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LACA Hosted Servers

LACA Hosted Server Service

What is LACA Hosted Server Service?


LACA offers our customers hosted servers running in a VMWare virtual environment on Cisco Hyperflex hyper-converged infrastructure.   This environment is fully redundant, all storage is on flash drives, and all hardware is on a UPS and generator for maximum uptime.

 

Why Would I Use LACA's Hosted Server Service?

Using LACA's Hosted Server service eliminates the burden of hardware maintenance, rack space, UPS, and backups from your school's technology staff. The server is still 100% your own to manage as you please, just like a physical server at your district would be. 
 
Windows Servers can be joined to your domain just like any of your physical servers, without restrictions.  You can remote desktop to the server to manage it. Hosted servers reside in a block of IP addresses specifically set aside for your district's hosted servers that are part of your school's LACA network and isolated from other LACA customer networks.

There is no equipment to buy and no equipment to maintain. If you need more memory, more CPU, or more disk, it can be added on-the-fly to expand your server's capacity.   No need to put in a requisition for new hardware, wait for it to ship, and take time to install the components like a physical server.   And if you decide to discontinue the use of a server, it can simply be deleted, with no obsolete hardware to be recycled or disposed of.
 

Pricing Information

Member pricing for LACA's Hosted Server Service is as follows (as of October 1st, 2018):
  • $200/year :  Base server (includes 2CPU cores, 2 GB of RAM, 100GB of disk space, backups included, Windows Server or Ubuntu Linux operating systems are included)
  • Additional CPU core : $50/year
  • Additional GB of RAM : $25/year
  • Additional Disk Space beyond 100GB : $1/gb/year
 
Costs will be rolled into LACA’s Service Level Agreement contract with your district for all LACA services.  No extra Purchase Orders or Invoices required.  
 
NOTE:  Additional software licensing for applications installed on a hosted server is the responsibility of the district, and is not included in the price of the hosted server.  Examples are Microsoft SQL server, Mealmagic or other Point-of-Sale software, Filemaker, Moodle, etc.      LACA support for the server itself is included, but troubleshooting of anything beyond the server's virtual hardware and operating system is not included. 
 
Examples: If the server will not boot, or is unable to access the Internet, LACA staff would troubleshoot.  However, issues with additional application software installed on the server would be the responsibility of the district to troubleshoot with the software vendor.

If I Choose to Implement, What Should I Expect?

IIf you choose to implement, these are the steps you can expect to happen:
  1. Notify LACA of your needs (number of CPUs, amount of RAM, amount of disk space, and what Operating system - Windows 2008, Windows 2012, Windows 2016, Ubuntu Linux). If you are unsure of your specific needs, we can start small, provision a server with fewer CPUs and RAM, then monitor the server's usage and adjust as needed. 

  2. LACA will provision the server with the settings you specified, usually within 24 hours.

  3. LACA will help you evaluate usage and make recommendations/adjustments as necessary until the server exactly meets your needs and budget.  

Evaluating LACA Hosted Server Services

We would be happy to set up a base server for you to evaluate and test before you decide to move forward with a purchase.  Just let us know!