Higher Ground’s server hosting architecture is simple: your data - on your servers - behind your firewall. No “per users” fees, no hidden charges, no performance degradation because another church is maxing-out their system. We have done extensive evaluation of virtual computing and multi-customer shared server clusters – interesting technology but not able to deliver the high performance and high availability our customers demand.  CheckIn on Sunday morning and data posting on Monday afternoon push a system to its capacity and your staff doesn’t want to hear excuses; they just want it to work at the same pace they do. To meet this requirement, we use a pair of physical (not virtual) servers. One for the SQL 2005 data server and the other for IIS Web hosting and, optionally, Microsoft Terminal Services.  Both servers are equipped with two of the latest Intel Xeon Dual-Core processors. Both have 4GB Registered ECC memory, a SCSI-320 fault-tolerant RAID set and dual Intel GB network ports. Out-of-band management cards and TCP KVM function provides the Higher Ground support staff with unparallel monitoring and management capability. With redundant power supplies, battery backups and a massive auto-start diesel generator, you can count on your servers operating at full power every day.  

Our hosting facility is provided by the largest co-location center in Memphis. It is environmentally protected, secure and accessible by the Higher Ground staff 24 x 7. Internet access is via multiple DS3 connections and our bandwidth is burstable to the full speed of their network.  With one TB per month aggregate data transfer, the customer may elect to use the web server for additional content or other sites.

Higher Ground’s E-Mon electronic monitoring will add features not provided by most vendors. Of course we will monitor public TCP ports to check for proper response, but beyond that we will configure the system to check disk space, Windows services such as IIS, SQL Server and Server Agent, Event Log errors, file and folder max size limits, processor temperature, cooling fan speeds, and power supply voltages. Higher Ground also provides Microsoft Windows Update Services (WSUS) to deliver service packs, hot fixes, and security updates to all hosted servers. The bottom line is 99.9% uptime, 1 hour hardware replacement, and a hosting solution designed from the ground up to optimize Shelby Arena.

 We suggest that all Shelby applications be moved to the hosted environment; Arena and V5. Arena is accessed via Internet Explorer and V5 via Terminal Services.  Both Arena and V5 data will reside on the MS SQL 2005 data server making data synchronization quick and simple. The Arena Web server will have Gigabit network access to that data over a dedicated link. Backups of the SQL data and the Arena customization files will automatically run each night over an out-of-band link to our Tereo backup server and subsequently replicated to another site during the following day.  Customers are notified of the success of that backup and may elect to download a fully restorable copy of their data at any time.