How to Offload Server Management and Free Up Your Time

To be clear, we’re not talking about server offload – moving security and performance functionality off the server itself and onto an application network infrastructure device. Rather, the self-management tactic of offloading the most time-consuming and least mission-critical server management tasks onto a third-party provider like Liquid Web. 

Liquid Web has many ways to make your job easier for you – from implementing the managed hosting tools you need to maintain control of your infrastructure to providing experts who can lead the project and ensure that your efforts to offload server management tasks don’t end badly. 

That being said, if you want to explore data architecture changes like server offloading, we can help with that, too. 

Server management is the maintenance of the hardware and software of a hosting environment.

You most likely depend on your server infrastructure for more IT functionality than most people realize. Of course, hosting your website is the most obvious part, but what about data storage, internal email, and running all the applications that make your operations possible? You may have your in-house server or use a remote or cloud server in an off-site, third-party data center.  

Either way, you engage in server management – keeping the hardware plugged in and running smoothly, upgrading and patching the software, looking after security and data protection, actively maintaining data backups, and ensuring that all of your operations are compliant with both regulations and your contract terms. 

Good server management means minimizing downtime and, ideally, eliminating unscheduled downtime. It means building and maintaining a secure data environment while ensuring that your servers have everything they need to meet the demands of your business today and in the foreseeable future. 

Finally, server management can be handled both in-house and by a third-party provider.

As you can imagine, using a reputable third-party provider is one of the fastest, easiest, and most reliable ways to offload server management tasks without compromising performance or reliability. Ideally, this company already provides your server infrastructure, but that isn’t always the case. 

Server management tools are a subset of managed hosting tools that help you manage your server in some way, typically by automating part of the server management process. For example, troubleshooting is an important task for a good server management toolset, as are backup and security update automation. 

Depending on the size of your business, the server management tasks might be divided into several distinct roles. For example, one specialist might focus solely on assembling new hardware and software systems. Another might be in charge of troubleshooting problems. And a third might be in charge of installing and configuring new workstations. 

In all probability, one person handles two or more of these responsibilities. But you might consider outsourcing some of these roles if you have more tasks than your in-house team can complete in a day and you cannot easily increase the size of your team.

You might be thinking that you handle all of these roles and more, and the workload is unreasonable. Well, offloading, in this case, might not cost anywhere near as much as you would expect.

Managed hosting can be anything you need it to be. For example, Liquid Web could take over something as simple (but vital) as updates and backups. We could become your server troubleshooting team, or we could take over the management of the server entirely. We could even upgrade you to a dedicated server or some other kind of advanced data architecture. 

Of course, there are other ways to offload server management. If you have a local team, you could carve off one or more of the server management roles that you currently occupy and give them to the most capable team members with time on their hands. 

You might implement a little automation as well. Liquid Web could, for example, put a full range of the best managed hosting tools into your hands. If you have a large number of servers to service, automating the tasks that require little or no judgment can take a huge weight off your shoulders with almost no downside. 

If you can’t offload server management, the next best option is prioritization. Make sure the most mission-critical tasks get done first and attend to the others when you can. This can be risky, of course. 

Another option might be to engage a skilled server management provider for a set time, from a few months to a year or more. This will let you focus on everything else for a while and prove the practicality of outsourcing. After your break, you can always take up a full load of duties again – but without that backlog hanging over your head. 

So, what kind of load can we take off your shoulders? We’re very flexible, as the name Liquid Web suggests. There are more possibilities than we’ve listed here, of course.

Contact us and speak to one of The Most Helpful Humans In Hosting® today.