Affordable Managed Dedicated/Cloud Hosting in SA

P

Praemon

Expert Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2007
Messages
1,897
Reaction score
472
Location
Cape Town
Can anyone recommend a good managed dedicated/cloud hosting that's reasonably priced? Hetzner seems the best option, although I was hoping to not spend more than R800 a month (their entry-level is R1200). There are some cloud providers like RSA Web and IS/MTN, etc., however, they're not managed. I'd also consider unmanaged cloud/dedicated at a good price and then IT support from another company to manage it, but if it exceeds R1k, then I'd might as well go with Hetzner.

Requirements:

  • Hosted in South Africa (JHB or CPT)
  • 99.9 or higher SLA
  • 24/7 Support
  • Power/usage requirements aren't much (hosting 3 websites, which function perfectly fine on Hetzner's current basic shared hosting)

The main reason shared hosting won't work is due to the security aspect (potentially requiring PCI DSS certification at some stage, but on the lowest level, which can't be achieved on shared hosting).

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.
 
PCI DSS certification? Sigh.

Have a look at domains.co.za and afrihost. I know that domains.co.za have fantastic support in general.
Have you considered the VPS path instead of cloud hosting? I'm not sure whether that meets your requirements; correct me if I'm heading off in the wrong direction... Companies like Hostking, Elite and Web Crew (on request) can all help you with that for much less money.
 
Denouncer said:
Can anyone recommend a good managed dedicated/cloud hosting that's reasonably priced? Hetzner seems the best option, although I was hoping to not spend more than R800 a month (their entry-level is R1200). There are some cloud providers like RSA Web and IS/MTN, etc., however, they're not managed. I'd also consider unmanaged cloud/dedicated at a good price and then IT support from another company to manage it, but if it exceeds R1k, then I'd might as well go with Hetzner.

Requirements:

  • Hosted in South Africa (JHB or CPT)
  • 99.9 or higher SLA
  • 24/7 Support
  • Power/usage requirements aren't much (hosting 3 websites, which function perfectly fine on Hetzner's current basic shared hosting)

The main reason shared hosting won't work is due to the security aspect (potentially requiring PCI DSS certification at some stage, but on the lowest level, which can't be achieved on shared hosting).

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Would a VPS meet your compliance?
 
Idiosyncratic said:
Have you considered the VPS path instead of cloud hosting?
Click to expand...

jsheed_sa said:
Would a VPS meet your compliance?
Click to expand...

VPS hosting should work in theory. Basically, anything that gives a "dedicated" environment that cannot be affected (ie. compromised) by other sites/services should be fine.

I'm also not keen on ISPs that do hosting on the side like Afrihost and Webafrica. Had terrible experiences with both of them with hosting, so won't make that mistake again.
 
Denouncer said:
VPS hosting should work in theory. Basically, anything that gives a "dedicated" environment that cannot be affected (ie. compromised) by other sites/services should be fine.

I'm also not keen on ISPs that do hosting on the side like Afrihost and Webafrica. Had terrible experiences with both of them with hosting, so won't make that mistake again.
Click to expand...

Hey Mate, on the PCI-DSS side, i've also been looking into this. Remember VPS is still shared and can be compromised, so just think hard about this. I explored most options and the only one that actually fits the bill is a dedicated box. For you; make sure that the server is in the Teraco datacenter, they are PCI-DSS and ISO 27001 certified.

Also want to say, I know budget is a big part but you can't afford to go cheap on data security, it can/will seriously burn you. Keep POPI in mind too.
 
Last edited:
poffle said:
Hey Mate, on the PCI-DSS side, i've also been looking into this. Remember VPS is still shared and can be compromised, so just think hard about this. I explored most options and the only one that actually fits the bill is a dedicated box. For you; make sure that the server is in the Teraco datacenter, they are PCI-DSS and ISO 27001 certified.

Also want to say, I know budget is a big part but you can't afford to go cheap on data security, it can/will seriously burn you. Keep POPI in mind too.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback. I agree VPS is shared resources, although it's still a confined environment, so less chance of a breach. In theory shared hosting could pass PCI-DSS testing, but I don't know of anyone who actually offers that locally. Probably will just end up going with managed dedicated from Hetzner.
 
Denouncer said:
Thanks for the feedback. I agree VPS is shared resources, although it's still a confined environment, so less chance of a breach. In theory shared hosting could pass PCI-DSS testing, but I don't know of anyone who actually offers that locally. Probably will just end up going with managed dedicated from Hetzner.
Click to expand...

So you need a vps, in Teraco which is managed to save the day? What other specs do you need? linux ,windows? cpanel? any specific db like the heavy oracle one?
 
Last edited:
Denouncer said:
Can anyone recommend a good managed dedicated/cloud hosting that's reasonably priced? Hetzner seems the best option, although I was hoping to not spend more than R800 a month (their entry-level is R1200). There are some cloud providers like RSA Web and IS/MTN, etc., however, they're not managed. I'd also consider unmanaged cloud/dedicated at a good price and then IT support from another company to manage it, but if it exceeds R1k, then I'd might as well go with Hetzner.

Requirements:

  • Hosted in South Africa (JHB or CPT)
  • 99.9 or higher SLA
  • 24/7 Support
  • Power/usage requirements aren't much (hosting 3 websites, which function perfectly fine on Hetzner's current basic shared hosting)

The main reason shared hosting won't work is due to the security aspect (potentially requiring PCI DSS certification at some stage, but on the lowest level, which can't be achieved on shared hosting).

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

You are correct, PCI-DSS does make provisions for virtual server environments however there are many factors to consider like hypervisor type, shared storage design and network stack that will need to be checked for compliance beforehand. A dedicated server within a PCI-DSS compliant data centre would be far less complex.
 
philaniH said:
So you need a vps, in Teraco which is managed to save the day? What other specs do you need? linux ,windows? cpanel? any specific db like the heavy oracle one?
Click to expand...

Everything that I need is open source. Basically a Linux/php/MySQL stack to host 3x websites. I don't need cpanel, as long as everything has already been setup correctly on the server. Any adjustments would be infrequent.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X