Major Components of Windows-Based Hosting

Version 2.0 of the Solution for Windows-based Hosting contains seven major modules, which can be used independently or in combination. Together, they cover most of the major tasks that a service provider needs to perform when managing large numbers of servers for customers.

Server purposing. Some service providers have thousands of customers and more than 10,000 individual servers in their data centers. According to Microsoft, about 14% of these servers need to be added or rebuilt every month to meet new customer needs. But at roughly three hours to build a Windows server, this is a costly operation. A server provisioning module that uses Windows Server’s Automated Deployment Services (ADS) can deploy server images simultaneously to multiple “bare-metal” servers, reducing the chance of installation or configuration errors and slicing to less than 20 minutes the time required to set up a new server.

Monitoring. Service providers need to ensure that servers are functioning properly and may need to monitor individual applications, such as Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server, particularly on servers that are shared by several customers. Monitoring services provided by the Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) ensure that problems are detected and resolved quickly. Monitoring helps ensure that a system meets the provisions of service level agreements (SLAs) negotiated with customers, and it can also generate revenue for service providers by allowing them to charge extra for advanced application monitoring, such as tracking the number of unique visits to a Web site or monitoring disk usage; service providers can then make this information available through a Web interface.