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Orvenant

Hosting & infrastructure

Know what your infrastructure agreement covers.

Guides to hosting choices, server management and ongoing care. Clarify responsibility before an incident makes it urgent.

A server specification is not an operating agreement.

Infrastructure decisions affect availability, recovery and the people who respond when something breaks. A larger machine does not supply a backup plan, application support or a tested restore. Begin with the workload, tolerance for interruption and the internal team’s capacity to operate it. Then compare hosting and management offers by their actual responsibilities, not by familiar package names.

Separate three questions before asking for a quote.

These guides cover resource selection, responsibility boundaries and the contents of a management agreement.

Know what management includes

Managed hosting may combine infrastructure and operating work; server management may apply to a server you already own. Compare the named layers, support coverage and account ownership.

Read the guide: Managed hosting vs server management

Read the service boundary

A management agreement should name systems, updates, monitoring, response process, backup and restore responsibilities, exclusions and handover. Those details matter more during an incident than a broad service label.

Read the guide: What a server management agreement covers

Questions to ask before an incident.

Who owns the provider account and can recover access? Which party patches the operating system, database and application? How are changes tested and rolled back? What data is backed up, where is another copy kept and when was a restore last checked? Support hours, escalation routes and realistic recovery objectives should be written down and matched to the architecture.

Treat continuing care as part of the design.

A project release is a point in time; hosting and maintenance continue afterward. Decide who monitors, approves updates, handles incidents and pays providers. Capacity can be changed as evidence grows, but responsibilities should be clear from day one. If the needed coverage exceeds one server or one support person, make that a conscious business decision with its cost.

Questions before we start.

Is a dedicated server safer than a VPS?

Neither category guarantees the safety of the whole service. Review isolation, provider guarantees, backup and recovery, maintenance and access control in the specific offer. A single dedicated machine can still be a single point of failure.

What should be included in a recovery plan?

Identify the systems and data, backup frequency and location, access to recovery credentials, the restore sequence and who performs each step. Test that the copies can actually be restored; a backup status message alone is not recovery evidence.

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