In the first part of this series, we went over the System, Network, and Security tools available under the IONOS cloud interface, or portal. These were the more important parts of the cloud interface. The remaining options are Backup, Management, and Costs. The information contained in these 3 tools is extremely sparse to the point of being unusable, however the Management tool does keep a track of changes you’ve made. I’ll cover some of my support interactions with their server support team to conclude these articles.
We’ll start with the Backup tool section. I don’t really have anything to add about this tool as this is an option I do not use. I move my backups to servers not under IONOS control. IONOS does offer backup packages which work hand in hand with their hosting services at additional cost.
The Management tool contains one entry, Logs. This is simply a running log of the actions you’ve performed against the interface while managing your VPS. This might be useful if you need to troubleshoot issues on your servers and need to check past operations.
Finally, there is a Costs tool. I personally only use the 2 VPS servers I purchased at the rate of $5 per month. I manage all services and administrate the servers myself so the two options available, namely Usage and Interactive Invoice which provide rudimentary information on costs don’t provide any useful information to me. This I’m sure is due to the low tier of my products.
If you’re an IT professional then the 6 tools available through the IONOS Web Console/Portal are self explanatory. Compared to other cloud offerings such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web services, the interface is analogous to comparing Microsoft Word to Notepad. It’s not feature rich. It’s the bare minimum you need to interact with your VPS while hiding much of the underlying complexity. We’re talking about an interface to manage a VPS or 2, not build an entire 3 tiered infrastructure with dev support. So if you need a VPS to quickly build your tools and don’t want to invest the time needed to learn a new interface IONOS could be a valid option.
The last thing I’ll talk about is IONOS support. When you purchase a self administered hosting offering from IONOS be prepared to get the cold shoulder as far as support is concerned. Anything further than logging into your VPS will derive an email pointing you towards paid support options. So if you decide to go with IONOS self managed hosting services, make sure your comfortable with managing your hosted OS, the network, and your application. You’ll get no free help from IONOS.