Hosting

fiennes.org maintains a server specifically for hosting InForm websites.

Managed Hosting

fiennes.org runs managed hosting. This basically means that there are individuals who are aware of the functionality of your application who are keeping an eye on things and making sure that the functionality is continuing to function as expected. It is possible to get cheaper hosting if you source an account yourself, but then you will be responsible for managing it. This is a responsibility that most people, once they realise what it entails, choose to delegate onto professionals.

However if you do want to manage your own hosting then fiennes.org is happy to setup and configure your website on a 3rd party host, assuming that they can provide the technical infrastructure that is required, and then pass it over to you to manage.

Backups

We run an automated incremental full daily backup to an offsite facility. This gives us the facility to recover from catastrophic hardware failure with a maximum of 24 hours of data loss. If clients require a more regular, finer grained backup procedure then we are happy to discuss possibilities...

Technical details

The fiennes.org server is a Dell R210 with Quad Core Xeon, 8G of memory and hardware raid giving protection against physical drive failure.

Security and performance upgrades

Both fiennes.org and Melbourne monitor the security mailing lists for all the software installed on our server. When security updates are released that have an impact on the server then we schedule up a time to perform the upgrade and email everyone hosted on the server to warn them when this work is going to take place. If the timing of this is inconvenient for any hosted client, then we reschedule if possible. Application of a major upgrade can necessitate a reboot of the server which leads to downtime of about 2 minutes, but generally the downtime is restricted to a matter of seconds for most upgrades.