You do a search for dedicated server within Google and what pops up? If you’re wondering, it’s well over 9 million results. It’s no wonder we all have a hard time figuring out which web hosting company is best out there. As I tell all my friends, it’s all about your own personal experience and hence the term YMMV or your mileage may vary applies. However, when it comes to products we can easily throw all the dedicated server companies in an arena and let them duke it out. As a consumer, there is one thing we all want… VALUE!

This is where Superb Internet reveals one of their trump cards: the 5-in-1 managed service package for just $99. Five in one has a nice ring to it, but what does this mean to us dedicated server customers? Let me break it down for you:

5-in-1 Managed Services by Superb Internet

  • Managed Backup (normally $49/month)
  • Managed Firewall (normally $99/setup and $49/month)
  • OS Hardening (normally $95/setup)
  • Patches and Updates (normally $35/month)
  • Monitoring (normally $20/month)

Essentially, Superb Internet has packaged 5 managed services that normally would cost you $194/setup AND $153/month. Instead, all this is available for just $99/month with FREE setup with any dedicated server plan. That is some hefty savings. So let’s talk a little about what each service does.

The managed backup uses R1Soft to automatically handle backups. I’m a huge fan of R1Soft and if you don’t know what this backup solution is, I bet I can easily convince you. Initially, R1Soft takes makes a backup dump of your hard drive partition. Every day the deltas, or data that has changed from the previous backup, gets backed up making available an image of your partition every day. So what does this mean? Now your server’s resources are more efficient because you no longer have to backup the same data every day. R1Soft knows what data has changed and can make a restore point from any day as long as it’s within its retention policy. Best of all, if you need to do a restore, R1Soft utilizes a technology called Bare-metal Restore which cuts down the time for a full restore significantly so you can but up and running in no time.

The managed firewall is a hardware-based firewall using Cisco FWSM. The Cisco FWSM actually resides on the switch level and is preferred by many system administrators because of its redundant configuration. Since Superb Internet’s network is fully redundant, if one of the firewalls were to not work, it would fail over to the other so your online site is continuously available.

OS hardening is a must for beginners and also the experienced that are a little lazy. It is important to understand that operating systems are quite vulnerable for unauthorized access right out of the box. Superb’s experienced staff secures the operating system giving you the full security and peace of mind you need.

Patches and updates I like since now there is one less thing for me to worry about. Superb Internet has a patches server that periodically checks to ensure your dedicated server has the latest security patches or updates available for your respective operating system for the maximum security. Let’s face it, this task has slipped through our fingers a lot of times. This service makes the ongoing management of a dedicated server much easier.

Finally, there is Monitoring. This doesn’t really need any explanation, but you can choose what service you want monitored and get notified if it goes down.

To top it off, all of the above are MANAGED services. This means that you don’t really have to do a thing but tell the team at Superb Internet what you want done. The managed support team will take care of the setup and ongoing management of all 5 services. For just $99/months… not too shabby!