There are many providers out there that focus on managed service, yet they give the customer with a root access. I mean, you are leasing the server from them. You're the one who's paying it monthly or so, then why can't you access fully? Why are you given with a limited user account?
Uhm, or maybe the customer is not given with root access because they are not using a physical server for it? Perhaps they're using a VM like Xen for that? Whatever!
A true managed service must offer the following:
- root access for the customer
- monitoring of the server (I know this is common, they have this)
- monitoring of the services on the server
- monitoring of the server's hardware resources
- bandwidth monitoring and graphing
- disk IO monitoring and graphing
- mysql monitoring and graphing
- httpd monitoring and graphing
- regular security audit
- vulnerability assessment
- DDOS protection
- highly designed firewall
- and of course, great technical support!
If you're looking for a Managed Server, there's Rackspace (expensive? sure they are), Liquid Web, Softlayer,Layered Tech and some smaller players like WebNX, Quadra Net and many others.
I would say avoid 1and1's Managed Server.
