Changes to Monitoring for Unmanaged Cloud Container Servers
As we bring Cloud Containers in line with every other type of server, unmanaged really does mean unmonitored.
This is an important update about unmanaged Cloud Container servers. The change won’t affect every customer, but it’s something worth knowing if you use our Cloud Container platform.
What’s happening
From the early days of Cloud Containers, our team applied platform-level monitoring to some unmanaged servers. This meant that, even though these servers weren’t covered by a management plan, alerts were still sent to us when certain issues cropped up. From time to time, we responded to those alerts and fixed problems.
This goes back to a time when fewer Cloud Containers were formally managed, and we wanted extra visibility into the health of the whole platform. Fast forward to today, and things look very different:
More servers are now managed, so we have broad monitoring in place that gives us visibility into the platform as a whole.
The platform itself has grown into a stable, mature environment.
With more containers than ever on the platform, the number of alerts reaching our team is growing. Once we prioritise managed servers, we are responding to fewer and fewer alerts from unmanaged servers anyway.
Our monitoring tools are focused on providing dependable service to managed servers.
Because of this, we’re removing monitoring from unmanaged Cloud Containers.
This change only affects our internal tooling. Any monitoring that you have set up for yourself, and any monitoring that sends alerts to you, will be unaffected.
The timeline
This change is happening in two phases:
Phase one: Back in May 2024, we stopped applying monitoring to new containers on unmanaged servers.
Phase two (now): We’re removing it from older unmanaged containers and servers that still had it in place.
Once this update is complete, all unmanaged Cloud Containers—no matter when you created them—will be treated the same way: unmanaged means unmonitored.
How this affects your unmanaged Cloud Containers
For all managed Cloud Container servers, nothing changes. Your servers and all of their containers will continue to receive full monitoring and proactive response from our team. You can also keep using Production Mode to decide which containers should be monitored, depending on whether they’re production-ready or still in development.
If your server is unmanaged, here’s what you need to know:
Our team will no longer receive alerts for your server.
That also means we won’t be able to occasionally step in and fix issues outside of your SLA, as we sometimes have in the past. While this was a nice bonus, it was never something you could rely on—it only happened when we had time available.
As always, you still have the option to set up your own monitoring. That hasn’t changed.
This also brings Cloud Containers into line with our other products (like Virtual Servers), where unmanaged servers are not monitored by us.
Add Server Management for 24/7 monitoring and response
If your servers are important to you (and we know they are!), we strongly recommend adding Server Management. With management in place, you get:
24/7 monitoring of both servers and containers.
Proactive incident response from our expert team.
The reassurance that someone is always watching over your infrastructure.
It’s the best way to make sure your services run smoothly, with dependable support around the clock. Work, rest, and even go on holiday knowing that infrastructure issues aren't going to drag you down.
To check whether a server is managed, or to request management, log into the Control Panel and view the server’s Settings screen. If it isn’t already managed, click Get Server Management.
In summary
Our internal monitoring is being retired from unmanaged Cloud Containers created before 13 May 2024. Alerts will no longer be generated for our team.
Any monitoring that you have set up for your own servers or containers will be unaffected—no change.
Unmanaged Cloud Containers created after 13 May 2024 will continue to be unmonitored—no change.
Managed Cloud Containers will continue to be fully monitored—no change.
Full monitoring and incident response is available for any server as part of standard Server Management.
You can still run your own monitoring on unmanaged servers.
We’ve built Cloud Containers to be robust and flexible, and this change ensures that every server is treated consistently, while keeping our attention focused where it makes the biggest difference—on managed infrastructure.
If you’d like to learn more about server management, our support team is here to help. Just get in touch with us.
Photo by Luan Rezende on Pexels.