, great stuff. We've weeded out the losers without wasting any time or money! :-)

I'd be very pleased to find that this has proven to be a useful resource and that others are using it. We're all re-inventing the same wheel when it comes to finding a host. Forums like this are invaluable but the information needs to be "distilled" somehow. Maybe this is a start.

Pending any responses, I'm going to post this in the "Requests" forum and see what happens ...

Cheers,
Doug

minimole · 21st June 2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by aTech

I'll say one thing - I'd hate to be host to have to answer all that - but well done very detailed and a useful resource for others looking for a provider.

They can't - if they do then don't go with them as they would be breaking data protection legislation. They may publish some on their website though with their clients permission.

You're right - but we've been asked the same thing from prospective clients and it's simply a question of approaching a few (hand picked of course ;-) and asking if they'd be prepared to be contacted. Standard stuff.

chrisbyrd · 21st June 2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by minimole

I'm going to post this in the "Requests" forum and see what

make sure you are very clear about what you require - specs etc

JonWitte · 21st June 2005

One to add - Ask about their network uptime SLA and compensation policy