What is a Boston Dedicated Hosting Provider?
A "Boston Dedicated Hosting Provider" is a company that offers dedicated hosting services from data centers located in Greater Boston area.
Many of the large Tier 3 and Tier 4 facilities owned by Equinix, Digital Realty, Lumen, CoreSite, INAP, TierPoint, Iron Mountain, Evocative, Expedient and many other IT facilities are located on the west bank of the Hudson River in New Jersey. They enable cloud infrastructure providers to deliver application services to the entire New York metropolitan area with an average round-trip latency of 1 ms to 3 ms.
What is a Boston Edge Server?
Your Boston Edge Server is a Bare-Metal or a Cloud Server that:
a) is hosted in a data center in Boston (Cambridge) physically close to your application users and customers
b) provides the lowest possible round-trip delay for application delivery (typically less than 5 milliseconds).
Your Boston edge server environment can be used as:
a) Edge dedicated server with OS installed directly on the physical (bare-metal) server; or
b) As an infrastructure node that hosts virtual servers created with Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) virtualization technology in Ubuntu 20 (or Ubuntu 22). VMM allows you to create and use Virtual Machines (VMs) that run a Linux distribution or Windows OS.
What is the security level of my Boston Dedicated Server?
Bare Metal Servers and Dedicated Cloud Hosting infrastructure providers in general, and those in Boston in particular, offer the following levels of security with their dedicated hosting services:
1. Physical Environment Security
Physical environment security refers to all physical aspects of the Boston data center facilities used to house bare metal servers. This includes the resilience against natural disasters, the physical design of the data center and the way the server rooms and cabinets are organized, as well as power redundancy, Internet network redundancy, and overall business continuity.
2. Network Security
Network security is part of the overall data center communications architecture. It includes the redundancy of fiber connectivity routes and the wide choice of ISPs and interconnection options.
3. Physical Server Security
This can also be referred to as "Bare Metal Server Security". It refers to the specific hardware components and configurations of the server that increase its uptime. These include the number of power supplies (PSUs) used, the number and capacity of network interface cards (NICs), the number and specification of hard drives used (SATA, SAS, SSD, NMVe, etc.), the use of RAID controllers, the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI, also known as ILO and iDrac by server vendors) for remote network access to the New York-based server, etc.
As a provider of Boston Bare Metal Servers, HC automatically covers the highest possible industry standards regarding "Physical Environment Security" and "Network Security". Physical Server Security is a customizable element of the dedicated hosting server that is selected by the user of the physical server (i.e. the customer).
Most of our Boston dedicated servers include the following "Physical Server Security" by default:
- Redundant Power Supplies (PSUs)
- At least 2 x 1 Gbps physical Network Interface Cards (NICs)
- Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) and IPMI capabilities, except for the Edge servers, which are shipped with SSH management access only and are not recoverable in the event of an operating system (OS) failure that renders the server inoperable
Are there dedicated servers with unlimited bandwidth in Boston?
Yes, if by "unlimited bandwidth" you mean no restrictions on incoming and outgoing Internet traffic and no charges for data transfer used. Each dedicated server in Boston comes with a certain virtual or physical capacity of the Internet connection port, chosen by the server user. It varies from 100 Mbps to 30 Gbps. Unless the dedicated server is listed with a certain number of terabytes (TB) of data transfer, there are no limitations or restrictions on the used bandwidth used or data transfer quotas, up to the capacity of the Internet connection port, selected by our clients.
Unless otherwise specified, all dedicated servers in Boston offered by HostColor feature "unlimited bandwidth up to the capacity of the Internet connection port". This is also called "unmetered bandwidth", which is actually a more appropriate term to use.
"Unmetered Bandwidth" or "dedicated server with unmetered bandwidth" means that the hosting provider does not measure the bandwidth used by the server. In Boston and most of its other Edge data center locations HostColor allows its customers to use the full capacity of the physical Internet bandwidth port of their dedicated servers.
There are no limits on the inbound and outbound Internet traffic (data transfer) on the Edge Bare Metal servers hosted in our data center located at 300 Bent St in Cambridge. There are also no data transfer fees. Each Boston Edge dedicated server comes with a certain physical capacity of the Internet connection port - 5 Gbps, 10 Gbps, 20 Gbps, or 30 Gbps - chosen by the server owner. Server owners are free to transfer data up to the full capacity of the Internet connection port they selected when they signed up. If the server user selected a 5 Gbps connection port at sign-up, they can upgrade to 10 Gbps, 20 Gbps, or 30 Gbps, depending on the network interface available on the bare-metal server in Boston.
Is my dedicated server in Boston safe from DDoS attacks?
Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks typically result in service unavailability and thousands of dollars in data transfer service fees, especially if you host your IT infrastructure with one of the major hyperscalers.
HostColor's DDoS-protected dedicated servers in Boston minimize the risk of service unavailability and virtually eliminate the risk of you incurring data transfer costs as a result of artificial, bot-generated traffic to your server instances.
When you use our dedicated servers in Boston, your applications run behind sophisticated DDoS protection firewalls, maximizing application availability. Our natural, enterprise-grade, DDoS-protected networks safeguard your Boston dedicated server from unexpected network downtime, preventing loss of business and revenue. Our DDoS-protected network services filter out malicious traffic and ensure that legitimate traffic requests reach your servers and applications. Specifically, our DDoS protection includes the following capabilities:
- Real-time mitigation of malicious attacks
- Human-generated traffic that reaches your Boston dedicated server
- Native protection against network attacks of any size
- No additional fees or charges for DoS and DDoS protected servers and infrastructure
- No fees for bot-generated and malicious traffic on all unmetered dedicated servers and dedicated clouds in Boston
- No increased latency and long round-trip delays in application delivery in the event of a network attack
- All IPv4 and IPv6 settings are protected from DDoS attacks
Is my Edge Server in Boston protected against failure?
Yes! Each Boston Edge dedicated server has four (4x) 25-gigabit network interfaces configured for redundancy on 2 separate NIC cards. All four interfaces are placed into a single link access group (LAG) and utilize LACP for individual link monitoring. Your Boston Edge Server is connected to two network switches with two (2x) 25-gigabit connection links to the first switch and two (2x) 25-gigabit to the second switch. Each network switch has multiple 100-gigabit fiber connections to the data center's network architecture that features failover protection. The overall networking architecture sustains full data transfer capacity with the failure of any single networking appliance or link. The data transfer from our Boston City Edge data center to either the public Internet or the MPLS IP VPN network is secured by two diverse routers for each network. The routers are connected to a pair of network switches. The data transfer can be forwarded through both routers and will switch over automatically upon failure of any networking device.
Does HC provide AMD-based dedicated servers in Boston?
Yes, we have an AMD Dedicated Server section where you can find hardware configurations with various AMD Ryzen and AMD Epyc processors. When you click to order any of the server plans, you can select the service location and fully customize the server starting with the edge location, RAM, memory type and capacity, bandwidth port, and data transfer quota.
How do I protect my hosted apps and data in Boston from natural disasters?
To protect your hosted applications and data from any type of natural disaster, your organization must have two different dedicated servers hosted in two different data centers. The primary data center and server location can be in the greater Boston area, and the secondary, redundant server can be hosted in any data center location that is at least 100 miles away from the primary data center. When selecting your secondary dedicated server location, it is important to consider the risk of natural disasters for the geographic region.
Once two dedicated servers are in place in two different data centers, the servers must be interconnected and the applications and data must be either backed up or mirrored. In the event of failure of the primary dedicated server, operations are switched to the redundant server according to a specific readiness level scenario and procedure. The latter depends on the chosen disaster recovery and business continuity model.
Can I have a dedicated cloud infrastructure in Boston?
You can use your preferred cloud computing virtualization technology to create and deploy a dedicated cloud infrastructure on a single bare metal server or a cluster of servers. If you want to use two dedicated bare metal servers, they can be directly interconnected using 1GE or 10GE NIC cards. If you need HostColor's help to create a cloud computing architecture, we can help you design one, deploy it, and manage it as needed.
Servers hosted in CoreSite BO1 data center at 70 Inner Belt Rd in Somerville can use Proxmox VE, VMware ESXi, Linux Containers, VirtualBox, OpenVZ, Microsoft Hyper-V, Kubernetes, Docker, or other virtualization platforms.
Edge bare-metal servers hosted at 300 Bent St in Cambridge can use the Ubuntu operating system with Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) virtualization technology in Ubuntu 20 (or Ubuntu 22) OS.
Can I host Docker and Kubernetes containers in Boston?
Yes. You can create and host dedicated cloud infrastructure based on Docker and Kubernetes in Boston data centers and host containerized applications on it.
HostColor's Boston bare metal and cloud infrastructure allows organizations to deploy run, scale up, scale down, and quickly move Docker containers and the containerized applications from one virtual containerized environment to another without interruption. Docker containers are executable software packages that contain everything needed to run an application: code, runtime, system tools, system libraries, and settings.
HC also enables enterprises to deploy a fully isolated, dedicated cloud infrastructure for hosting and orchestrating containerized applications, based on the Kubernetes open source platform for managing containerized workloads and services.
Can I have a server with AMD processor in Boston?
Yes, we offer AMD-powered dedicated servers in our Boston data center locations.
Is business continuity possible on my Boston Dedicated Server?
Yes, you can do this using virtualization technology such as Proxmox VE. Proxmox provides a software stack called the HA Manager that automatically detects failures and provides automatic failover.
The Proxmox VE HA Manager acts as an "automated" administrator. After resources (VMs, containers, etc.) are configured, the HA Manager monitors them for proper functionality and handles service failover to a redundant Boston server in case of failure or downtime. The HA manager can also handle normal user requests to start, stop, move, and migrate a service.
But it's not just Proxmox VE. There are many other technologies that enable the use of two or more physical servers to provide business continuity for IT infrastructure and hosted applications. Microsoft Windows Hyper V also allows server owners to create a high availability cluster.
Is there technical support available?
All HostColor Edge servers in Boston come with "Free Infrastructure Support". HostColor never charges you for access to infrastructure technical support. Unlike the large hyperscale clouds like AWS, Azure, and others, which charge their customers for access to technical support for their bare-metal or cloud infrastructure.
Our infrastructure technical support covers everything related to network interfaces and the core functionality of the physical components of your Boston bare-metal dedicated server such as CPU, RAM, and storage drives. With our free infrastructure support, you can save money and have access to the technical support you need for the core components and network functions of your Boston edge server.
Please note that the "Free Infrastructure Support" does not include support for the operating system (OS), any custom configurations created and maintained by the customer, and the installed software applications.
Please note that in the event of a major hardware component failure or bare-metal server operating system (OS) failure, it is very likely that HostColor will deploy a new bare-metal server rather than repair the current server. For this reason, we expect our Edge Server customers to maintain a fully functional backup copy of their server technology environment, applications, and data.
In addition to the "Free Infrastructure Support" HostColor takes the Edge hosting services it provides to a new level of reliability with its "Semi-Managed Dedicated Servers" support.
What does a Semi-Managed Edge Server mean?
While most dedicated hosting providers offer 'Unmanaged' or 'Managed' hosting services, HostColor does 'Semi-Managed' and 'Managed' Edge Servers.
'Unmanaged' means that the client is solely responsible for the management of the bare-metal edge server they have. The provider's responsibility is to make sure that the server network connection works properly and in case of a hardware failure, to fix the failed components, or to replace the whole physical server.
'Managed' means that the provider is responsible for managing the network, the physical server, the installed operating system, and the software environment. The provider does operating system updates, software updates, and other management and configuration tasks on the physical server. In other words unmanaged edge bare metal servers do not feature server-side support and therefore the clients pay for the base infrastructure service. The 'Managed Edge Servers' feature full server-side infrastructure, OS, and software environment support and therefore are more expensive, as the provider's experts commit time and work hours to deliver technical and system administration.
HostColor fills the gap by offering 'Semi-Managed' Edge Bare Metal Servers in Boston. 'Semi-Managed' means that our administrators install your preferred OS on the physical server or your preferred virtualization platform to transform the physical server into a Cloud infrastructure. We create a custom technology environment per your requirements and keep on record a description with the 'base desired state' of your dedicated server in Boston. As a part of the 'Semi-Managed' support contract, HostColor reinstalls the server OS per the request and helps the client fix issues and troubleshoot in case of any operating system, networking, or software configuration issues. All 'Semi-Managed' dedicated servers in Boston feature up to 30 minutes per month of technical and system administration. Any time spent by HC experts on managing the server OS, software environments, or troubleshooting will be charged at HostColor's standard managed service rates.