Private Cloud & Server Hosting
Your server doesn't have to live in a cupboard at the office. GravIT hosts business servers and line-of-business applications on our own private cloud platform in a Melbourne data centre, with dedicated resources, proper redundancy, and your data staying in Australia. We plan the move, rehearse it, and cut over after hours so your staff turn up to a working morning.
Why the server belongs out of the office
Most server cupboards were never meant to be server cupboards. They were a spare room, and then a server arrived.
No more hardware cycle
No capital outlay every five years, no end-of-life scramble, and no argument about whether this is the year you replace it.
Dedicated resources
A private platform sized to your workload, rather than a shared box you are quietly competing for at month end.
Australian data sovereignty
Hosted in Melbourne on infrastructure we own and monitor. When a client, insurer or auditor asks where the data lives, the answer is short.
Reachable from anywhere
Multi-site businesses stop backhauling everything through one office, and staff working from home stop being second-class citizens on the network.
Power and cooling that exist
Conditioned power, backup generation, proper cooling and physical access control. A cupboard has none of that, and the hottest day of the year is when it matters.
Grows without a purchase order
More capacity is a conversation rather than a procurement round. You stop sizing hardware for the business you hope to be in four years.
Backup that is part of it
Built in from the start rather than bolted on later. See backup and disaster recovery, including copies that cannot be deleted.
The 3am problem is ours
Monitored and maintained by us. A failure at 3am becomes our call-out rather than your Saturday, and you find out from us rather than from staff on Monday.
There is no size threshold on this. A three-person practice with one line-of-business server gets the same platform and the same attention as a fifty-seat client, with a smaller bill rather than a lesser service.
Who private cloud hosting suits
Not always, and we would rather say so now. Here is the honest sorting.
Good fit if…
- Your server is approaching end of life
- It lives somewhere that gets hot, or that anyone can walk into
- You have more than one site, or people working from home
- A line-of-business application has to keep running and nobody wants to own the box
- You would rather a monthly cost than a capital purchase every five years
Worth a chat first if…
- Your internet is not solid. Moving the server makes your connection the single point of failure. That is fixable, and it gets fixed before the migration rather than after
- Your software vendor ties licensing to physical hardware
- People move very large files all day and the link would feel it
- There is equipment on site that must talk to the server locally
Probably not yet, if…
- You are replacing the application itself within the year, so move once rather than twice
- The current server is young, healthy and in a decent spot. We will tell you to leave it
The one everybody underestimates
When the server moves out of the building, your internet connection stops being a convenience and becomes the thing the business runs on. That is not an argument against doing it. It is an argument for sorting the connection out first, and for having a second path. We look at that as part of the design rather than discovering it in week two. See business internet.
How the migration runs
Six stages, rehearsed before it is real. The bit that matters is stage four. Almost nobody does it, and it is the reason cutovers go badly.
Discovery
A full inventory of servers, applications and data, and the part that catches people: what depends on what. The forgotten dependency is what turns a migration into a bad weekend.
Design and capacity planning
Right-sized for how you work now and where you are heading, with the security model agreed in writing before anything gets built.
Build and seed
The new environment goes up and data starts replicating across, quietly, while you carry on working on the old one.
Rehearsal
A full test migration, with your applications opened and used, and connectivity validated from each of your sites. You find the surprises here, on a Tuesday, rather than at 2am on cutover night.
After-hours cutover
Final sync and switch outside your operating hours, with a rollback path that we have already tested, because a plan you have never run is a hope.
The morning after
Someone is available when the questions arrive, because that is when they arrive: not at the cutover, but at 8:40am when forty people log in at once.
Websites and public-facing applications are a different service, covered under web hosting. Servers that stay in your building are IT infrastructure, and either way the same team looks after them.
What's included
- Melbourne data centre, GravIT-owned
- Dedicated resources per client
- Line-of-business application hosting
- Discovery and dependency mapping
- Rehearsed test migration
- After-hours cutover with rollback
- Monitored and maintained by us
When your server is getting on in years
The decision usually arrives as a quote. Something fails, or a vendor stops supporting the version you are on, and suddenly there is a number in front of you for a replacement box that will need replacing again in five years.
That is the moment worth pausing on, because it is the one time the question is genuinely open. Replacing like for like is the path of least resistance and occasionally the right answer. If the application is tied to that hardware, or the site works fine and nothing is changing, we will say so. More often the honest comparison is between one capital purchase now plus another in five years, and never buying a server again.
Either way it is a conversation rather than a quote, and it costs nothing to have it before the current one dies rather than during the week it does.
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from putting everything in Microsoft 365?
Microsoft 365 covers email, files and collaboration brilliantly. It doesn't run the specialist software many businesses depend on: practice management, accounting, job and inventory systems. Private cloud hosting is where that software goes when you'd rather not own a server.
Where exactly is our data?
In a Melbourne data centre, on infrastructure GravIT owns. Not offshore, and not on someone else's platform we resell. That matters for privacy obligations and for the clients who ask.
What happens on cutover night?
We rehearse the migration first, test the applications, validate connectivity from your sites and confirm the rollback path. The real cutover happens outside your operating hours, and someone is there the next morning.
Do we still need backups if it's hosted?
Yes. Hosting keeps it running; backup is what gets your data back after a mistake or an attack. They are different jobs and you want both.
Can you host Linux servers, or only Windows?
Both. The virtualisation layer is Linux-based, so a Linux guest is no more exotic here than a Windows one. We work in AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, Ubuntu and CloudLinux. If your line-of-business application, database or appliance wants Linux, that is ordinary work rather than an exception.
What if our internet goes down?
Hosted servers need a reliable connection, so we look at that first, and for sites that can't wear an outage we design failover. See business internet.
Private cloud hosting for the server in the cupboard
Tell us what it runs and we'll tell you whether moving it is worth doing, including when it isn't.