LITA Blog

Here is a page to gather and track what we believe our hosting requirements are for the site that hosts LITABlog. Whether we are happy with our current host is something that we can evaluate on a yearly basis (or more frequently if needed). This is a preliminary list. If you have opinions about things on this list or recognize that something is missing from this list please feel free to comment.

(M) = Mandatory requirement
(HD) = Highly desired feature
(D) = Desired feature
(Q) = Question we need (would like) answered

Requirements, Desires, and Questions

• Uptime:
  • Is there a monitoring service to tell us when our site is down? (HD)
  • Is there a promise of >= 95% uptime? (M)
  • What sort of tech support?
    • Email (what sort of response time?) (M)
    • Phone, 24/7 person? (D)
    • Phone, call back (what sort of response time)? (Q; I see this
      as same as #1)
• Logs:
  • Are all our logs from our server kept and backed up? (M)
  • Are they all accessible to us at any time? (HD)
• Backups
  • How often are they made?
    • Every day (M)
    • Hourly (HD)
  • How many iterations are made/kept?
    • Two (M)
    • Three (HD)
    • Are they kept in a different location from main server? (HD)
    • Do we have immediate access to them? (M)
• Redundancy (D)
• Cost (Q)
• Bandwidth and how much does it cost to purchase more if we go over? (Q)
• Disk space and can we purchase more if needed? (Q)
• Is there a separate server for serving media files? (Q)
• Shell access to a Linux/Unix system (M)
• Multiple logins/accounts (Kevin, Jason, etc.) (M)
• LITABlog “group” so resources can be shared (M)
• User accounts only connect via secure (ssh/scp/sftp) connection (HD)
• Flexible with regards to software choices (no "push button" limitations) (HD)
• Access to cron to create our own jobs (M)
• Multiple database options (MySQL/Postgres) (D)
• May create multiple databases for our use (HD)
• Fully allows .htaccess (M)
• Runs current versions of software (M)
• Who maintains DNS; is there a secondary DNS on an entirely different host? (Q)