Frequently Asked Questions

Go to the signup page where you'll need to provide your email, password, and phone number. Account creation takes just 2 minutes.

Support is available via our chat on the right side of your application dashboard. Our team is ready to help with any questions or issues.

For most users, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS offers the best balance of ease-of-use, community support, and package availability. Choose Debian for maximum stability in production, Rocky Linux or AlmaLinux for RHEL-compatible enterprise workloads, and Alpine Linux for lightweight container environments.

Two meters, and that's the whole bill. Memory at $0.0000035 per GB-second and active CPU at $0.000020 per vCPU-second. Requests and egress are free. Billing is balance-based, so it's predictable and invoiceable, and a per-account spend cap is on by default. See the full breakdown on the pricing section.

Per-second compute on flat per-instance tiers from $3/mo, free egress, and no per-seat pricing, so adding teammates is free. A spend cap is on by default and pauses services before a surprise bill, not after.

You can pay in two ways. Subscriptions: choose your resources and a term, monthly, 1-year or 2-year, with bigger savings on longer terms. They renew automatically and you get a detailed invoice with every payment. Pay-as-you-go: add funds to your balance and resources draw from it as you use them, with no commitment.

Yes! We offer a 14-day money-back guarantee. If you're not satisfied within the first 14 days, contact support for a full refund.

Bandwidth on Cloud Servers, Windows Servers, Kubernetes nodes, managed databases and Apps is unmetered, no inbound or outbound charges. Object Storage includes 1 TB of egress every month, then $0.01/GB. The only other exception is suspicious or abusive usage.

No contracts and no minimum commitment. Pick monthly, 1-year, or 2-year billing, you're never locked in. Delete a VM whenever you want and we automatically refund the unused time to your account balance, calculated to the hour, ready to spend on anything else you run.

A Forex VPS is a Windows virtual server that runs your trading terminal around the clock, independently of your own computer. On Raff it is a Windows Server VM in the us-east region with full administrator access over RDP, so MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 or cTrader keep running, and your Expert Advisors keep trading, when your laptop is closed or your home internet drops.

For Windows Server they are used interchangeably: both mean the end of extended support, when free security updates stop. The earlier milestone, end of mainstream support, only stops feature updates and non-security fixes.

It runs Windows desktop sessions and applications centrally, so users connect from any device and work inside the server instead of on local machines. The business gets one environment to secure, back up, and support, and the apps stay next to their data.

An RDP VPS is a cloud-hosted Windows Server that you use through Remote Desktop Protocol: the server runs the Windows environment and applications, and your local device is the screen and keyboard. On Raff it is a Windows VM with full administrator RDP access.

RD Gateway is a Windows Server role that brokers encrypted Remote Desktop connections through one controlled HTTPS entry point, instead of exposing each server's RDP port directly to the internet. Users connect to the gateway, and the gateway connects them to the right desktop resource.

Yes. A property management company can use a Windows VPS for supported Windows applications, accounting tools, shared documents, reports, databases, and remote users when licensing, security, backups, and workflow testing are completed.

Not as a first action. Changing the port does not replace access restrictions, strong credentials, patching, firewall controls, monitoring, or a VPN. It can also complicate support and recovery.

Server Core has a smaller operating-system footprint and fewer installed interface components, but workload performance still depends mainly on CPU, RAM, storage, networking, and application behavior. Do not expect the installation option alone to fix an under-sized VPS.

Yes. For IIS hosting, install the .NET 10 Hosting Bundle on the Windows Server. It installs the runtime components and ASP.NET Core Module V2 required for IIS to run ASP.NET Core apps.

Yes. A local office server can be migrated to a cloud Windows VPS when files, apps, users, databases, remote access, backups, licensing, and rollback are planned and tested before production cutover.

Yes. A Windows VPS can work as a cloud file server for shared folders, business files, app data, and Remote Desktop users when access, permissions, backups, storage, and security are planned correctly.

Yes. Multiple offices can use one Windows VPS when access, user count, applications, file behavior, backups, and security are planned. It works best for centralized Windows apps, RDP/RDS users, and shared business workflows.

Active Directory Group Policy is a Windows Server feature that lets administrators centrally manage settings for domain users and computers through Group Policy Objects.

No. Windows Server Datacenter does not give the same VPS more CPU, RAM, storage speed, or network performance. Datacenter mainly adds virtualization rights and infrastructure features.

A Windows Server 2025 VPS is a virtual machine running Microsoft's Windows Server 2025 operating system on remote infrastructure. It provides administrator access to a dedicated Windows server environment without requiring you to own physical server hardware.

A managed Windows VPS is a hosted Windows Server where the provider handles some administration tasks such as updates, monitoring, security, or troubleshooting depending on the service agreement.

Windows Server sizing is the process of choosing CPU, RAM, storage, and architecture based on the workload the server will run. Production sizing should consider peak load, growth, backups, security tools, and role contention rather than only Microsoft's minimum hardware requirements.

Windows Server performance monitoring is the process of collecting CPU, memory, disk, network, and application data to understand server health and workload behavior.

Windows Server hardening is the process of reducing unnecessary exposure and configuring the operating system so accounts, network services, remote access, security tools, logging, patching, and recovery follow a safer production baseline.

Windows Server patch management is the controlled process of assessing, testing, installing, rebooting, validating, and documenting operating-system updates while balancing security exposure against production availability.

No. Windows Firewall is enabled by default, and Microsoft’s Windows Server 2025 security baseline keeps the firewall enabled with default-deny inbound behavior. Fix the specific listener or rule instead of disabling the firewall globally.

Windows Server supports two concurrent remote connections for administration without RDS CALs. Those are administrative connections, not a general multi-user desktop licensing model for employees.

No. Windows Server allows exactly 2 concurrent administrative RDP connections (sometimes called "Remote Desktop for Administration") with no CAL required. This is built into the OS. The moment you install the Remote Desktop Session Host role to support more concurrent users, CAL requirements kick in.

Developer for development and testing: it is free with full Enterprise features but not licensed for production. Express is free for small production databases with size limits. Standard is the usual choice for production business workloads and is licensed separately.

Two: a primary and a secondary domain controller in the same site, connected over private networking. A single DC is a single point of failure for logons, DNS, and Group Policy across the whole business.

Expert Advisors only trade while the terminal is running. On a Windows VPS, MetaTrader stays online 24/7 regardless of your PC, power, or internet, and you can disconnect the remote session without stopping the terminal.

Yes. Sage 50, 100, and 300 run on Windows Server, with users connecting over RDP or an RDS session. Check that your specific Sage version supports the Windows Server release you deploy before migrating.

Often, for plain Windows Server workloads: Raff's price is a flat monthly rate with unmetered bandwidth plus a fixed licence line, while Azure bills compute, licensing, disk, egress, and IP separately. Verify both prices on the same day for your exact size, because usage changes the comparison.

A Windows VPS with RDP or RDS access: one cloud Windows Server that users connect to, at a flat monthly price, without host pools, session-host images, or Azure-native management to operate.

The common set: Remote Desktop access for staff, accounting and ERP software, shared files, SQL Server tools, and the workloads of a retiring office server, all in one managed cloud Windows environment.

On Raff the default account is Administrator, with the password you set during VM creation. You can create additional named users after the first login.

Set the schedule from your acceptable data loss (RPO). A common small-business pattern is a nightly full backup plus transaction log backups every 15 to 60 minutes when the database runs in the FULL recovery model. A backup you have never restore-tested does not count.

By design. SQL Server caches data pages in RAM so queries avoid disk reads, and with the default unlimited setting it will claim nearly all server memory over time. That is healthy for SQL Server and bad for everything else on the box, which is why you set a cap.

When every database stays under the 10 GB per-database cap, the workload is light, and you can live without SQL Server Agent for scheduled jobs. Many small line-of-business apps run on Express for years.

One data file per vCPU, up to eight. A 4 vCPU server gets four equally sized files; more than eight rarely helps and complicates management.

Standard supports Basic Availability Groups: two replicas protecting one database per group, with no readable secondary. Advanced groups with multiple databases and readable replicas require Enterprise edition.

More than any earlier version, but defaults only cover part of the job. Authentication choices, sa handling, network exposure, encryption of backups and connections, auditing, and patch cadence still need deliberate configuration.

Backup and restore: take a full backup on the source, restore it on the destination, and repoint the application. The source stays intact and online throughout, which makes rollback trivial.

No. Everything in the list runs on Windows PowerShell 5.1, which ships built-in with Windows Server 2022 and 2025. PowerShell 7 works too, but nothing here requires it.

Yes. Use a fresh, dedicated VM with a stable IP and correct DNS settings, install the AD DS role, promote with Install-ADDSForest for a new forest, and verify AD DS, DNS, and SYSVOL after the reboot.

Standard SMB file sharing tunneled inside QUIC over UDP 443 with TLS 1.3 encryption. It lets clients reach file shares across the internet without a VPN and without exposing the classic SMB port.

Check in order: server resources first (CPU, RAM, disk), then the network path (latency and packet loss), then client display settings and Windows visual effects. Most slow RDP is an overloaded server or a lossy connection, not a protocol problem.

A Microsoft 365 Apps activation mode for shared machines: Office is installed once on the server, and each Remote Desktop user activates Word, Excel, and Outlook with their own eligible Microsoft 365 account instead of tying the install to one device licence.

Copy with ACL preservation (robocopy with /COPYALL, or Storage Migration Service) and make sure the same users and groups resolve on the destination. Permissions referencing accounts that do not exist on the new server break silently.

Everything the old server quietly does: roles, applications, file shares, scheduled tasks, databases, printers, integrations, and which person depends on each. Most migration surprises are things nobody knew the server was doing.

No. A snapshot is a short-term rollback point taken before changes; a backup is a retained, restorable copy that survives independently, including off the server. A healthy setup uses both for different jobs.

Yes. QuickBooks, tax packages, and SQL-backed practice tools are the typical workload, with staff connecting over Remote Desktop. Confirm the vendor supports server or multi-user deployment for your exact product and version before migrating.

Yes, when it is Windows-based: practice management, document management, and time-and-billing tools run centrally with lawyers connecting over Remote Desktop. Verify the vendor's server and multi-user support before the move.

Windows-based agency management and rating tools generally run well centrally, with producers and CSRs connecting over Remote Desktop. Check the specific vendor's hosted or server deployment support first; a few are strict about environments.

Windows-based transaction management, property management, and back-office accounting tools are the usual fit, running centrally while agents and staff connect over Remote Desktop. Confirm vendor support for server deployment before migrating.

Yes, Windows estimating, takeoff, accounting, and payroll tools are the core workload, used by the office team over Remote Desktop. Verify vendor support for server use; some estimating packages have licence-dongle or graphics caveats worth testing first.

The office-facing layer, yes: ERP, MRP, inventory, purchasing, and reporting, when the vendor supports Windows Server deployment. Real-time machine control and shop-floor systems stay on-site; the VPS hosts the business layer they report into.

Yes, the business systems: inventory, order processing, billing, customer records, and reporting, used by office staff over Remote Desktop. Warehouse floor hardware keeps its local network; the VPS is the system of record it feeds.

Yes, in most cases: one environment per client gives isolation, clean per-client billing, simpler documentation, and painless offboarding. Shared servers save little and complicate everything the day a client leaves or has an incident.

Generally yes when the vendor supports server or multi-user deployment; most professional Windows tax packages do. Confirm the hosting policy for your exact product and year version before the season starts, not during it.

Over Remote Desktop, ideally through a controlled path such as RD Gateway. Each employee gets a named account and their own session; their laptop becomes a screen and keyboard for the company environment.

Small and mid-size Windows-based ERP where the vendor supports Windows Server deployment. Hyperscale suites and appliance-bound systems do not belong on a single VM; the sweet spot is the office-server-class ERP most SMBs actually run.

Usually, since they are often one suite with one database. Watch RAM and database load as both grow; the split into separate servers comes later, driven by measured pressure rather than habit.

Yes, properly: split the database into front end and back end, and run every user inside Remote Desktop sessions on the same server. The app then sits next to its data at LAN-like speed, which is what Access needs.

Often safer than where it runs today: the aging application moves onto a supported, patched operating system with controlled access and real backups, instead of a dusty machine nobody dares reboot. The app stays old; the platform stops being fragile.

The signs stack up: aging hardware and surprise reboots, awkward remote access, backups nobody has tested, mounting maintenance effort, and a growing fear of what happens if the box dies. Any three of those together is the answer.

For remote access, hardware risk, and the ability to resize monthly, usually yes. A local server still wins when the workload is tied to office-only devices or genuinely offline operation. The honest answer is workload-by-workload, not ideology.

Ask the vendor three questions: is Windows Server supported, is multi-user or Remote Desktop deployment supported, and how is licensing counted in that model. Those answers, not the brochure, decide whether the migration works.

No. A snapshot is a point-in-time image stored on the same platform as the server it protects, so it disappears with the server. A backup is an independent copy on separate storage that survives the loss of the VM. Microsoft's own Hyper-V documentation states that checkpoints are not a replacement for backups.

Snapshots are $0.06 per GB per month, billed only for the storage each snapshot uses. Every account also gets a free backup-and-snapshot storage pool, 10% of each standard VM's disk, or 15% on premium plans, so smaller snapshots often cost nothing.

The standard control plane is free, you only pay for worker nodes, which start at $9.99/month (1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 50 GB NVMe SSD). Every cluster runs at least 2 worker nodes, so the smallest cluster is $19.98/month. An optional high-availability control plane is $30/month per cluster.

At entry, substantially: a dedicated server rents an entire physical machine, while a VPS rents a right-sized slice. On Raff a Windows VPS starts at $13.99/month compute plus the $15 licence, far below typical dedicated hardware pricing.

Your Raff Windows Server runs a genuine Windows licence billed monthly through Microsoft's SPLA program, $15.00/month per VM, with no upfront licence to buy, and we handle the Microsoft compliance. Prefer to use your own licence? Bring-your-own (BYOL) is possible for eligible Microsoft licences under the Flexible Virtualization Benefit. Your server runs the same either way; only the licensing model differs.

There is no universal Windows VPS price floor because providers package compute, Windows licensing, backups, storage, and support differently. On Raff, the current entry Windows VM is $13.99/month for compute plus $15.00/month for a Windows Server Standard SPLA licence, for a $28.99/month starting total before optional items such as RDS access, extra storage, or data protection.

Windows Server licensing on a cloud VM determines which Microsoft rights authorize the Windows Server software and the users or devices that access it. On Raff, the two production paths are generally Raff-provided Windows Server licensing under SPLA or eligible customer BYOL under Microsoft's outsourcing rights and Flexible Virtualization Benefit. RDS and other Microsoft products can require separate access or product licensing.

There is no universal RAM-per-user number. Size from peak concurrent sessions and the actual workload: browser tabs, Outlook, accounting software, ERP, databases, profiles, and background services all change memory demand. Microsoft treats its session-host sizing figures as baselines that should be refined with workload testing. For Raff, use current VM tiers as planning anchors and monitor real peak usage before resizing.

Yes. Let's Encrypt certificates are free, and win-acme is free open-source ACME client software for Windows. There is no certificate fee for using this workflow, but you still pay the normal costs of your domain name, Windows server, and any other infrastructure or services you use.

Yes. Windows Server 2016 will keep running after January 12, 2027, but normal extended support and regular security updates end. Eligible organizations can use Extended Security Updates for up to three additional years. Without ESU, newly discovered operating-system vulnerabilities may remain unpatched, so internet-facing and business-critical systems should have a migration or isolation plan.

Not always, but separate application pools are a strong production default when sites or applications need independent identities, recycling, failure isolation, or resource controls. Small related apps can share a pool when that trade-off is deliberate. For ASP.NET Core, Microsoft recommends isolating apps in separate pools, especially when using in-process hosting.

Yes, for supported nonclustered member or application servers, Microsoft supports a direct in-place upgrade from Windows Server 2016 to Windows Server 2025 using installation media. Do not use that as the default path for Active Directory Domain Services: Microsoft recommends a clean Windows Server 2025 domain controller, replication and FSMO transfer, then demotion of the older DC.

Windows Server 2025 extends the support runway and adds newer platform capabilities, including broader SMB over QUIC support, Active Directory improvements, and Credential Guard enabled by default on supported systems. Eligible Azure Arc-enabled Windows Server 2025 Standard and Datacenter machines can also use Hotpatch; Microsoft made that Hotpatch capability available at no additional Hotpatch cost in May 2026. Windows Server 2022 remains the more mature compatibility baseline for third-party software.

The plan price includes the Windows Server licence. SQL Server Express and Developer are free from Microsoft. Standard and Enterprise can be added through Raff's Microsoft SPLA, priced per vCPU with Microsoft's four-core minimum, from $333.94 a month for Standard on a 4 vCPU plan and shown as its own line on your statement. Or bring your own licence and pay nothing extra.

$28.99 a month for the entry plan: $13.99 compute plus the $15.00 Windows Server licence, itemised on your statement. A site plus an API with SQL Server Express alongside fits $37.99, and the most deployed production size, 4 vCPU with 8 GB, is $55.99. Shared ASP.NET hosting is cheaper, from around $4 a month, because hundreds of sites share one Windows install and one IIS. The difference you are paying for is that the runtime, the trust level and the database are yours to decide.

RDP is the protocol your Remote Desktop client uses to reach any Windows server. Every Raff Windows VPS allows two administrator connections with it, so one or two people can work on the server with no extra licence. RDS, Remote Desktop Services, is the Windows Server role that turns the server into a shared desktop for a whole team, each user with their own profile. On Raff each RDS user is $8.00 a month, shown as its own line on your statement.

You pay for one server plus a Remote Desktop licence for each person who signs in. A Windows VPS sized for Sage 50 starts at $55.99 a month with the Windows licence included, and each user adds $8.00. So one person is $63.99, two people on Sage's recommended 16 GB are $107.99, five people are $192.99 and ten are $269.99, all in. Your Sage subscription is separate and stays with Sage, at no markup. Sage hosting specialists charge per user instead: Ace Cloud Hosting publishes $74.99 to $79.99 per user per month, which is $375 to $400 for the same five people.

You pay for one server plus a Remote Desktop licence for each person who signs in. A Windows VPS sized for QuickBooks Enterprise starts at $55.99 a month with the Windows licence included, and each user adds $8.00. So one person is $63.99, five people on the most deployed size are $131.99 and fifteen are $309.99, all in. Your Intuit subscription is separate and stays with Intuit, at no markup. Intuit-authorized hosts advertise from about $35 to $85 per user per month before security and Office add-ons, and Intuit's own Enterprise-with-hosting bundle starts near $250 for a single user.

Raff runs on ISO 27001 certified infrastructure in the us-east region. Raff's own ISO 27001 certification is in progress and SOC 2 Type II is on the 2026 roadmap. The 99.9% uptime SLA is contractual, with service credits.

Yes. Intuit currently lists Windows Server 2022, 2019, and 2016 for QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise. Intuit separately says QuickBooks Desktop 2024 virtual environments are not supported, so OS compatibility does not make a generic VPS an Intuit-supported hosting model.

Under Microsoft's conventional customer licensing model, users or devices accessing Windows Server 2025 Standard or Datacenter generally need Windows Server CALs unless a documented exception or qualifying CAL-equivalent right applies.

Both phone number and email verification are required to activate your account.

Credits earned from deposits and our reward program are permanent and never expire!

Yes, we provide full IPv6 support for all services.

Currently, our primary data center is located in US East, with expansion plans for additional regions.

Yes. All Raff Linux VPS use KVM virtualization with full kernel access, so Docker, Podman, and Kubernetes all work out of the box. Ubuntu and Debian are the most popular choices for containerized workloads.

Yes. App-to-database traffic rides a private fabric, and public bandwidth isn't metered or billed, including attack traffic. It's the single biggest source of surprise bills on Railway, Render and Heroku, and here it's $0.

We accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, and UnionPay cards (credit, debit, and prepaid), plus Google Pay and Apple Pay. For wire transfer, SWIFT, or ACH, please contact support. You can also pay directly from the billing section.

Yes. Every account gets 100,000 GB-seconds and 10,000 vCPU-seconds free each month, plus free requests and free egress on top. The free tier is permanent, not a trial, and it never bills you.

One setup note: Functions and the free tier switch on after a one-time $5 top-up, which stays in your balance as usable credit, a light anti-abuse gate, covered in the funding question below.

Yes! Every cluster includes a fully managed control plane at no cost, unlike providers that charge ~$72/month just to run one. If you need redundant masters with automatic failover, enable the high-availability control plane for $30/month.

Backup retention is configurable, keep between 2 and 100 recovery points per VM, on a schedule you choose.

Comprehensive documentation is available at our documentation site, covering all aspects of our services.

No. Every plan includes unmetered bandwidth and DDoS protection, plus a free backup-and-snapshot storage pool worth 10% of your VM's disk (15% on CPU-optimized plans). You only pay extra for optional add-ons, extra storage or backups beyond that pool, or additional IPs.

Any Windows trading software. MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 and cTrader are the common ones, along with their Expert Advisors, cBots and custom indicators. Because you get a full Windows desktop with administrator rights, other platforms such as NinjaTrader and broker-specific terminals install exactly as they would on a home PC.

Windows Server 2016, 2019, 2022, and 2025 all still receive security updates as of August 2026. Server 2016 keeps them only until January 12, 2027. Server 2012 and 2012 R2 are already out of support, and their paid ESU coverage ends October 13, 2026.

Effectively yes: every Windows VPS includes RDP access. RDP VPS emphasizes how you use it (a remote Windows desktop), while Windows VPS emphasizes the infrastructure. The plans, licensing, and management are the same.

No. Microsoft designed RD Gateway to give secure, encrypted access to Remote Desktop resources over the internet without a VPN. Connections run over HTTPS, which also passes through most corporate and guest networks more reliably than raw RDP.

Sometimes. If the main platform is already vendor-hosted, a Windows VPS may still help with desktop accounting, legacy applications, reports, shared files, integrations, or office-server replacement. Do not add a server without a clear workload.

Only when the hosting platform explicitly requires that configuration. Many VPS environments manage addressing outside the guest or provide settings that must not be replaced casually.

Yes. Server Core can be managed through Remote Desktop, but the RDP session does not provide the traditional Windows desktop shell. Administration is primarily through SConfig, PowerShell, Command Prompt, or remote tools.

No. The Hosting Bundle is for running ASP.NET Core apps on IIS. The SDK is for creating, building, and publishing apps with commands like dotnet new and dotnet publish.

For local server to cloud migration, side-by-side migration is usually cleaner. The old server stays available while the new Windows VPS is built, tested, and prepared for user cutover.

No. Do not broadly expose SMB file sharing to the public internet. Use RDP/RDS, VPN/private networking, RD Gateway for desktop users, SMB over QUIC where supported, or another controlled access model.

A Windows VPS is often better when users work from multiple offices or remote locations. A local office server can still be better for LAN-heavy files, local hardware dependencies, or unreliable internet.

A GPO, or Group Policy Object, is a collection of policy settings. It applies when linked to a site, domain, or organizational unit and when the target user or computer is in scope.

A fully licensed physical host using Windows Server Standard includes rights for two Windows Server virtual machines, plus the Hyper-V host when used only to manage them. Additional VM sets require additional Standard licensing.

Use Windows Server 2025 for a new VPS when your application stack supports it. Microsoft lists extended support through November 14, 2034, giving new validated deployments a long support runway. Use Server 2022 instead when a vendor has not yet certified Server 2025.

An unmanaged Windows VPS provides the virtual server infrastructure while the customer manages Windows Server, applications, security, updates, and administration.

There is no single production RAM value. A light IIS or file server may start around 4–8 GB, while small production SQL Server workloads commonly start around 16–32 GB. Size for the application, database, users, security tools, backups, and headroom.

Yes. Performance Monitor (PerfMon) is built into Windows Server and does not require a separate installation.

Windows Server 2025 is not currently listed in Intuit’s QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise technical specifications. Verify the exact QuickBooks release before choosing the server operating system.

Yes. Microsoft’s Windows Server 2025 Evaluation Center states that the evaluation edition expires after 180 days and must be activated online within the first 10 days to avoid automatic shutdown.

Yes. Microsoft provides a Windows Server 2025 security baseline through OSConfig and the Security Compliance Toolkit. The OSConfig baseline is role-aware and contains more than 300 security settings.

Not automatically. Review the update, affected components, exploitation status, known issues, and application risk first. Use a staged deployment when time allows, but accelerate remediation when exploitation or exposure makes delay unsafe.

NotConfigured in a policy field does not mean the firewall is off. Effective settings can come from local policy, Group Policy, MDM/CSP policy, and Windows defaults. Check the profile’s Enabled state and the effective rules before diagnosing the firewall.

Use RD Session Host when users need session-based Windows desktops or RemoteApp programs rather than occasional server administration. Microsoft defines RDSH as the role that hosts the session-based apps and desktops shared with users.

It installs and runs on 4 GB for small databases, but always cap max server memory so Windows keeps 2 to 4 GB for itself. For production business workloads 8 GB or more is the comfortable starting point.

Within one site, changes replicate within seconds: the source DC notifies its partner about 15 seconds after a change. Between sites, replication follows the site-link schedule, which defaults to every 180 minutes and is configurable.

One terminal with a few charts runs comfortably on 2 vCPU and 4 GB RAM. Add RAM for extra terminals, chart counts, and Expert Advisors. Latency to your broker's server usually matters more than raw CPU.

Small teams of roughly 3 to 10 users work well with an RDS Session Host and per-user licensing, sized with enough RAM per active session. Beyond that, plan capacity properly and consider separating the database.

When the workload depends on Azure-native services: Azure SQL, Entra ID, Functions, Service Bus, Monitor, specific compliance programs, or many global regions. Ecosystem dependency, not VM quality, is the real deciding factor.

Most small teams do not. If the goal is reaching Windows apps, shared files, and accounting or legacy software, a shared server with RDS covers it. Full VDI earns its complexity when every user needs a personal Windows 10 or 11 desktop with desktop-management tooling.

For very large, predictable workloads that use a whole machine, for strict hardware-isolation requirements, or for special hardware needs. It brings more capacity and more operational responsibility.

2 vCPU / 4 GB for admin use and light work, 4 vCPU / 8 GB when a few users run business software, and 4 vCPU / 16 GB or more once daily multi-user sessions are the norm. Resizing later is routine.

Yes. Use Microsoft's Windows App on macOS, iOS, and Android; on Linux, clients like Remmina or xfreerdp work. The connection details are the same on every platform: server IP, username, password.

A full backup captures the whole database. A differential captures everything changed since the last full, keeping restores fast. Transaction log backups capture activity since the last log backup and enable point-in-time restore in the FULL recovery model.

Leave 2 to 4 GB for Windows and everything else that runs on the server. On an 8 GB VPS a 4 to 5 GB cap is a sensible start; watch actual usage and adjust rather than guessing high.

Scale beyond Standard's CPU and memory limits, advanced availability groups with multiple readable secondaries, and the high-end performance and security features. Most small and mid-size workloads never touch those; Standard is the default paid choice.

TempDB is the shared scratch space for the whole instance: sorts, temporary tables, versioning, and spills all land there. With a single default file, busy workloads queue on its allocation pages and the whole server feels slow.

Server and instance failure: if the primary replica dies, the group fails over to the secondary. They are not a backup substitute; deletions and corruption replicate to the secondary just as faithfully as good data.

Yes. Create a named administrative login first, then disable sa (or at minimum rename it and set a long random password). Audit failed logins so brute-force attempts are visible.

Backup and restore in almost all cases. Detach/attach takes the database offline and moves the only copy; backup/restore keeps the source untouched and doubles as a test of your backup discipline.

Use Get-Service piped through a status filter: Get-Service | Where-Object Status -eq Running. Add Format-Table for a compact view, or filter by name pattern like Get-Service MSSQL* for one application's services.

The Directory Services Restore Mode password: a break-glass local administrator credential used when the DC boots into recovery mode. Set it during promotion and store it somewhere safe outside the server.

An H.264-based graphics mode for RDP that renders motion and full-color content more smoothly. Enable it via Group Policy when the client supports it; text-only admin work benefits less than dashboards and browsers.

Plans that carry the Office desktop apps with shared-activation rights, such as Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise, E3, E5, and Business Premium. Web-only plans do not qualify; check each user's plan before deployment.

The bulk copy runs days ahead of cutover; the user-facing downtime is only the final sync window, typically minutes to a few hours depending on how much changed since the pre-copy. A test copy first makes the estimate real.

Side by side for aging hardware or old Windows versions: build the destination cleanly, move workloads deliberately, and keep the old server as rollback. In-place upgrades carry every past mistake forward.

Four: whole-VM backups for full recovery, file-level backups for daily work, application-aware backups for databases and accounting software, and an off-server copy against the worst cases like ransomware or account compromise.

It can be, when configured deliberately: named user accounts, restricted remote access, least-privilege file permissions, tested backups with retention, and immediate offboarding. The firm's own access discipline remains part of the control set; the server alone is not the compliance story.

Safety comes from configuration: named accounts, least-privilege NTFS permissions on case folders, a controlled remote-access path, audit logging, and retention-aware backups. The firm's confidentiality obligations still govern who gets access to what.

With the right controls, yes: named accounts per employee, restricted access paths, least-privilege permissions on client folders, audit logs, and tested backups. The agency remains responsible for who can see what and for offboarding departed staff same-day.

Yes. The Windows session works from a laptop or tablet anywhere with internet, and transaction documents stay on the server instead of being scattered across personal devices and email threads.

Yes, over Remote Desktop from laptops or tablets on site. Drawings, contracts, and change orders stay in one place instead of living in one superintendent's inbox.

Anything controlling machines in real time or requiring plant-floor latency. The dividing line: production control on the local network, business records, reporting, and remote user sessions on the cloud server.

Yes, that is a core use case: every site connects to the same environment, so stock records and orders stay consistent without a server per location.

With a template: the same base build, access model, backup policy, monitoring, and documentation applied per client. Repeatability is what makes ten client servers manageable by a small team.

Resize up for filing season and back down after. A firm pays for the busy months instead of owning year-round hardware sized for April.

With session-based work, the files stay on the server; the device shows the screen. Combine that with sensible policies on clipboard, drives, and downloads, and offboarding stops being a hunt across personal machines.

At small scale, yes: one right-sized VM keeps the app next to its data. Separate the database onto its own server when concurrent users, reporting load, or memory pressure say so, not before.

All sites work against the same central records, which is the cure for per-location spreadsheets that disagree. Each location connects to the shared environment instead of keeping its own copy.

Access reads its data file in small chatty operations that collapse over high-latency links. Inside a server session the latency to the file is near zero; only the screen travels the internet.

Freeze a known-good install, snapshot before any change, restrict network exposure to what the app truly needs, and document every setting. The goal becomes preservation with containment, and the VM model is built for exactly that.

For most small businesses, a cloud Windows Server carries the files, applications, and remote access, sometimes alongside SaaS tools for email and collaboration. The workloads move; the closet hardware retires.

The cloud server keeps running and staff work from anywhere else: home, phone hotspot, another site. With a local server, the office outage takes remote workers down too. Either way, office connectivity is the dependency to invest in.

Accounting and admin tools, internal and line-of-business applications, SQL-backed systems, and anything that benefits from running 24/7 next to its data. Heavy graphics and real-time device control are the poor fits.

Hours to a few days. A snapshot is a rollback point for a specific change, so verify the change and then delete it. Long-lived snapshots keep growing as the disk changes, cost more every month, and give a false sense of protection they cannot deliver.

A very low headline price may be compute-only, promotional, or attached to a small resource tier. It can also exclude Windows Server licensing, backups, or other services. Compare the final recurring price, CPU/RAM/storage, Windows licensing model, renewal terms, bandwidth, backups, and support rather than assuming the headline figure is the total cost.

Deploy a Windows Server VM, confirm the Microsoft licensing model, restrict administrative RDP, create named accounts, choose RDS Session Host for daily multi-user desktops, add RD Gateway or another controlled access layer where appropriate, install and validate the business applications, then configure backups and complete a restore test before production users depend on the server.

For five active business users, treat the environment as production and size from the actual workload rather than a generic 5-user rule. On Raff, a current 8 vCPU / 16 GB / 180 GB plan at $76.99/month is the safer starting anchor for heavier shared-desktop use; lighter environments may fit a smaller tier after testing. Add the $15/month Windows Server Standard SPLA licence and, for Raff-hosted RDS, $8/month per RDS User SAL.

After the first successful certificate, win-acme creates one Windows scheduled task that runs daily and checks all configured renewals. With the default Let's Encrypt endpoint the task is typically named `win-acme renew (acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org)`. win-acme 2.2.9.1 defaults to a 55-day renewal age and can also honor ACME Renewal Information (ARI) when the CA recommends renewing earlier. The IIS installation step updates bindings after a successful renewal.

There is no single flat Windows Server 2016 ESU price that applies to every server. Cost depends on edition, licensed core count, and how you buy ESU. Microsoft supports Windows Server 2016 ESUs through Azure Arc with pay-as-you-go monthly billing, and also through eligible Microsoft licensing channels. For budgeting, use Microsoft's current Azure Arc pricing or an official licensing/CSP quote for your exact server instead of a fixed per-server estimate.

No. On Windows Server 2025, SMB over QUIC is available in Standard and Datacenter editions. Earlier Windows Server 2022 guidance often referred to Azure Edition, which is why older articles can be misleading. For clients, use a currently supported Windows version that includes SMB over QUIC support and verify the exact edition/build requirements in Microsoft's current documentation.

It depends on the application. IIS defaults to 20 minutes; setting the idle timeout to 00:00:00 disables idle shutdown and can reduce cold starts for latency-sensitive apps, but it also keeps the worker process resident. Use 0 only when the app should stay warm and the server has enough memory. Otherwise keep the default or use a longer timeout based on measured behavior.

A newly created RD Session Host receives a 120-day technical grace period before an RD Licensing server must be configured for normal RDS licensing enforcement. Use that window to activate the license server, install the correct CAL pack, and configure the Session Host's licensing mode and server assignment. The grace period is not a substitute for commercial licensing, and Raff-hosted SPLA deployments use the provider's SAL model rather than customer CALs.

There is no reliable universal duration. A simple, well-tested member-server in-place upgrade may fit inside a planned maintenance window, while Active Directory, file, SQL Server, RDS, or line-of-business migrations can require a longer staged project for inventory, compatibility testing, data transfer, cutover, and rollback validation. Estimate the schedule from the server roles, data size, application dependencies, and recovery requirements.

No. Windows Server 2022 Standard leaves mainstream support on October 14, 2026, and extended support continues until October 15, 2031. The same lifecycle dates apply to Windows Server 2022 Standard and Datacenter. Mainstream support ending does not mean security updates stop; extended support continues through 2031.

Yes. SQL Server Express is free for production within its limits: 10 GB per database, a 1.4 GB buffer pool, up to 4 cores and no SQL Server Agent. SQL Server Developer is also free with every Enterprise feature, but it is licensed for development, testing and demos only, never for production.

A Raff Windows VPS starts at $28.99 per month: $13.99 for 1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM and 50 GB NVMe, plus the $15.00 Windows Server Standard licence billed through Microsoft SPLA. Ten Windows plans go up to 16 vCPU and 32 GB RAM at $174.99 compute, and every plan includes unmetered bandwidth, RDP administrator access and a 14-day money-back guarantee. Full prices are on the pricing page.

$28.99 a month for the entry plan: $13.99 compute plus the $15.00 Windows Server licence, itemised on your statement. One MT4 terminal with an Expert Advisor or two fits the $32.99 plan, and two terminals or a single MT5 fit $37.99. The largest plan, 8 vCPU with 16 GB, is $91.99. Billing is hourly, so you pay only for the time the server exists, paying yearly bills ten months instead of twelve, and bandwidth is unmetered on every plan.

Yes, and Sage documents it. The Sage 50 system requirements state that Windows Server 2019 and higher, with the Remote Desktop Connection client, is required to run in a Windows Terminal Services environment, and they list Windows Server 2022 as an optimised setup for multi-user mode. That is exactly what a Raff Windows VPS is. Everyone signs in to the same server, so the company data, the database engine and every user sit on one machine with no network hop between them.

No, and it does not need to be for QuickBooks to run well. Raff customers have run Desktop and Enterprise in multi-user mode on Raff servers for more than a year, and a Windows VPS is one of the most common ways small businesses run QuickBooks today. What the authorized program adds is Intuit's hosting support desk. What you get here instead is a server you own, your own licence at no markup, roughly half the per-seat price, and Raff's Windows engineers on call for the server, sessions, printers and backups. Intuit still supports the software under your subscription. Migration is free, the uptime SLA is in writing, and the first 14 days are money-back.

Two at a time on the administrator sessions Windows Server includes. With the RDS Session Host role, as many as the plan carries. For light office work allow 2 to 3 GB of RAM per person on top of about 2 GB for Windows: 8 vCPU with 16 GB suits 3 to 5 people, 8 vCPU with 32 GB suits up to 8, and 16 vCPU with 32 GB suits up to 12. Beyond 12, or for heavy applications, a second Session Host behind the same gateway.

No. The name moved: ASP.NET Core is the current framework and ships with each annual .NET release, and .NET 10 is the version to target today. What is winding down is the original ASP.NET on .NET Framework, still supported because 4.8.1 ships with Windows, but receiving no new features. On a Raff VPS both run side by side: a .NET 10 application in one pool and a Framework 4.8.1 application in another, on the same server.

A User CAL is assigned to one user who may access licensed Windows Servers from any device. A Device CAL is assigned to one device that may be used by any user to access those servers.

Yes, you can create private network routers for any networking need, from basic to advanced architectures.

Yes, we are fully GDPR compliant for Europe, US, and worldwide operations. See our privacy policy for details.

For sales inquiries or custom enterprise solutions, visit our contact page.

KVM only. Every VPS runs on true hardware virtualization with dedicated resources. No overselling, no shared kernels, no restrictions on kernel modules.

No. A per-account spend cap is on by default, so functions pause instead of running up a runaway bill. A near-real-time usage panel updates in 5-minute windows, and because requests and egress are free, the only two numbers that move are memory and active CPU.

No. If it deploys with a Dockerfile, a buildpack, or a docker-compose file today, it deploys here. Import a compose file and the whole stack lands on the canvas, wired up.

Your billing cycle is tied to the day you started the subscription, not the calendar month. It renews on that same date each period, and the length matches the term you chose, every month for monthly plans, or once a year (or every two years) for 1-year and 2-year plans. At the end of each cycle you get a detailed invoice showing your usage.

Yes. Raff Functions includes a permanent free tier every month, 100,000 GB-seconds and 10,000 vCPU-seconds of compute, plus free requests and free egress (it activates after a one-time $5 top-up that stays in your balance as credit). Backups and snapshots come with a free storage pool too, worth 10% of each standard VM's disk (15% on premium plans). And every paid plan is backed by our 14-day money-back guarantee.

Every user can have only one account. For specific business cases requiring multiple accounts, please contact support. Multiple accounts without approval are forbidden.

You can create up to 10 volumes per account, each from 10 GB to 10 TB, and resize them later as you grow. Contact support if you need higher limits.

Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, UnionPay, Google Pay, and Apple Pay. We bill monthly, you only pay for what you use.

No. Every Windows Server 2016 edition shares the same lifecycle: extended support ends January 12, 2027 for Standard, Datacenter, and Essentials alike. Edition changes licensing and features, not the calendar.

No. October 13, 2026 is the end of mainstream support for Server 2022. It continues to receive security updates on extended support until October 14, 2031.

Two concurrent administrative sessions are built in for server management. For more simultaneous users working on the server, deploy the RDS Session Host role with the appropriate RDS licensing and size CPU and RAM per active user.

No. RD Gateway is an access role, not a licensing exemption. Users or devices connecting to an RD Session Host still need the applicable RDS CAL, or RDS SALs in a hosted SPLA model like Raff's.

Yes, when the server is sized for concurrent users and the applications support multi-user Windows Server or RDS deployment. Use named accounts, role-based permissions, and appropriate RDS licensing.

Sometimes, but not reliably. Start the update cycle, review what is offered, and plan the required restart. Large cumulative updates or several restart cycles can take longer.

No. Windows Server 2016, 2019, 2022, and 2025 require a clean installation to change between Server Core and Desktop Experience.

Back up the full server, files, databases, system state where needed, application data, certificates, scheduled tasks, configs, and vendor-specific data. Restore testing is as important as backup completion.

It can be better when users are remote, multiple offices need the same files, hardware replacement is coming, or backups need off-site planning. Local storage can still be better for LAN-heavy or very large file workflows.

Branch users can access a Windows VPS through Remote Desktop, Remote Desktop Services, RD Gateway, VPN/private access, or application-specific access. The right model depends on whether users need desktops, files, apps, or admin access.

Avoid editing the Default Domain Policy for normal settings. Keep it clean and create separate GPOs for server baselines, user settings, RDP settings, and workstation policies.

A fully licensed Windows Server Datacenter host includes rights for unlimited Windows Server virtual machines on that licensed server, subject to Microsoft's current terms and product limits.

Usually, unmanaged VPS hosting costs less because the customer handles more administration work instead of paying for ongoing management services.

Start from the web application's working set, request behavior, number of app pools, and background work. A small IIS workload can start around 2–4 vCPU and 4–8 GB RAM, while production multi-site workloads often need more memory and CPU headroom.

A short controlled session can validate the monitoring setup. Production decisions are usually better based on longer periods that include normal and peak workloads.

No. Raff provides customer-controlled Windows VM infrastructure. For Intuit-authorized QuickBooks Desktop hosting, use a provider on Intuit’s current authorized-hosting list.

Disable RDP if the server does not need remote desktop administration. If RDP is required, keep Network Level Authentication enabled and restrict administrative exposure to trusted sources where practical.

There is no universal number. Normal cumulative updates can move through a short validation ring before production; actively exploited or high-exposure vulnerabilities should use a compressed emergency process. Avoid a blanket 7–14 day rule for every server.

No. Microsoft documents that an explicit block rule takes precedence over a conflicting allow rule. More-specific rules matter, but explicit block behavior must be checked when troubleshooting rule conflicts.

It depends on the licensing model. Customer-owned Windows Server/RDS deployments use the applicable RDS CAL model. A Raff-provided hosted SPLA deployment uses the applicable RDS SAL model for authorized users.

No. Only enable remote TCP access if an application genuinely needs it, and then restrict the Windows Firewall rule to trusted source IP addresses. Broad exposure of 1433 is one of the most attacked configurations on Windows servers.

No. In a single-site deployment the KCC builds the replication topology automatically and no Sites and Subnets configuration is required. The design work starts when you add a second location or network.

The built-in VPS is simpler but limited: it is tied to the account and runs only MetaTrader. A Windows VPS gives full control, multiple terminals, other trading tools, custom software, and your own backup strategy.

Yes. Moving Sage to a VPS changes where it runs, not how it is licensed. Bring your own Sage licences and confirm activation details before the migration weekend.

Yes. The usual path is building a fresh Windows Server VM on Raff, migrating roles, applications, and data, then cutting over DNS and access. Lift-and-shift by exporting and converting the disk is possible for suitable workloads.

Yes. With the RDS Session Host role and per-user licensing, a properly sized Windows VPS runs daily desktop sessions for small teams; size CPU and RAM for the concurrent users and their applications.

A fresh Windows Server presents a self-signed certificate, so the client cannot verify it against a public authority. On first connect to a server you just created, verify the IP is yours and accept the warning.

SIMPLE when losing up to a day of data is acceptable and you skip log backups. FULL when the business needs point-in-time restore, at the cost of managing log backups. Decide the model first; the backup schedule follows from it.

Less than the paid editions: Express caps its own buffer pool at roughly 1.4 GB. Setting an explicit max is still good practice on servers where SQL Server shares RAM with applications or Remote Desktop sessions.

Often yes. Standard includes Basic Availability Groups: two replicas protecting one database per group, without readable secondaries. That covers straightforward failover needs; multi-database groups and readable replicas need Enterprise.

Pre-size all files equally (for example 512 MB each on a small server) with identical autogrowth settings, instead of leaving the tiny defaults. Equal sizes keep SQL Server's proportional-fill algorithm balanced across files.

Two Windows Server VMs on private networking, a Windows Server Failover Cluster, Active Directory, the same SQL Server edition on both, and a listener for applications to connect to. Plan quorum and test failover before production.

Almost never. Keep TCP 1433 closed, and when a remote application truly needs access, restrict the firewall rule to its specific source IP addresses. Broad 1433 exposure is a standing invitation for attacks.

Logins and users, SQL Agent jobs, maintenance plans, linked servers, application connection strings, and firewall rules. Databases restore cleanly; forgotten logins and jobs are what break Monday morning.

Get-Counter with the Processor and Available MBytes counters gives live samples, and Get-Process sorted by WorkingSet64 shows which processes hold the memory. Together they answer why is the server slow in under a minute.

No. Keep the DC dedicated to directory, DNS, and Group Policy duty, and put applications, SQL Server, and Remote Desktop session hosts on separate VMs. Mixing roles complicates security, patching, and recovery.

Resolution and color depth have the biggest effect: a 4K, 32-bit session pushes far more data than 1080p at 24-bit. Tune the .rdp file, and use a current Remote Desktop client rather than an old bundled one.

Yes. Microsoft 365 licenses the Office applications; access to the RDS session itself is licensed separately through RDS CALs or, on a hosted SPLA platform like Raff, RDS SALs. They are two independent requirements.

Not by opening SMB to the internet. Use private networking or VPN for direct SMB, or move users into Remote Desktop sessions where the shares are local to the server. Plan mapped drives and offboarding as part of the design.

Only after the destination passes real-workflow tests: sign in, open the business app, print, save, restore a file. Then run both servers in parallel briefly with rollback ready.

RPO is how much data you can afford to lose (time since the last backup); RTO is how long you can afford to be down during a restore. Those two numbers, not tools, should decide your schedule and retention.

Three to five preparers running business applications usually start at 4 vCPU / 16 GB RAM, with storage planned for client files and backups. Lighter document-only use fits 4 vCPU / 8 GB.

Three to five users working with documents and practice software typically start at 4 vCPU / 8 GB and move to 4 vCPU / 16 GB as daily sessions and document volume grow.

Three to five users on agency software and documents usually start at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, stepping to 4 vCPU / 16 GB as scanned documents, downloads, and concurrent sessions grow. Plan storage generously; scans accumulate.

Three to five users on documents and office software typically run comfortably on 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Move up when property management databases or heavy concurrent use appear.

Estimating and accounting applications are heavier than plain documents: start at 4 vCPU / 16 GB for a small office team and monitor. Storage should be planned around project file growth.

Start at 4 vCPU / 16 GB for a small ERP with its SQL database on the same VM, and separate the database or move to 8 vCPU / 32 GB as concurrent users and reporting load grow.

Three to five office users on inventory and billing software typically start at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, moving to 4 vCPU / 16 GB when the database and reporting load grow. SQL-backed systems lean on RAM first.

Each client environment is a predictable monthly cost that resizes with that client's growth, which maps cleanly onto per-client pricing. No shared-hardware cost allocation debates.

Yes, with the RDS Session Host role and per-user licensing, sized for the number of concurrent preparers. Two or three simultaneous users need noticeably less than a ten-seat peak; size for the real peak.

Size by concurrent sessions and their workload: around five active business-software users on 4 vCPU / 16 GB, around ten on 8 vCPU / 32 GB, with RDS licensing planned per user.

4 vCPU / 16 GB is the realistic starting point for an ERP with its database, with storage planned for data growth and backups. Monitor real usage for a month before deciding anything bigger.

Three things: is Windows Server deployment supported, is multi-user or RDS access supported, and how is licensing counted in that model. The answers decide the architecture before any server is built.

Most run on current Windows Server: try Server 2025 or 2022 first (the evaluation licence makes the test free) with compatibility settings when needed. Genuinely stubborn cases get isolated, not made the standard.

Usually not: most legacy Windows software runs on current Windows Server, sometimes with compatibility settings. Test on Server 2025 or 2022 first under the evaluation licence; keep genuinely incompatible cases isolated as the exception.

Cloud is a predictable monthly fee; local is hardware capex plus power, warranty, maintenance, and an eventual forced refresh. Spread over a hardware lifecycle, the comparison is closer than the monthly number suggests, and predictability is the real difference.

Small businesses usually share one right-sized VM across their apps and split later only if workloads start fighting for resources. Measured pressure, not habit, should trigger the split.

Usually not. A snapshot of a running server is typically crash-consistent, meaning it captures the disk as if the power had been pulled. Databases like SQL Server and QuickBooks company files need application-aware backups that use the Volume Shadow Copy Service so in-flight writes are flushed before the copy is taken.

You add dedicated NVMe storage nodes to your cluster at $0.10 per GB per month (100 GB to 1 TB per node). Your workloads claim replicated persistent volumes from that pool through standard PersistentVolumeClaims.

Compute from $13.99/month plus the $15.00/month Windows Standard licence. Multi-user access adds RDS User SALs at $8.00/month per user. That is a flat, predictable bill rather than per-user platform pricing.

From $13.99/month compute plus the $15.00/month Windows licence. A typical small-business shape is 2 vCPU / 4 GB at $22.99 or 4 vCPU / 8 GB at $40.99, plus the licence, with unmetered bandwidth included.

A cloud Windows Server starts at $13.99/month compute plus the $15.00/month licence on Raff, versus a hardware refresh's upfront cost plus power, warranty, and maintenance. The bigger shift is predictability: a monthly line item instead of a capex surprise.

Possibly for a very small workload, but the headline price alone does not tell you whether the server is production-ready. Check CPU, RAM, storage, Windows licensing, backup coverage, support, renewal pricing, and the application's real resource needs. A small plan that technically boots Windows Server can still be a poor fit for daily RDS users, SQL Server, accounting software, or other business-critical workloads.

Potentially. Windows Server BYOL does not use License Mobility through Software Assurance. For an eligible Authorized Outsourcer scenario, Microsoft's Flexible Virtualization Benefit generally requires qualifying subscription licenses or licenses with active Software Assurance. If the workload runs on shared Authorized Outsourcer infrastructure, the Windows Server access CALs used for that deployment also need the qualifying subscription or active Software Assurance rights Microsoft requires for the benefit. Verify your exact agreement before production deployment.

Not as a production business hosting model. Free RDP offers are usually trials, shared systems, or your own hardware. On Raff, Windows VM compute starts at $13.99/month and Windows Server Standard SPLA is $15/month per instance. If employees need hosted RDS desktop sessions through Raff's SPLA model, add $8/month per RDS User SAL. Application licenses and backups may add further cost.

If ten staff members need their own interactive Windows desktop or RemoteApp sessions, plan Remote Desktop Services rather than relying on the two administrative RDP sessions. In Raff's hosted SPLA model, budget $15/month for Windows Server Standard plus $8/month for each RDS User SAL. Size the VM from peak concurrent users and application load; a current 8 vCPU / 32 GB / 240 GB Raff plan at $137.99/month is a practical planning anchor for 10 active users, not a universal guarantee.

For the HTTP-01 workflow in this guide, you need a domain whose DNS resolves to the IIS server, an IIS site with the intended hostname binding, and TCP port 80 reachable from the internet for validation. Port 443 is needed to serve HTTPS after issuance, but it is not the HTTP-01 validation port. Wildcard certificates require DNS-01 instead.

By default, SMB over QUIC uses UDP port 443. Microsoft recommends allowing UDP/443 inbound to the file server and not exposing TCP/445 to the internet. Newer Windows versions can support alternative SMB ports when both client and server are configured for them, but UDP/443 remains the standard SMB over QUIC deployment path.

No Managed Code tells IIS not to load the classic .NET Framework CLR for that application pool. Microsoft recommends this setting for ASP.NET Core because the ASP.NET Core Module handles the application process, but the setting is not a hard requirement for every hosting mode. Classic ASP.NET Framework applications may still require the appropriate CLR version.

Windows Server 2016 extended support ends on January 12, 2027. After that date, normal security updates under the standard lifecycle stop. Organizations that cannot migrate in time should review Microsoft's current Extended Security Updates eligibility and terms directly rather than relying on old fixed-price examples.

Not necessarily. Whether an upgrade requires new Windows Server licensing depends on the customer's licensing agreement, edition, and upgrade rights. On Raff, a common migration path is to deploy a Windows Server 2025 VM alongside the old server, move the workload, and license the hosted Windows Server instance under Raff's Microsoft licensing model. Check the customer's Microsoft entitlement before assuming an in-place upgrade is licence-free.

Pick by the first limit you will hit. Express covers most small applications that stay under 10 GB per database. Standard removes the size, memory and core caps and adds SQL Server Agent and basic availability groups. Enterprise is for online index rebuilds, full Always On and very large memory. Standard vs Enterprise, when to pay more

Yes, for eligible licences under Microsoft's Flexible Virtualization Benefit, which requires qualifying subscription licences or licences with active Software Assurance. Check your agreement first. If you do not own licences, Raff's SPLA licence at $15.00 per month is the default.

Yes. The Windows prices shown here include a $15.00 per month Windows Server Standard licence, supplied through Raff's Microsoft SPLA program, so the entry Windows VPS is $28.99 a month: $13.99 compute plus the licence. It appears as its own line on your statement rather than being hidden in the plan price. Linux distributions are free, so Linux plans carry no licence line. If you bring your own Windows licence under Microsoft's Flexible Virtualization Benefit, switch the licence off above and pay for compute only.

Sage's published requirements ask for 8 GB and recommend 16 GB and higher once more than one person works in the company file. A terminal server needs more again, because every session carries Sage plus Outlook, Excel and a browser, about 3 GB each. That gives the sizes on this page: 8 GB for one person, 16 GB for two, 32 GB for up to six, and 16 vCPU with 32 GB for up to ten. Resizing takes minutes, so starting one size down is safe.

Yes, and it is how most of the industry runs it. Pro, Premier and Enterprise install on Windows Server 2016 through 2022, all of them run under Remote Desktop Services, and Raff customers have run them in multi-user mode for more than a year. Nearly every QuickBooks host, authorized or not, runs QuickBooks on virtual machines. Intuit's published network guidance still calls virtual servers not recommended, which in practice means its help desk may point you back at the environment. That is what Raff's Windows engineers are for. Free migration tests multi-user mode with your own people first, and the first 14 days are money-back.

Not to buy. Raff supplies the RDS user licence monthly through Microsoft SPLA at $8.00 per user, so there are no CAL packs to purchase and no licence server to run. Add or remove users and the count follows on the next statement. Microsoft allows a 120-day grace period on every new Session Host, which covers setup and migration. If you already own RDS CALs with active Software Assurance, ask a Microsoft licensing specialist whether they qualify under the Flexible Virtualization Benefit first.

Yes, in the price you see. The $28.99 a month entry price is $13.99 compute plus a $15.00 Windows Server Standard licence through Raff's Microsoft SPLA program. We show it as its own line on your statement rather than burying it, and you pick Windows Server 2019, 2022 or 2025 when you deploy. If you already own a licence you can bring it under Microsoft's Flexible Virtualization Benefit and pay for compute only.

Any that Windows Server supports, because you install them. ASP.NET Core 8, 9 and 10 through the .NET Hosting Bundle, which adds the ASP.NET Core Module to IIS, plus .NET Framework 4.8.1 for older applications. Side-by-side runtimes are normal on Windows, so each application pool targets its own version and an upgrade is a new pool rather than a migration. When Microsoft ships the next release you install it the same day.

Moving an RD Licensing server and reassigning CAL entitlements are separate issues. Microsoft supports migrating/reinstalling CAL packs through its licensing process, but reassignment rights depend on the customer's agreement. For hosted Raff RDS, the service uses SPLA RDS SALs rather than customer CALs.

Yes. Microsoft recommends No Managed Code for ASP.NET Core app pools because the app loads CoreCLR itself. It is recommended, not required, so a different managedRuntimeVersion alone does not prove the cause of an ASP.NET Core startup failure.

For a production Raff Windows VM, use Raff-provided Windows Server licensing under the hosted SPLA model or eligible customer BYOL rights. Review the Windows Server Licensing guide before deployment if you are bringing existing Microsoft licenses.

If the base Windows Server CAL requirement applies and the user or device also uses Remote Desktop Services, the RDS CAL is additive. It does not replace the base Windows Server CAL.

After logging into your account, go to your profile settings to reset your password.

Yes! We provide always-on, free DDoS protection for all customers. Visit our security page for more details.

We do not maintain fixed support hours. Our global team aims to respond as quickly as possible, regardless of time zone. Please feel free to contact us anytime.

Currently US East Coast. Singapore, Canada, and Europe regions are coming soon.

Yes. Every Linux VPS comes with full root access via SSH. You can install any software, modify system configurations, and manage your server with complete control.

Yes. Autoscaling adjusts your worker node count to demand within the limits you set, and you can also add or remove nodes manually at any time.

Correct. Timeouts run up to 1 hour by default and 24 hours on request. Long AI inference, batch processing, ETL and streaming run as functions on the same two meters, instead of being pushed onto a second, heavier product.

Pre-pay. Subscriptions are charged at the start of each cycle, on your renewal date, and the service then runs for the period you paid. Pay-as-you-go resources draw from a balance you top up in advance. Credits and account balance are applied first before your card is charged, and every successful payment comes with an invoice.

We retain data according to legal requirements and industry standards. For specific retention periods, please refer to our privacy policy or contact support.

Yes, our Object Storage is fully S3 compatible. You can use it with any S3 library or tool.

PostgreSQL, MySQL and Valkey (Redis-compatible), provisioned in a click with daily backups and private-fabric connections. MySQL covers WordPress, Ghost and the whole MySQL-native ecosystem. See Managed Databases for every engine and plan.

There is no software limit on the number of Expert Advisors. The constraint is the RAM and vCPU on your plan. As a rough guide, a 2 vCPU and 4 GB plan comfortably carries two terminals running roughly 5 to 10 EAs. If you outgrow it, you can resize the VPS to a larger plan without rebuilding it.

Windows Server 2025 is supported until November 14, 2034: mainstream support runs to November 13, 2029, followed by five years of extended support.

RDS ships in Windows Server 2025 and follows its support lifecycle into the 2030s, so nothing stops working. Microsoft's investment focus has shifted toward its cloud desktop services, which makes version planning and vendor support checks more important, not less.

Users or devices connecting to an RD Session Host for daily desktop or RemoteApp sessions require appropriate RDS CALs. Administrative RDP sessions are different from a licensed multi-user work environment.

No. First create and test a named administrator and confirm a reliable recovery path. Then handle the built-in account as part of the documented hardening plan.

Yes. IIS is available on Server Core. Verify that the web application, frameworks, deployment tooling, monitoring, and security agents also support the selected Windows Server Core version.

Yes. Use one IIS site and one app pool per app. Use host headers to route different domains to different apps on the same server.

Yes. A Windows VPS can replace a local file server when shared folders, SMB access, NTFS permissions, mapped drives, backups, and user access are planned carefully. Direct SMB exposure to the public internet should be avoided.

For many SMBs, the cleanest model is RDP/RDS access where users work inside the Windows VPS and access files close to the apps. Direct SMB from remote endpoints should use a secure access design.

If users connect to an RD Session Host running Windows Server for desktop or RemoteApp sessions, RDS CAL planning is usually required. Admin RDP and staff desktop access are different use cases.

Link your first GPO to a test OU that contains only one or two test users or computers. Verify it before linking it to a production OU.

Most single Windows VPS deployments do not need Datacenter. Standard normally supports RDP administration, IIS, SQL Server, Active Directory, file services, and business applications.

The standard first-login account in the current Raff Windows VM workflow is Administrator. Use the password you set during VM creation and saved securely.

Raff provides Windows VPS infrastructure with administrator access. Customers are responsible for Windows Server and application administration unless separate services are arranged.

Prioritize memory, database behavior, TempDB, storage activity, query concurrency, and backup windows. A small production SQL Server often starts around 4–8 vCPU and 16–32 GB RAM, then scales based on observed database load.

Start with CPU utilization, available memory, disk latency, free storage, network activity, and application-specific counters.

For daily multi-user desktop sessions, use Remote Desktop Services rather than the two administrative RDP sessions. RDS licensing is separate from QuickBooks licensing.

Not under the Flexible Virtualization Benefit. Microsoft states that the Flexible Virtualization Benefit does not require the License Mobility verification form used by License Mobility through Software Assurance.

No, not as a normal production choice. Microsoft strongly discourages SMBv1, and it is not installed by default on Windows Server 2019 and later. Upgrade or isolate legacy dependencies instead of re-enabling SMBv1 broadly.

No. PSWindowsUpdate is a community PowerShell Gallery module. Windows Update, SConfig, WSUS, approved patch-management platforms, and other Microsoft-supported mechanisms can manage Windows Server updates without it.

No. The service must be running and listening on the expected local address and port. Use Get-NetTCPConnection -State Listen before changing the firewall.

No. Microsoft’s current RDS licensing configuration guidance says workgroup deployments must use Per Device CALs; Per User CALs are not permitted in that configuration.

Per Microsoft's SPLA announcements, Windows Server and SQL Server SPLA list prices stayed flat on January 1, 2026. Exchange, SharePoint, Skype for Business, and legacy Dynamics SPLA rates went up ~10%. RDS SAL pricing follows the same SPLA cycle and isn't publicly listed — check with your reseller for specifics.

Yes. The Windows licence covers the operating system only. SQL Server Developer and Express are free within their limits; Standard and Enterprise need their own licensing regardless of where the server runs.

In a two-DC setup, yes. The Global Catalog holds the partial replica used during logons, and making both DCs Global Catalogs means authentication keeps working when either server is down.

No. Disconnecting the RDP session leaves the Windows session and MetaTrader running. Signing out ends the session and stops the terminal, so always disconnect, never log off.

Two layers: Sage-aware backups (the company file for Sage 50, the database for Sage 300) plus whole-VM backups. Run at least one test restore before the accounting team goes live.

No. Raff Windows VMs include unmetered bandwidth in the monthly price. Azure meters outbound data transfer beyond a free allowance, which is one of the costs that surprises teams after migration.

Yes, that is the typical workload: accounting, tax, ERP, Microsoft Access, and other legacy Windows software running centrally with controlled remote access, instead of being installed on every laptop.

Yes. Start small, resize the VPS as the workload grows, and migrate to dedicated hardware only if the numbers ever justify it. The migration is the same discipline either way: build, test, cut over.

Yes, office-server replacement is one of the main use cases: files, apps, and access move to the cloud server, with backups and remote access designed in. Plan the migration and run both in parallel briefly before cutover.

TCP and UDP port 3389. It must be reachable from your network, and for security the firewall rule should limit which source IP addresses may connect rather than leaving it open to everyone.

No, and the difference drives sizing. Ten user accounts with four people connected at once is a four-session workload. Size for the peak number of simultaneous active sessions and what those sessions actually run.

In a dedicated backup directory on the server, with a copy kept off the server so one failure cannot take both the database and its backups. Whole-VM backups complement, not replace, SQL-level backups. Restore-test at least once before production.

No. Max server memory is a dynamic setting and takes effect immediately, which also means a wrong value can be corrected on the spot without downtime.

No. Compute and the Windows licence stay the same. SQL Server licensing is separate: Express and Developer are free within their terms, while Standard and Enterprise are licensed on their own.

Yes. TempDB is recreated from its configuration at every SQL Server startup, so new file counts and sizes apply after the service restarts.

Sometimes. If minutes of downtime are tolerable, a solid backup and restore strategy is simpler and cheaper. Availability groups earn their complexity when the application genuinely needs automatic failover.

Re-check the finished server: authentication mode, sa state, firewall scope, encryption settings, and that audit events are being written. A hardening pass without a verification pass is a hope, not a control.

Restore the big full backup ahead of time, then apply a final differential or log backup during a short cutover window, repoint connection strings, and keep the old server running until the application is verified.

Yes. Enable PowerShell remoting on the target with Enable-PSRemoting, then use Invoke-Command for one-off commands or Enter-PSSession for an interactive session, including against a whole list of servers at once.

No. Run two: a primary and a secondary replicating over private networking, so logons, DNS, and Group Policy survive the loss of either server. One DC is a single point of failure for the whole domain.

Yes, the server needs a certificate matching the name clients connect to. A free Let's Encrypt certificate issued with win-acme works, which is exactly what this guide sets up.

They can. A disconnected session keeps its applications running and holding RAM and CPU. Set disconnected-session time limits so abandoned sessions sign out instead of quietly consuming the server.

Activation breaks: standard activation binds Office to a device and user pair, which is unsupported on a session host. Users hit repeated activation prompts and unlicensed-product warnings until SCA is configured.

Stale files, departed-user folders, and broken permissions. Every gigabyte and misconfigured ACL you delete before migration is one you do not copy, verify, back up, and pay to store afterwards.

A verified backup of the source, a snapshot before every major change, a written rollback plan, and a schedule with slack. Cutovers fail safely when the old system is one decision away.

Resize the VM up before the season and back down after. That elasticity is the practical advantage over office hardware, which has to be bought for the busiest week of the year and then idles.

Yes. The Windows session is reachable from any approved device over RDP, and the case files stay on the server rather than traveling on laptops, which is precisely the point.

Yes. Every location connects to the same environment, so client records, documents, and the management system stay consistent without a server in each office.

Plan for growth: media accumulates fast. Raff volumes can be extended without rebuilding the server, and the backup plan should include file-level restore so one deleted folder does not require a full recovery.

Layered: whole-VM backups plus file-level restore for the daily oops, with an off-server copy. Test one restore before the first bid deadline depends on the server.

Inventory what runs today, build the destination in parallel, test the ERP against copied data with the vendor's guidance, then cut over in a planned window while the old server stands by as rollback.

Test device workflows before cutover. Scanners and printers bound to the local network generally keep working locally, while the records they update live on the server. Anything device-dependent deserves a pilot before production.

Access model and who holds admin, backup schedule and restore test date, firewall rules, licensing (Windows, RDS, applications), and the rollback plan. If the engineer who built it leaves, the document is the environment.

With deliberate controls: named accounts, restricted access, least-privilege folders, audit logging, and retention-aware, restore-tested backups. The firm's own processes for access and offboarding complete the picture.

Disable one account centrally and access ends everywhere, because nothing lived on their device. That single moment is where the centralized model pays for itself.

Use the vendor's supported backup and restore path, test against a copy of production data in parallel, and cut over in a planned window with the old system intact until the new one is verified. Never migrate the only copy.

Database-aware backups for the ERP data, whole-VM backups for the server, and an off-server copy. One tested restore before go-live turns the plan from theory into protection.

It safely buys years: a supported OS and controlled access around software that no longer evolves. Treat that time as runway for the eventual replacement, with the data export path documented now.

When it blocks business needs that containment cannot solve: integrations, security requirements, or vendor support the frozen app cannot meet. Until then, run it safely and keep the data export path documented for the eventual migration.

A typical small-business migration runs 2 to 6 weeks end to end: inventory, a parallel build with real-workflow testing, then a planned cutover with the old server standing by as rollback.

Yes, hybrid is normal: printing and office-bound devices stay local while files, applications, and remote access move to the cloud server. The migration does not have to be absolute to be worthwhile.

One small VM for a month: deploy, install the software against copied data, and test real workflows. If it works, resize and migrate; if not, delete the VM. No hardware was purchased for the experiment.

Keep three copies of your data on two different types of storage with one copy off-site. On a Windows VPS that usually means the live data, an automated platform backup, and a periodic export of critical files to an independent location such as object storage.

Raff's pricing page lists snapshots and backups at $0.06 per GB per month, with scheduled or on-demand backups and adjustable retention. For most small-business servers that is a small line item next to the risk it removes.

It depends on the provider and plan. Some providers include Windows Server licensing in the advertised price, while others separate compute and licensing. Raff currently prices them separately: Windows VM compute starts at $13.99/month and Windows Server Standard SPLA licensing is $15.00/month per instance.

As of September 2026, Let's Encrypt's default certificate lifetime is still 90 days. Let's Encrypt has announced a phased reduction: the default lifetime is scheduled to drop to 64 days in February 2027 and 45 days in February 2028. This makes reliable automated renewal even more important.

Microsoft's current in-place upgrade guidance supports moving older Windows Server releases to Windows Server 2025 when the edition, installation type, hardware, applications, and upgrade method are compatible. For production Server 2016 systems, validate the exact path with current Microsoft guidance and vendor support first. A clean migration to a new Server 2025 VM is often easier to test and roll back because the original server can remain intact until cutover.

Use recycling as a controlled process-lifecycle tool, not a universal performance fix. IIS commonly defaults to a 29-hour regular interval. You can keep that default or replace it with a predictable schedule when operations require one. Add private-memory recycling only when measurements justify a threshold; an arbitrary memory cap can cause unnecessary recycles and does not fix a memory leak.

The licensing answer depends on how the destination is deployed. On Raff, Windows Server Standard is available through Raff's hosted Microsoft licensing model at $15/month per instance. Eligible customer-owned Windows Server licences may use Microsoft's Flexible Virtualization Benefit where the licence and agreement qualify. SQL Server and RDS are licensed separately; Raff-hosted RDS uses RDS User SALs rather than ordinary customer CAL purchasing.

Not necessarily. On Raff, Windows VM compute sizing is independent of whether you choose Server 2022 or 2025, and the hosted Windows Server Standard licence is billed separately per instance. Use the live pricing page for current amounts. The version decision should primarily follow application compatibility, lifecycle, and required platform features rather than assuming one release is inherently cheaper.

Raff Windows plans use guaranteed vCPU allocation rather than oversold shared cores, include unmetered bandwidth with no overage on every plan, and show the $15.00 Windows Server licence as its own line so the total is visible before checkout. Raff also includes a 14-day money-back guarantee, 24/7 human support and free migration from Contabo, OVHcloud and other providers. Compare the like-for-like plan totals on the pricing page before you decide.

QuickBooks multi-user: plan ~2–4 GB per concurrent user plus Windows Server overhead. MSSQL Standard production: 1.5–2× your active dataset size in RAM. MetaTrader: 1–2 GB per running EA instance. Each use-case panel above lists plan recommendations matched to typical workloads.

Not for Enterprise. Intuit stopped selling new subscriptions of QuickBooks Desktop Pro Plus, Premier Plus and Mac Plus to new customers in 2024, but existing subscribers can keep renewing, and QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise is still sold and updated every year. Each Desktop version is supported by Intuit for about three years after release. If you are on Enterprise, or on a Pro or Premier subscription you already hold, a server on Raff keeps it running for as long as Intuit supports your version.

No. Raff is not affiliated with Sage and sells no Sage licences: you install your own subscription on your own server. That is a normal arrangement, not a grey area, because Sage's own system requirements describe running Sage 50 multi-user on Windows Server through Remote Desktop. Sage keeps supporting the software, and Raff's Windows engineers support the server, the sessions, the users, the printers and the backups. If you would rather one company answered for both, a Sage specialist is the right choice at about $50 to $100 per user per month.

Open port 3389 on the public internet is. It is one of the most scanned ports there is, and password guessing against it never stops. On Raff the Session Host has no public RDP port at all. Your team signs in through a Remote Desktop Gateway over HTTPS with multi-factor authentication, both firewalls are default-deny, and failed logins are logged with lockout on the host. Used that way, Remote Desktop is a normal, well-understood way to reach a Windows server.

There are free ASP.NET hosts and they suit a student project or a demo. The limits are the point: an old .NET version, a few hundred megabytes of space, a shared SQL quota, forced ads or sleeping sites, and no administrator access. Raff has no free tier. The entry Windows VPS is $28.99 a month with the licence itemised and the first 14 days are money-back, so you can deploy your actual application and decide with it running.

Start from your active data, meaning the part of the database your application reads and writes on a normal day, not the whole file on disk. Double that number and add 2 GB for Windows. If you do not know it, use the total database size. Express needs only 8 GB because it can use 1.4 GB itself. For Standard: an 8 GB plan up to 4 GB active, 16 GB up to 8 GB active, 32 GB up to 16 GB active. SQL Server memory tuning guide

RDS CALs are customer licensing rights for users or devices accessing Remote Desktop Services. RDS SALs are monthly Subscriber Access Licenses used by service providers under SPLA. Raff-hosted RDS uses the SAL model rather than ordinary customer CALs.

Yes. A Windows Server 2025 CAL can access Windows Server 2025 and earlier versions such as 2022 and 2019. An older CAL does not grant access to a newer Windows Server version.

Access your account via the login page, using your registered email address and password.

Raff Technologies enhances application security through multiple layers. This includes network-level DDoS protection, configurable VM firewall rules, and SSL/TLS certificate support for data encryption.

We currently offer standard support to all customers. For companies requiring custom support with guaranteed response times, we offer enterprise solutions at custom pricing. Contact sales for more details.

No. You write your framework's standard HTTP handler: FastAPI/ASGI, Node's http, the Web Fetch API, or Go's net/http. There's no proprietary signature, so the same file runs on your laptop, on Raff, and on other platforms. A Dockerfile escape hatch covers anything else.

Attach durable volumes to any service, for databases, uploaded media or plugin installs. Data survives redeploys and restarts, so stateful and self-hosted software runs, not just 12-factor apps.

When you add a card, we place a one-time $1 charge to confirm it's active and valid. You don't lose it, the $1 is credited to your account balance and you can spend it on usage.

Yes! Download your kubeconfig from the dashboard and use kubectl, Helm and any standard Kubernetes tooling. Clusters run upstream-conformant Kubernetes, no proprietary lock-in.

Yes, your data is preserved. Resize from your dashboard with a quick power-off, stop the VM, apply the new CPU, RAM, or storage, and start it again. Nothing is rebuilt and no data is lost.

General Purpose VMs use shared CPU resources, making them ideal for web servers, development environments, and applications with variable workloads where occasional performance fluctuations are acceptable. CPU Optimized VMs provide dedicated CPU cores exclusively reserved for your instance, delivering consistent and stable performance, perfect for databases, CI/CD pipelines, video encoding, and any workload that demands reliable compute power. Not sure which to pick? Start with General Purpose and resize to CPU Optimized anytime with just a reboot.

When you cancel, your subscription stays active until the end of the current billing period, it simply won't renew. After the period ends the server is removed within 24 hours, so download any data, backups, or snapshots you want to keep before then.

The published minimums are essentially identical: a 1.4 GHz 64-bit CPU, 512 MB RAM (2 GB with Desktop Experience), and a 32 GB system disk. On a VPS the question disappears in practice: you size vCPU and RAM for the workload, and all three versions run on the same Raff plans.

SQL Server 2016 left extended support on July 14, 2026, six months before the OS deadline. If your 2016 server runs SQL Server 2016, plan the database move first, then the OS move.

Only through Extended Security Updates, where offered. Server 2016 ESU runs to January 2030; Server 2012/R2 ESU ends October 13, 2026. ESU covers security patches only and its per-server price roughly doubles each year.

Yes. A Windows VPS can host structured shared folders with Windows permissions and backups. Do not expose SMB broadly to the public internet, and plan file-level recovery in addition to VM backups.

No. It creates a safe starting state. Production still requires role-specific configuration, restricted access, logging, backups, restore testing, update management, and application validation.

No. Microsoft does not include the Remote Desktop Session Host role service in Server Core. Use Server with Desktop Experience for employee desktop sessions and plan the required RDS licensing.

Yes. The same IIS and ASP.NET Core hosting pattern works on supported Windows Server versions. The exact UI and installed feature behavior may vary slightly.

If staff use Remote Desktop Services sessions on Windows Server, RDS CAL planning is usually required. One or two admin RDP sessions are different from daily staff desktop access.

It depends on current data, file growth, backups, profiles, app files, and retention. Plan for at least 12 to 24 months of growth instead of sizing only for today’s folders.

Yes. A Windows VPS can host shared folders for multiple offices if SMB access is secured, permissions are documented, backups are tested, and users access files through a controlled model such as RDP/RDS, VPN, or supported SMB patterns.

Run gpupdate /force on the target computer. Some settings still require logoff, login, or reboot before they fully apply.

No. Datacenter's unlimited virtualization rights do not provide unlimited Remote Desktop users. Multi-user Remote Desktop Services still requires the correct RDS deployment and licensing.

Verify the OS and network state, then follow the Windows Server Initial Setup Checklist. Complete updates, administrator-account planning, firewall and Defender checks, storage review, and recovery setup before installing the production workload.

The better choice depends on whether the business has someone responsible for Windows Server administration, security, backups, and application support.

Size storage from current data plus 12–24 months of growth, then add CPU and RAM for the actual access model. A small shared-folder server may only need modest compute, while file servers that also host RDP users or business apps need additional resources.

Not immediately. First identify the bottleneck. The limiting resource may be CPU, RAM, storage, network, or the application itself.

Microsoft’s current RDS licensing guidance requires Per Device CALs for workgroup RDS deployments. Per User CALs can be used in domain-joined deployments but are not permitted for a workgroup session host.

Microsoft’s Windows Server 2025 security baseline requires SMB signing on client and server connections. Test compatibility with older or third-party SMB devices before enforcing a stricter signing policy on an existing environment.

A short-term snapshot can be a useful rollback point before a significant change, but it should supplement—not replace—application-aware backups, off-server copies, and tested recovery procedures.

Avoid broad public RDP exposure when practical. Restrict RDP to trusted source addresses, use a VPN, or use RD Gateway for an RDS architecture. Microsoft specifically warns that direct internet exposure of Remote Desktop increases risk.

Microsoft currently documents a 120-day grace period for a newly created RD Session Host before a license server is required technically. Do not treat the grace period as a substitute for the licensing rights required for production use.

You also need Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise licensing with Shared Computer Activation enabled. RDS CALs cover the Windows Server access right; M365 has its own per-user licensing on top.

When the eligible per-VM licensing option is used, Microsoft requires licenses for the virtual cores allocated to each VM, with a minimum of 8 core licenses per VM and a minimum of 16 core licenses per customer. The per-VM option requires qualifying subscription licenses or licenses with active Software Assurance. Always check the current Product Terms and your agreement before deployment.

$166.97 per 2 vCPU per month through Microsoft SPLA, with Microsoft's four-core minimum per VM. That is $333.94 a month on a 1, 2 or 4 vCPU plan, $667.88 on 8 vCPU and $1,335.76 on 16 vCPU, itemised on your statement and adjusted automatically when you resize. Enterprise is $628.65 per 2 vCPU. Bring your own licence and the line is $0.

Windows allows 2 administrator sessions. For more users, add the RDS Session Host role and an RDS SAL from Raff at $8.00 per user per month, or bring your own RDS CALs if your Microsoft agreement allows it. Full rules are in the RDS CAL licensing guide.

Yes. Sage 100 Standard runs on one Windows Server as it is. Sage 100 Advanced and Premium and Sage 300 keep their data in SQL Server, so they run either on a single server with SQL Server Express, or on two servers joined by a free Raff private network with port 1433 reachable only on that network. SQL Server Express costs nothing and allows 10 GB per database; Standard can be licensed through Raff or you can bring your own.

On the server, open QuickBooks Desktop and go to File, then Utilities, then Host Multi-User Access. That starts the QuickBooks database service for your version. Then open QuickBooks Database Server Manager, add the folder holding your company files and scan it, which creates the .ND files that let other sessions open the file in multi-user mode. On a Raff server everyone works in a Remote Desktop session on that same machine, so hosting mode stays on and there are no workstation-to-server settings to maintain.

You install it, and SQL Server Express is free from Microsoft with a 10 GB per database limit that covers most line-of-business applications. It runs on the same VPS as IIS, so there is no network hop between the application and the data and no second licence. When a database outgrows Express, move to SQL Server Standard through Raff or put SQL Server on a second VPS joined by a free private network, with port 1433 closed to the internet.

Not a real one. Free RDP offers are shared or short-lived machines with no guarantee, and many ask for a card anyway. A Raff remote desktop VPS starts at $45.99 a month for one person: $37.99 for the server with Windows included, plus $8.00 for that person's Remote Desktop licence. An unattended machine that nobody signs in to, such as a scheduled bot or a trading terminal, is the server cost alone. Both come with a 14-day money-back guarantee and a 99.9% uptime SLA.

Pricing depends on the hosting model. A Raff self-managed example with 4 vCPU / 8 GB Windows plus five RDS User SALs is $95.99/month before QuickBooks licensing, backups, or other software. Intuit-authorized providers use their own per-user pricing.

No. User CALs are assigned to specific users and Device CALs to specific devices. They are not a pool based on simultaneous connections or peak concurrent users.

You can manage your profile information, change your password, and update contact details within the Settings section of the application.

If you enter correct information in the tax section, we'll invoice you each month with appropriate taxes calculated based on your location.

VMs have fixed resources (CPU, RAM) that cannot be exceeded. For storage, you can easily add more volumes. You should track your resource usage through your dashboard.

Yes, we provide an SLA that outlines our commitment to service availability for eligible services. You can review our SLA details here.

In about 55 seconds. Choose your OS, select your plan, and your server is ready with root access via SSH.

Yes. Paste or upload your Lambda and Raff maps it deterministically, rewrites the proprietary parts with AI assistance, and shows you the diff. Review it, then deploy a clean, portable handler with no lock-in. Prefer no AI? Run it as-is instead. No Dockerfile or YAML required, Buildpacks detects your language and builds the image.

Open a pull request and Raff spins up an isolated copy of your whole stack, app and databases, on a shareable URL. It updates on every push and tears itself down when the PR merges or closes.

Via SSH using your terminal, or through our browser-based web console. We support SSH key authentication for secure access, and everything can also be managed through our REST API.

No. Node bandwidth is unmetered with no inbound or outbound charges, the same policy as our Cloud Servers.

Virtual Machines: Secure SSH key access and network isolation via configurable firewalls. Object Storage: Access control through keys, pre-signed URLs, and bucket policies. Managed Databases: Network restrictions, encryption at rest, and secure authentication. Accounts: Two-factor authentication (2FA) is available and recommended.

Some printers, drives, and devices can be redirected, but policies, drivers, client settings, vendor support, and application behavior affect the result. Test the exact model and complete workflow before production.

It installs more components and therefore has a larger attack surface than Core. It can still be secured effectively with updates, restricted access, firewall rules, Defender, backups, monitoring, and role-specific hardening.

For quick tests, it is fine. For production, build on your local machine or CI/CD system, then copy the published output to the server. This keeps build tools off the production VM.

Avoid or delay migration when the application vendor does not support cloud/RDS use, local devices are critical and untested, internet is unreliable, backups are unproven, or high availability is required but not designed.

Yes. Cloud hosting does not replace backups. A Windows VPS file server still needs VM backups, file-level restore, off-server copies, retention policy, and restore testing.

Size by peak concurrent users and workload type, not by the number of offices. Three active users may start around 4 vCPU / 8-16 GB RAM, while ten active users often need 8 vCPU / 32 GB RAM or more.

Run gpresult /r for a quick summary or gpresult /h C:\GPOReport.html for a detailed HTML report.

Yes. Microsoft supports converting Standard to Datacenter when the target edition is valid and a valid Datacenter product key is available. Back up and verify licensing before conversion.

They can share one VM for small workloads, but separate them when SQL memory usage, backups, reporting, security requirements, or maintenance begin affecting the web application. Separate VMs give clearer scaling and troubleshooting boundaries.

Intuit’s current Enterprise guidance lists 8 GB server RAM for up to 5 users, 12 GB for 10 users, 16 GB for 15 users, and 20+ GB for 20 or more users. An RDS server often needs additional headroom for user sessions and other applications.

No single control is enough. Defender should be combined with restricted access, Windows Firewall, patching, least privilege, secure SMB/RDP configuration, logging, and tested backups.

Some Windows Server 2025 Standard and Datacenter systems can use Microsoft Hotpatch when they meet the Azure Arc-enabled Hotpatch requirements. Baseline updates and other update types can still require reboots.

Not for most deployments. Microsoft recommends outbound allow-by-default for typical environments because default-deny outbound requires a maintained inventory and explicit rules for every application and service that needs network access.

No. Users who consume a website, API, database, or other server-side service do not need Windows desktop sessions merely because administrators manage the server over RDP. Separate the application-access model from server administration.

No. The rule restricts service providers from using SPLA licences on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud. Raff operates its own infrastructure at our us-east datacentre, so our SPLA programme is fully compliant.

It depends on who provides the Windows Server license. Customer-owned Windows Server deployments follow the applicable Microsoft RDS CAL rules. Under Raff's hosted SPLA model, Remote Desktop Services functionality is licensed with RDS User SALs, currently $8 per authorized user per month. The Windows Server license itself is separate.

For a production Windows Server VM, you need valid Windows Server licensing. On Raff, Windows Server Standard licensing is available through Raff's SPLA program at $15 per instance per month. BYOL is only appropriate when your Microsoft rights permit deployment with the relevant outsourcing/virtualization benefit, so do not assume an existing Windows Server licence can simply be moved to any hosted VPS.

Two layers. SQL Server native backups run on your schedule to a separate volume or to Raff Object Storage; a full backup nightly and log backups every 15 minutes is the usual pattern. Raff automated VM backups and snapshots protect the whole server, with a free pool of 50 GB per account plus 10 to 15% of each disk. SQL Server backup strategy guide

Yes, as a self-managed server. QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise runs on Windows Server 2016 to 2022 with multi-user mode through Remote Desktop; Raff provides the Windows VM, not Intuit-authorized hosting, and Intuit's own guidance lists virtual servers as not recommended. Setup guide: QuickBooks Enterprise server on a Windows VPS.

Yes. You have full administrator access, promote any plan to a domain controller, join servers to an existing domain, configure Group Policy, manage users and computers. We help architect domain controller redundancy across multiple Raff servers if you need it.

Forex VPS runs under the same 99.9% uptime SLA as the rest of the Raff platform, on AMD EPYC hosts with NVMe storage and automatic DDoS protection on the public IP. Live status and 90 days of uptime history are published on the Raff status page.

Sage sets the software ceiling: five licensed named users for Sage 50 Premium, up to forty for Quantum. The server then needs room for each person's Windows session, and one Raff server on the largest plan is sized for about ten people in Sage at once. Beyond that, or with several large company files open together, the answer is a second server on the same private network. Note the two counts are different: the named-user licence is yours from Sage, while the $8.00 Remote Desktop licence is what lets someone sign in to Windows.

QuickBooks sets the ceiling: Pro allows 3 users, Premier 5, Enterprise 40 per company file. The server then needs room for each person's Windows session. Intuit's guidance calls for 8 GB of server memory at 5 users, 12 GB at 10 and 16 GB at 15, and each session adds Outlook, Excel and a browser, so plan about 3 to 4 GB per person. On Raff that is 8 GB for one or two people, 16 GB for up to 5, 32 GB for up to 10, and 16 vCPU with 32 GB for up to 15. Beyond 15, a second Session Host.

The server is priced by plan and users are added at $8.00 each per month. One or two people use the two administrator sessions on any plan, so a 2 vCPU server with 4 GB is $37.99 a month all in. Five people on a 4 vCPU Session Host with 8 GB is $95.99. Twelve people on 8 vCPU with 32 GB is $248.99. Every figure includes the $15.00 Windows Server licence.

Not at Raff, and the free offers elsewhere have conditions. Brokers give away a VPS slot to keep your trading volume: you qualify on monthly lots or a minimum deposit, the slot is shared, it runs one terminal for that broker only, and it is withdrawn when your volume drops. Raff has no free tier and no minimum lot size. You pay $28.99 a month for a whole Windows server that stays yours whatever you trade, with 14 days money-back so you can test it against your own broker.

The same way you would to any Windows Server. Web Deploy from Visual Studio with a publish profile, msdeploy from your own build server, or a GitHub action that copies the publish output and recycles the application pool. Nothing is Raff-specific and there is no proprietary CLI. For a zero-downtime swap, publish to a second folder and switch the site's physical path. Certificates come from Let's Encrypt through win-acme, which adds the https binding and renews on a schedule.

No ordinary customer Windows Server CAL purchase is required for the Raff-provided SPLA Windows workload itself. Additional functionality such as hosted RDS can still require service-provider access licensing such as RDS User SALs.

Yes, we strongly recommend enabling Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) for enhanced account security. You can set this up using authenticator apps like Google Authenticator or Authy via your account settings.

Yes, Raff Technologies includes DDoS mitigation as part of our network infrastructure to protect hosted applications against volumetric denial-of-service attacks and ensure network resilience.

Please report any suspected abuse (e.g., spam, phishing originating from our network) or security vulnerabilities to [email protected].

Yes. With full root access, you can install cPanel, Plesk, Webmin, Cyberpanel, or any other control panel. Note that cPanel and Plesk require their own licenses, which are not included in the VPS plan.

Per worker node, monthly, plus any storage nodes and the optional $30/month HA control plane. Integrated load balancers are included, and you can cancel anytime.

Python, Node.js, TypeScript, JavaScript and Go, using each one's standard handler. For anything else, a Dockerfile escape hatch lets you run any language or runtime. See the runtime guides for details.

Five service types: web services with public HTTPS and custom domains, private services on any TCP port, background workers, timezone-aware cron jobs, and one-off jobs. All deploy from the same source and bill on the same meter.

Yes! We offer three subscription terms: monthly (most flexible), 1-year (save with 2 months free), and 2-year (best value, up to 6 months free depending on the plan). You can select your preferred term when creating or upgrading resources.

Yes! You can contact our support team and request a custom offer. Just provide the specs you need and we'll give you more information about pricing and availability.

Yes. Scale CPU, RAM, and storage from your dashboard without rebuilding your server. Changing CPU or RAM takes a quick power-off, stop the VM, apply the new size, and start it again, while storage expands as you grow. Downgrades refund the unused time to your balance pro-rata; upgrades charge only the difference for the rest of the current period, then renew at the new rate. No migration fees.

A light 2-3 user test may start around 4 vCPU and 8 GB RAM. A 3-5 user property and accounting workload often needs 4 vCPU and 16 GB RAM, while larger or SQL-heavy teams may need 8 vCPU and 32 GB RAM or more.

Server Core is usually a strong choice for a dedicated domain controller because AD DS is supported and can be managed remotely. Choose it only when the team has reliable remote management and recovery procedures.

Usually because the app failed to start. Check the app pool setting, installed runtimes, app permissions, connection strings, environment variables, and stdout logs.

Common causes include wrong OU, wrong user/computer side, disabled link, security filtering, WMI filtering, blocked inheritance, DNS issues, or a setting that requires reboot or logoff.

No. Use layered recovery: QuickBooks-aware backups, server-level backups/snapshots, and an off-server copy. Test restoration before relying on the system for production accounting.

Yes, when the deployment uses a qualifying Microsoft 365 plan that supports Shared Computer Activation and each user is properly licensed. Microsoft 365 Business Premium and plans with Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise are examples Microsoft currently lists as supporting SCA.

Review the server after major application changes, Windows Server upgrades, changes to remote access, new exposed ports, security incidents, and baseline revisions. Also review Microsoft’s security baseline periodically because recommendations evolve.

Verify update state, pending restart, required Windows services, Event Viewer/application logs, remote access, and the actual production workload such as IIS, SQL Server, RDS, accounting software, file shares, or automation.

For production troubleshooting and auditing, logging dropped packets and successful inbound connections is useful. Microsoft recommends at least a 20 MB firewall log and separate logs per profile when configuring detailed firewall logging.

A terminal server is the pre-2008 name for what Windows Server now calls an RD Session Host: one server hosting isolated desktop sessions for many users over RDP. Modern deployments use the Remote Desktop Services roles, licensed through RDS CALs or, for hosted platforms like Raff, RDS SALs.

No. On a SQL Server VPS you are the administrator: you install SQL Server, choose the edition, tune it and manage backups, and you can run any Windows application next to it. Raff Managed Databases cover PostgreSQL, MySQL, Valkey, ClickHouse and Kafka with backups and failover handled for you; Microsoft SQL Server is not offered as a managed engine.

Windows Server 2025 for anything new; it has the longest support runway, to November 2034. Windows Server 2022 when a vendor certifies only 2022 today. Windows Server 2019 only for legacy software pinned to it. The version is chosen at deploy and costs the same on every plan.

Yes. Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise (the desktop versions of Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams) install and activate on Windows Server with Shared Computer Activation enabled. Office 2021/2024 perpetual licenses also work. Our team helps configure shared activation for RDS environments.

Two ways, and you should keep both. QuickBooks' own scheduled backup writes a .QBB file nightly to a folder on the server, which is the copy you restore into QuickBooks and the one your accountant can take. Raff's nightly backup then copies the whole server to separate storage, so a failed disk or a ransomware incident is a restore rather than a rebuild. Take a snapshot before every QuickBooks year upgrade, and verify the company file from inside QuickBooks after any restore.

Anything that runs on a Windows Server desktop. Microsoft 365 Apps install with shared computer activation, so each user signs in with their own licence. QuickBooks Desktop, Sage 50 and similar accounting packages run in multi-user mode with the company file on the same server. Practice management, ERP clients and the Windows-only line-of-business app install once for everyone. Printers, scanners, the clipboard and local drives redirect through each session. Hardware dongles and heavy 3D graphics are the exceptions, so ask us before you order.

If your broker's trade server is in the New York area, single digits. Measured from a Raff us-east VPS on 11 September 2026, the median round trip was 8.6 ms to a test host in Newark and 8.3 ms to one in New York, over 50 samples each. If your broker hosts in London, the same VPS measured 76.9 ms, because Raff runs one region today. For a swing strategy 77 ms is invisible; for scalping it is not, so pick your broker's New York server if it offers one. Your own figure is the ping MetaTrader shows bottom right.

Shared hosting is the right answer for a brochure site on a .NET version the host already offers, and at around $4 a month it is genuinely cheaper. Choose a VPS when any of these is true: you need a .NET version the host has not installed, your code needs full trust, you run a worker service or scheduled job, you use SignalR or WebSockets, you want your own SQL Server instance and backups, or you need RDP to debug at two in the morning.

Two ways, and you should keep both. Sage's own backup writes a company-file copy nightly to a folder on the server, which is what you restore into Sage and what your accountant can take away. Raff's nightly backup then copies the whole server to separate storage, so a failed disk or a ransomware incident becomes a restore rather than a rebuild. Automated backups and snapshots draw on a free pool of 50 GB per account plus 10 to 15 percent of each disk; beyond that it is $0.06 per GB per month. Take a snapshot before every Sage year upgrade.

Your current usage, billing history, invoices, and payment records are available in the billing section of the Raff Technologies application.

Yes! We offer a comprehensive REST API for all operations. You can manage VMs, storage, networking, and billing programmatically.

Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, CentOS Stream, Alpine Linux, openSUSE, FreeBSD, and Windows Server. You can also upload custom ISOs.

It scales to zero and you pay nothing. Cold starts are sub-second, and autoscaling follows load. Active CPU is billed only while your code is on-CPU, never while it's idle waiting on I/O. For latency-critical paths, you can add optional warm instances at 30% of the memory rate.

Add a binding on the canvas and scoped, per-service credentials are injected as environment variables. The connection runs over the private fabric, so app-to-database traffic never touches the public internet and never bills egress.

To close your account, first back up your data and terminate all active resources to prevent further charges. Account closure is processed through your profile page. You must pay any remaining balance and remove all active resources. For immediate closure, pay the total outstanding amount and contact support. Any surplus will be refunded to your registered card. Support will then complete the account termination.

They’re the same thing. A Linux VPS (Virtual Private Server) is a virtualized cloud server running Linux. We use cloud server and VPS interchangeably, both refer to dedicated, isolated resources running on shared physical hardware.

Data encryption options: In Transit: Secure connections via SSL/TLS certificates and SSH for VM access. At Rest: Encryption for Managed Databases and Object Storage; OS or application-level encryption for VMs.

Raff provides the Windows VM infrastructure and platform support. The customer or MSP remains responsible for the application, licensing, users, database, integrations, backups, security, and migration unless a separate service agreement says otherwise.

Desktop Experience is usually safer because many business and legacy applications expect an interactive Windows environment or GUI-based support workflow. Use Core only after the exact software version and complete operating process are verified.

Yes. ASP.NET Core runs well on Linux with Kestrel behind NGINX or another reverse proxy. This guide is specifically for teams that want Windows Server and IIS.

Loopback processing lets user settings apply based on the computer the user logs into. It is commonly used on RDS Session Hosts, kiosks, and shared computers.

No. RD Session Host runs users’ desktops and RemoteApps. RD Gateway provides a secure external access path to remote desktop resources, typically through HTTPS. They solve different parts of an RDS architecture.

No contract. Plans are month-to-month. Every plan includes a 14-day money-back guarantee, try Raff Windows VPS, and if it doesn’t fit your workload, we refund your first month, no questions asked. Annual prepayment is available for ~17% off if you want to lock it in.

Yes, and that is one of the better reasons to move Sage onto a server. Your accountant gets a Windows user and signs in through the Remote Desktop Gateway over HTTPS with multi-factor authentication, works in Sage on the live company data, and the user is removed when the close is done. Nobody emails a backup file around and nobody waits for someone else to get out of the company file. The $8.00 user licence is monthly, so a user you add for one month costs one month.

Dedicated forex hosts such as ForexVPS.net and TradingFXVPS pre-install MetaTrader, sit in a broker's own facility and often hand out a free slot if your broker sponsors it. That is genuinely convenient if you trade one broker on one platform. Raff sells you a whole Windows Server instead: $28.99 a month with the licence included, administrator access over RDP, any platform and any broker, no lot-size condition to keep it. If you scalp on a London-hosted broker, a host inside that facility will beat us on latency, and we would rather say so.

Neither in the strict sense, and that is the point. Raff gives you hosted virtual desktops on a Remote Desktop Services Session Host: one Windows server your team shares, where each person signs in to their own session, profile and documents. True VDI gives every user a separate virtual machine, and DaaS platforms add a broker and a management layer. Those matter for separate operating systems, GPU workstations or thousands of seats. For an office of two to fifteen people, a Session Host does the same job from $45.99 a month for one person and $131.99 for five, which is about $26 per person, against $20 to $53 per seat. If you genuinely need one VM per user, we will size separate VMs instead.

Your tax location is determined by the address and name you provide for invoicing. You can view or change this information in your billing settings.

Our underlying infrastructure is designed for high availability, utilizing data centers with redundant power, cooling, and network connectivity. We architect our core services to minimize single points of failure.

All Linux distros come with package managers. On Ubuntu/Debian: apt install nodejs python3 php. On Rocky/AlmaLinux: dnf install nodejs python3 php. For specific versions, use NodeSource, pyenv, or Remi repos. Full setup guides available in our docs.

Write one standard handler, deploy once, and wire it to any trigger: an HTTP URL with automatic TLS, a timezone-aware cron schedule, a single one-off future run, or object-storage events like bucket uploads with prefix filters. No separate services and no duplicated code.

Yes, you can easily update your account's tax location by visiting the Billing page in your account settings, where you can modify your address and business or personal information. All future invoices will then be generated using your updated details, ensuring your billing accurately reflects your new tax location.

Real human support 24/7 with average response under 10 minutes. No chatbots, no ticket queues. We also offer documentation, quick start guides, and API reference.

Policies are usually enforced settings for security and configuration. Preferences are usually used for convenience items such as drive maps, printers, shortcuts, files, and registry preferences.

Technically yes: install your licensed copy on your own Windows Server, which is what this guide documents. Know the boundary first: Intuit lists virtual servers as not recommended and limits Terminal Services troubleshooting to Enterprise, so production accounting that requires vendor support belongs with an Intuit-authorized host.

Resize anytime through the dashboard. Changing CPU or RAM takes a quick power-off, stop the VM, apply the new size, and start it again, while disk can be expanded as you grow. Upgrades are prorated for the rest of your current period, with no migration fees.

Fair. That's why there's a public status page, a 99.9% uptime SLA with credits, and a real 24/7 support channel. We run on our own first-party cloud, on ISO 27001 certified infrastructure, so we control the reliability story end to end.

Use our customer portal for real-time tracking and set alerts for usage thresholds.

Yes, each VM comes with one static public IPv4 address. Floating IPs that can be reassigned between VMs might also be available.

Raff Technologies maintains internal disaster recovery plans for its own infrastructure. For customer applications, DR is a shared responsibility. We provide tools like VM snapshots and backups, which customers should use as part of their own DR strategy. Customers are responsible for designing their applications for resilience and ensuring they have appropriate backup and recovery procedures in place.

Yes. pgvector, PostGIS and 60+ other extensions are available on every plan at no extra cost. Enable them from the console or with a single SQL command.

Yes. It speaks the standard MySQL wire protocol on port 3306, so existing connection strings, ORMs, WordPress and phpMyAdmin work unchanged. Point them at the new host and go.

Yes. Valkey forked from Redis 7.2 and keeps the RESP protocol and command set, so redis-py, ioredis, Jedis, go-redis and the rest connect with no code changes. Point them at the Valkey host and go.

Reach for ClickHouse when you run analytical queries, counts, sums and group-bys over very large, append-heavy tables like events, logs and metrics. For transactional app data with lots of small reads and writes, Postgres or MySQL is the better fit. Many teams run both.

Yes, open-source Apache Kafka 4.3 running in KRaft mode, speaking the standard Kafka protocol. Your existing producers, consumers and CLI tools work unchanged.

High availability adds a standby copy of your database that takes over automatically if the main one fails. It costs a fixed percentage of the plan price, from +70% depending on the database, and you see the full cost on the same single bill line before you turn it on.

To claim a tax exemption, first update your account profile with a valid Tax ID through the Billing and Settings section, then reach out to our support team by submitting a ticket with an attached copy of your Taxpayer Registration Certificate. A customer service representative will review your request and notify you once your account's tax exemption status has been confirmed.

A binding injects scoped, per-function credentials for a Raff Managed Database or an Object Storage bucket, so there are no secrets to copy around. Rotate any binding at any time and your main credentials are never touched.

Yes. Every Linux VPS comes with a dedicated public IPv4 address included in the price. IPv6 is also fully supported. You can add additional IPs from your dashboard if needed.

A virtual private cloud (VPC) is an isolated network inside a public cloud. Your servers communicate on private IPs no other tenant can reach, and only services you choose to expose get a public address. On Raff, every VPC is a free, fully isolated network.

Use Backup-GPO -All -Path C:\GPOBackups to back up all GPOs or Backup-GPO -Name "GPO Name" -Path C:\GPOBackups to back up one GPO.

Hosting runs your existing QuickBooks Desktop product on a cloud server, keeping the full Desktop feature set. QuickBooks Online is a separate browser-based product with a different interface and feature set. Switching between them is a product migration, not just a change of where the software runs.

Use our control panel for a user-friendly interface.

The Raff Technologies control panel provides basic monitoring dashboards displaying key metrics for your resources (e.g., CPU utilization, network I/O, disk activity for VMs). For more comprehensive application performance monitoring (APM) and custom alerting, you can install third-party agents (like Prometheus exporters, Datadog, etc.) on your Virtual Machines.

An invoice is created for each payment, right after it succeeds: subscription renewals when they are charged, and pay-as-you-go top-ups when you add funds. Pay-as-you-go usage itself is drawn from your balance as you go, so it does not wait for a monthly cycle. You can track usage in real time and download every invoice from the billing portal.

No. Observability is included free. You get a live log tail with search and level filters and 14-day retention, plus count, p50, p95 and error rate per function. Every recent request correlates to its own logs, all in the dashboard with nothing to install and no second bill.

Yes. IIS supports unlimited site bindings, host as many websites as your CPU and RAM can handle, with separate application pools, SSL certificates, and configurations per site. Common patterns: 5–10 small sites on the 4 vCPU / 8 GB plan ($40.99 plus licence), 20+ sites on 8 vCPU / 32 GB ($137.99 plus licence).

Powered by high-performance AMD EPYC processors and NVMe SSDs for fast I/O.

Yes, our expert team offers professional services, including consulting on web application security and architecture on the Raff Technologies platform. Contact our sales team via support channels for details on designing and implementing secure solutions.

If a payment fails, you have a 10-day window to fix it. We email reminders on day 3 and day 7; if it's still unpaid we pause the affected services on day 7 and remove them on day 10. Add funds or update your card any time before then and everything resumes automatically, so keep an eye on those emails.

Credit and debit cards, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, and UnionPay, plus Google Pay and Apple Pay. Bank wire transfers (USD, EUR, TRY) are also supported, and annual prepayment works with any payment method.

Every function runs in per-tenant gVisor sandbox isolation. Traffic is encrypted in transit and at rest, every action is captured in exportable audit logs, and the platform runs on ISO 27001 certified infrastructure and is GDPR-ready with a DPA. It's all on from the first deploy, with nothing to configure.

Yes, you can easily update your account's tax location by visiting the Billing page in your account settings, where you can modify your address and business or personal information. All future invoices will then be generated using your updated details, ensuring your billing accurately reflects your new tax location.

Yes, with an SLA guaranteeing uptime. Refer to our SLA document for details.

A one-time top-up of $5 or more unlocks Functions, and that includes the free tier. It's a light anti-abuse gate for a product that runs your code on demand, not a fee: the money stays in your balance and you spend it on normal usage. It counts the moment your lifetime paid reaches $5, whether that's a deposit or spend on any other paid Raff product.

Brand-new accounts also run with lower concurrency and scale limits until $10 lifetime paid, then those lift automatically.

Use our customer portal for real-time tracking and set alerts for usage thresholds.

We offer automated backups and manual snapshots. You can restore from backups in case of data loss.

VMs are billed monthly based on the resources allocated. Your monthly cost is calculated based on your VM's specifications (CPU, RAM, storage) and the time your VM is active during the billing period.

Yes, we offer migration services. Contact support for assistance.

Our infrastructure is designed for low latency and high bandwidth, with a 3 Gbps network available for all machines.

Yes, there is an additional charge of $3 per month.

Postgres 14, 15 and 16. Minor version upgrades are applied automatically with zero downtime; major upgrades are a guided operation you trigger when ready.

Valkey is the Linux Foundation fork created when Redis changed its licence. It keeps the same protocol, commands and performance profile, but stays BSD-licensed and community-governed. For your app it behaves like Redis; for your legal team it stays open source.

We bill a flat plan price per cluster instead of metering ingress, egress and storage separately. You size the cluster, you see one line on the bill, and throughput within it does not generate surprise charges.

One line per database: the database you chose and its size, for example Postgres 4 GB. Backups, networking, traffic and monitoring are already inside that price, there is no separate fee for any of them. If you turn on high availability, it adds a fixed percentage to that same line. The only extra line you can ever see is more storage, at a flat price per GB.

No. Pricing is flat per cluster size, like every other Raff database, and backups are included. A growing query volume never grows the bill.

On HA plans your database runs on three servers (a Galera cluster) that all hold the same data at all times. If one server fails, traffic moves to a healthy one automatically, with no data loss, no ticket and no manual step.

Nothing. VPCs are free on Raff: the network, the managed gateway with NAT, DNS and DHCP, and all private traffic. There is no hourly charge and no per-GB meter; private traffic runs unmetered on a 25 Gbps internal network.

Raff runs the Kubernetes control plane for you and you add worker nodes. Clusters are standard, CNCF-conformant Kubernetes, so your manifests and Helm charts run unchanged. The control plane is free at every size.

Yes. MySQL 8 with InnoDB is the database WordPress is built for. Create the cluster, point wp-config.php at the private endpoint (or the public one with an IP allowlist), and daily backups cover the rest.

High availability adds a standby copy of your database that takes over automatically if the main one fails. It costs a fixed percentage of the plan price, from +70% depending on the database, and you see the full cost on the same single bill line before you turn it on.

High availability adds a standby copy of your database that takes over automatically if the main one fails. It costs a fixed percentage of the plan price, from +70% depending on the database, and you see the full cost on the same single bill line before you turn it on.

Postgres records every change as it happens, so you can restore to any minute in the retention window. A restore creates a new database first, so you can check the data before you switch over.

You can. Valkey can save its data to disk, so it survives restarts and failovers, and nightly plus on-demand snapshots cover recovery, restored as a new instance or in place. For pure caching, skip persistence and let eviction policies manage memory.

Yes, it is a standalone product. Connect from anywhere over TLS with IP allowlists and scoped credentials (Kafka is the one private-only exception, by design). If your app runs on Raff Apps, the one-click virtual link adds a private wire with $0 egress on top.

The control plane is free; you pay only for worker nodes, read live from our pricing on the Kubernetes page. A cluster needs at least two nodes, and same-region traffic is unmetered with no egress fees.

AWS bills the parts around the VPC: a NAT gateway is $32.85/month plus $0.045 per GB processed, and public IPv4 is $3.65/month. On Raff the VPC, gateway, NAT and private traffic cost $0. AWS offers more regions; Raff runs from its us-east region.

One line per database: the database you chose and its size, for example Postgres 4 GB. Backups, networking, traffic and monitoring are already inside that price, there is no separate fee for any of them. If you turn on high availability, it adds a fixed percentage to that same line. The only extra line you can ever see is more storage, at a flat price per GB.

One line per database: the database you chose and its size, for example Postgres 4 GB. Backups, networking, traffic and monitoring are already inside that price, there is no separate fee for any of them. If you turn on high availability, it adds a fixed percentage to that same line. The only extra line you can ever see is more storage, at a flat price per GB.

High availability adds a standby copy of your database that takes over automatically if the main one fails. It costs a fixed percentage of the plan price, from +70% depending on the database, and you see the full cost on the same single bill line before you turn it on.

High availability adds a standby copy of your database that takes over automatically if the main one fails. It costs a fixed percentage of the plan price, from +70% depending on the database, and you see the full cost on the same single bill line before you turn it on.

High availability adds a standby copy of your database that takes over automatically if the main one fails. It costs a fixed percentage of the plan price, from +70% depending on the database, and you see the full cost on the same single bill line before you turn it on.

Postgres and MySQL record every change as it happens, so you can restore to any minute in the retention window. A restore creates a new database first, so you can check the data before you switch over. Valkey and ClickHouse restore from their latest snapshots and backups instead.

Yes. Each VPC is fully isolated, so overlapping CIDR ranges across VPCs are allowed. You can run dev, staging and production with identical addressing, for example 10.0.0.0/24 in each, and your configs stay identical across environments.

Yes, at every cluster size. Hyperscalers typically charge about $73/month per cluster just for the control plane; on Raff it is $0 and you pay only for the worker nodes you run.

One line per database: the database you chose and its size, for example Postgres 4 GB. Backups, networking, traffic and monitoring are already inside that price, there is no separate fee for any of them. If you turn on high availability, it adds a fixed percentage to that same line. The only extra line you can ever see is more storage, at a flat price per GB.

One line per database: the database you chose and its size, for example Postgres 4 GB. Backups, networking, traffic and monitoring are already inside that price, there is no separate fee for any of them. If you turn on high availability, it adds a fixed percentage to that same line. The only extra line you can ever see is more storage, at a flat price per GB.

One line per database: the database you chose and its size, for example Postgres 4 GB. Backups, networking, traffic and monitoring are already inside that price, there is no separate fee for any of them. If you turn on high availability, it adds a fixed percentage to that same line. The only extra line you can ever see is more storage, at a flat price per GB.

We keep a live copy of your current database in sync while it keeps running. When the copy is fully caught up, you switch the connection, usually in under 30 seconds. An engineer runs the whole thing with you, free.

Kafka is private-network only by design: clients connect over the private fabric or a one-click private link from your Raff services, never the open internet. Exposing Kafka publicly is an anti-pattern, so unlike our other databases there is no public endpoint. Producers and consumers authenticate with SCRAM credentials over TLS.

Yes, it is a standalone product. Connect from anywhere over TLS with IP allowlists and scoped credentials. If your app runs on Raff Apps, a one-click private link adds a private wire with $0 egress on top.

Use a site-to-site VPN: Raff supports WireGuard and IPsec tunnels from your VPC gateway to your office router or another cloud. You set it up from the VPC's VPN tab in the dashboard. See Hybrid Cloud Connect for the full feature.

Yes. High availability promotes the control plane to three masters with etcd quorum for a flat $30/month, and the redundant gateway pair that comes with it is included at no extra charge.

PostgreSQL 14 to 16 with pgvector, PostGIS and the common extension set; MySQL 8.0; Valkey (Redis-compatible); ClickHouse 25.8 LTS; Apache Kafka 4.3 in KRaft mode. MongoDB is rolling out next. Minor upgrades are automatic and zero-downtime.

Yes, it is a standalone product. Connect from anywhere over TLS with IP allowlists and scoped credentials. If your app runs on Raff Apps, a one-click private link adds a private wire with $0 egress on top.

Yes, it is a standalone product. Connect from anywhere over TLS with IP allowlists and scoped credentials. If your app runs on Raff Apps, a one-click private link adds a private wire with $0 egress on top.

Yes, it is a standalone product. Connect from anywhere over TLS with IP allowlists and scoped credentials. If your app runs on Raff Apps, a one-click private link adds a private wire with $0 egress on top.

PrivateLink creates private endpoints in your VPC for Raff managed services such as databases. Your apps, functions and VMs reach those services over the internal network, without any traffic crossing the public internet. It is included free with every VPC.

Yes. Download a kubeconfig with full cluster-admin from the dashboard and use your own kubectl, Helm and pipelines. The in-dashboard view adds monitoring, logs and one-click apps on top.

Yes. Each VPC is an isolated network: your IP space and traffic are separated per tenant, and no other customer can see or reach your private network. Security groups add stateful, per-VM firewall rules inside the VPC.

Yes. Node pools scale up when pods can't be scheduled and scale down after sustained low usage, between the minimum and maximum you set. The platform keeps a two-node floor.

A public status page, a 99.9% uptime SLA with credits, daily backups with tested restores, encryption in transit and at rest, ISO 27001 certified infrastructure, and it all runs on Raff's own first-party cloud, so we own the reliability story end to end.

Worker-node disk isn't billed separately. For stateful workloads you add dedicated storage nodes, 10 to 1,000 GB each at $0.10/GB per month, replicated across nodes. Same-region cluster-to-storage traffic is free.

Yes. The App Hub installs popular Helm charts into your cluster with generated credentials and an exposed URL with automatic TLS, so you can add common services without writing manifests.

Every plan ships with automatic DDoS protection on all public IPs, stateful security groups, isolated VPCs, IAM with granular per-action permissions, MFA and a full audit log. There are no paid security add-ons on Raff.

Yes. Automatic node-level DDoS protection covers every public IP on the Raff platform, on every plan. There is no per-attack charge, no per-GB scrubbing fee and nothing to configure.

Mitigation runs automatically at the node level, where your workload lives. An attack on your IP is filtered without any action from you, and your bill does not change afterwards.

Yes: stateful security groups with TCP, UDP and ICMP rules, attachable per VM, with ready-made templates for web servers, SSH and databases. Manage them in the dashboard, the API or Terraform.

AWS includes basic DDoS cover but bills separately for WAF, GuardDuty and extended audit trails. Raff includes DDoS protection, firewalls, IAM and full audit logs in every plan at $0. AWS offers a larger security product catalog overall.

Raff runs on ISO 27001 certified infrastructure in the us-east region, backed by a 99.9% uptime SLA in writing.

Yes. Every network is a fully isolated VPC per tenant: separate IP space, separate traffic. Nothing you don't expose is reachable, from the internet or from other Raff customers.

IAM controls who can do what in your cloud account. On Raff that means roles with a named permission for every action, project-scoped access, API keys with roles, MFA and an audit log, included free with every account.

Nothing. Unlimited members, unlimited custom roles, API keys, MFA and the audit log are included free on every Raff account.

Yes. Start from 8 built-in roles or build your own by toggling exactly the permissions you mean, like vm.create or backup.restore, in the dashboard or via the API.

Resources live in projects, and project access is separate from account membership. Account Owners and Admins see everything; everyone else sees only the projects they were explicitly added to.

Yes. On Raff, API keys are members: each key holds a role, can be scoped to projects, and can carry an expiry date. Your CI key deploys and does nothing else.

No policy JSON. Raff uses named roles and permission toggles instead of policy documents, so access takes a minute to grant and is hard to get wrong. AWS IAM is more granular but far more complex.

Yes. Authenticator-app MFA (TOTP) is built into every Raff account and enforced at sign-in once enabled. Enrollment takes a QR scan and one 6-digit code.

Block storage is a raw disk you attach to a server, formatted with a filesystem like any drive. On Raff, volumes are NVMe disks from 10 GiB to 1 TB that attach to your VMs in seconds and keep existing when the VM is deleted.

Volumes are billed per GiB per month at the rate shown on the volumes page, read live from our pricing system. There are no IOPS tiers, no throughput surcharges and no fees for traffic between the VM and its volume.

Yes. Volumes grow online while attached and in use: pick a new size and the disk expands with no reboot. Growing is instant; shrinking is not supported, so start small and grow when needed.

Nothing bad. The volume automatically detaches and stays in your account with its data intact. Attach it to another VM whenever you like; you only pay for the volume itself.

As a standard virtio disk: /dev/vdb, /dev/vdc and so on. Linux volumes arrive formatted ext4 or xfs and mounted; on Windows you format NTFS from Disk Management.

Yes. Volume snapshots are point-in-time copies you can restore from, and they share your account's free backup-storage pool. Only snapshot storage above the pool is billed per GB.

Use a volume when software expects a disk: databases, file systems, application data. Use object storage for files accessed over an API: media, backups, static assets. On Raff they cost and behave differently, so most stacks use both.

You set a schedule, daily or weekly, and Raff backs up the VM automatically. The first backup is full; every one after copies only changed blocks. Backups are stored on a separate pool and restore in one click.

Every account gets a free backup-storage pool: 50 GB plus 10 percent of each standard VM's disk (15 percent on premium), shared across backups and snapshots. Only storage above the pool is billed per GB-month.

You choose a retention of 2 to 100 recovery points per VM. When a new backup completes, the oldest point beyond your retention is pruned automatically.

Pick a recovery point on the VM's Backups tab and restore. The VM powers off and is overwritten in place with that point, then boots again. Restores stay on the same VM.

Yes. A VM can have multiple schedules, for example daily at 02:00 and weekly on Sunday, all sharing the same retention setting.

A snapshot is a manual checkpoint before a risky change; a backup is scheduled protection stored on a separate pool. One rule to know: a VM with backups enabled cannot also take snapshots, so use backups for anything important.

On a dedicated backup storage pool, separate from the storage your VM's disk runs on. A problem with the VM or its disk does not touch its backups.

Object storage keeps files as objects in buckets behind an API instead of on a disk. It is the standard home for media, backups and static assets. Raff Object Storage speaks the S3 API, so existing S3 tools work unchanged.

$7 per month, including 100 GB of NVMe storage and 1 TB of egress. Above that, storage is $0.07/GB-month and egress $0.01/GB. There are no per-request fees and inbound traffic is free.

Yes. Point aws-cli, SDKs, rclone or your backup tool at s3.raffusercloud.com and keep working: uploads, multipart, presigned URLs, bucket policies and ACLs all work. Versioning, lifecycle rules and object lock are not supported yet.

Raff includes 1 TB of egress per month and charges $0.01/GB after, about a ninth of S3's $0.09/GB internet egress. Traffic from your Raff VMs to your buckets in the same region is free.

Objects up to 5 TiB via multipart upload, with parts from 5 MiB to 5 GiB and up to 10,000 parts. The dashboard uploader handles multipart automatically above 10 MB.

Yes. Create up to 50 access keys, each either full-access or limited to specific buckets with read or read-write grants. Secrets are shown once and revocable individually.

Backups from any tool that speaks S3, media and user uploads, static assets, and log or artifact archives. For workloads that need a filesystem, use a block storage volume instead.

A site-to-site VPN links two whole networks over an encrypted tunnel, so machines on each side reach each other by private IP. On Raff it connects your office, data center or another cloud to your VPC using WireGuard or IPsec.

The VPN gateway is about $14.97/month and each site tunnel about $20.00/month, both billed by the hour. The data through the tunnel is unmetered and never charged per gigabyte.

Yes. Each tunnel can be WireGuard or IPsec (IKEv2 with a preshared key). You choose per tunnel, so modern peers and classic firewalls both work on the same gateway.

Any device that speaks standard IKEv2 or WireGuard: UniFi, pfSense, OPNsense, MikroTik, Fortinet and others. You enter matching peer settings on both sides and the tunnel comes up.

Up to 10 site-to-site tunnels per VPN gateway, each with its own remote endpoint and one or more remote subnets. The same gateway also serves up to 10 WireGuard remote-access peers for laptops.

AWS charges about $36.50/month per VPN connection and then $0.09/GB for data leaving through it. Raff's gateway plus a tunnel is roughly $35/month total and the tunnel traffic is unmetered.

A Raff VPC with the VPN gateway enabled, and a firewall or router on your side that supports IKEv2 or WireGuard. You configure the tunnel from the VPC's VPN tab in the dashboard.

Customer-owned Windows Server RDS uses the applicable RDS CAL model. Raff-provided hosted licensing uses the applicable SPLA RDS SAL model. Administrative RDP sessions are a different use case.

A Standard RDS deployment with Connection Broker and collections is designed around domain-backed identity. Microsoft also documents limited Session Host configurations without Connection Broker for workgroups, but Standard Deployment is the cleaner path when possible.

Remote Desktop Services configuration combines RD Session Host, RD Connection Broker, licensing, collections, user authorization, and profile settings so multiple users can run managed Windows sessions on Windows Server 2025.