What is an unmanaged server?
An unmanaged server means that all server administration and management is completely up to you.
With an unmanaged server, you are expected to perform all server activities yourself, including installing software, managing backups, updating the OS, or anything else that involves logging into the server. With an unmanaged server, you are also responsible for managing your own software and server security. If you run into an issue installing or configuring a piece of software on an unmanaged server, its up to you to solve the problem or contract a server administrator who can help.
As far as uptime, you are responsible for setting up your own server monitoring tools. We monitor our network connections for uptime, but do not place any monitoring to ensure the uptime of your server. This is because we do not have access to intervene during an outage, and we also don’t know when you may have purposely shut down your server.
Is an unmanaged server the same as a self-managed server?
Yes, both of the term unmanaged and self-managed mean the same thing. In each case, you or someone in your company is responsible for managing the server and GreatHostServer is responsible for ensuring network / power uptime as well as having staff available to assist with hardware support.
What level of support can I expect from an unmanaged server?
Even with an unmanaged server, you are not completely left alone as far as server management.
With an unmanaged server, we still help get you started by installing the selected Operating System you chose during checkout.
If you ever experience issues with server hardware or performance issues which may be related to failing hardware, we are able to help investigate and replace the impacted hardware.
As well, if you experience any issues with network connectivity, we can help troubleshoot and diagnose these issues with our upstream providers.