How to Choose a Virtual Desktop Hosting Provider: 5 Questions to Ask

Sharad Acharya
Aug 31, 2018 · 4 min read

These days a plethora of hosting providers offer virtual desktops as a part of their service. So how should you go about choosing the most efficient virtual desktop hosting provider?

Image: iStock- Ace Cloud Hosting

The hosting provider should be able to meet your desktop requirement. Of course! The provider’s pricing should also fit your pockets. Choosing the right hosting provider is not that difficult once you are clear about what type of services you are looking for from a virtual desktop hosting provider. Some might look for high-end performance, other for affordable services.

Confused? You do not need to worry. There are certain features and parameters you must check before opting for a virtual desktop services provider. As long as the hosting provider fulfills these aspects, it could be considered as a right choice of virtual desktop hosting provider.

Just ask yourself these questions before choosing the best virtual desktop hosting provider.

What’s the SLA guaranteed uptime?

You must carefully go through the SLA or Service Level Agreement provided by the virtual desktop hosting provider. The SLA contains the terms and levels of service that the hosting provider agrees to uphold.

Just by reading the SLA, you can analyze the hosting provider and make an informed decision whether to choose it for virtual desktop hosting services.

Uptime is the total time in a year that the hosting provider guarantees to keep the system functioning. Uptime is a part of the SLA. It mentions how the hosting provider will compensate in case of failing to uphold the uptime.

Ace Cloud Hosting offers an uptime of 99.999 percent to the customers which means about 5 minutes downtime in a year.

What security practices does the provider follow?

Every hosting provider has a set of security practices and regulations that it imposes to ensure data security of the customers. Some of these factors include strong password policies, multi-factor authentication, and identity management.

In VDI, the client broker software is responsible for authenticating the end-users and sending them to the respective desktops. The hosting provider should be responsible for providing end-to-end encryption to the end-users.

The hosting provider should deploy advanced security infrastructure like software and hardware firewalls, Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems.

Moreover, the data center in which the data is hosted should be secure. There should be multiple levels of security in the data center at different entry points. Security personnel should be vigilant and available at every entry point. Various entry methods like access cards, biometrics, etc. should be deployed.

Data centers have security certifications for them to be categorized for various tiers (Tier-1 being lowest on the grades while Tier-4 being on the top). For critical business applications, it is recommended to go with as Tier-3 or Tier-4 category. You can analyze the security of the data center by the certifications it has passed.

Does the provider offer a disaster recovery plan?

Disaster Recovery Plan is a set of procedures that the hosting provider follows in the event of a disaster. The disaster could be both natural or man-made that affects the infrastructure of the data center where your virtual desktops are hosted.

For instance, in the event of an earthquake at the data center location, the power or the cooling equipment might get hampered. The servers hosting your data could get damaged.

To secure your data even in such an event, the virtual desktop providers back up your data in multiple geographic locations. Hence, in the event of a disaster, your data is still safe in other data center.

Disaster Recovery is very critical to your operation. It ensures that your data is secure no matter what. You should always choose a hosting provider with a well-structured disaster recovery plan.

What level of support does the provider offer?

It is essential for the virtual desktop hosting provider to offer you dedicated and efficient support. It means that you should be able to contact the technical support team immediately in case an issue arises. The support team is expected to have a low response time and should provide you with an approximate duration for the resolution.

The support team should be well-trained so that they can provide you with the resolution swiftly. The better hosting providers offer 24*7*365 available support.

You can have advanced security or a high-end infrastructure, but the hosting provider can never be reliable without adequate support.

Is the provider cost-effective?

Providing underperforming services at a low cost isn’t the answer. Also, offering advanced services at a high price is also unacceptable. So what parameter distinguishes between the various virtual desktop hosting providers available in the market?

A virtual desktop hosting provider should be cost-effective. What it means is that you should get total value for the money you are paying to the provider. The hosting provider should be able to offer you a secure infrastructure, advanced features, and satisfactory services at an affordable cost.

The best way to experience the hosted virtual desktop services is to ask for a free trial. Most renowned hosting providers offer a free trial to the customers.

Ace Cloud Hosting also offers a 10-day free trial to the customers. Under the free-trial, you will get all the services and features of the hosted virtual desktop.

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