Web Hosting Services

The Ohio Office of Information technology provides a shared web hosting environment for state entities.

The shared hosting environment began as the Ohio Server project offering hosting services to state agencies in 1995. Shared Hosting now focuses on Website hosting and Web Application hosting. The General Revenue Fund supports the Shared Hosting Environment and the State Portal. Currently, agencies using the basic services provided are not charged agency fees.

Website Hosting

The site hosting environment offers an IIS 6 load balanced web environment for static html pages as well as for MS SQLServer 2005 applications and Read Only MS Access applications. Customer agencies are provided with a hosting account which is used to send files via secure FTP to and from the Test environment. The Test environment provides both a load balanced testing site for viewing pages before they are moved into production and a launch point directory with automatic replication from the Test to the Production environments.

Web Application Hosting

The Hosting environment includes connectivity to Microsoft SQLServer 2005 databases on either the shared Hosted servers or on Agency owned servers. MS-Access applications are supported as well. However, write enabled MS-Access applications have specific requirements.

Troubleshooting

Hosting staff will be available during business hours to troubleshoot the hosting environment to isolate problem areas and ensure that the hosting environment is functioning within established standards. Hosting staff will not be able to assist with application code issues beyond making basic recommendations and providing best practices information.

Streaming Video

The Ohio.gov Hosting service does not provide Streaming Video Server Services. However, there are 3 commonly used products (RealVideo, WindowsMedia, and QuickTime) which support a form of serverless "http streaming" (aka "progressive download"). Hosting customers are free to utilize any or all of these 3 options to provide video content on their sites. Ohio Government Telecommunications does provide streaming video services. For more information please contact Dan Shellenbarger at
614-466-3798 or send email to danogt@aol.com. The OGT website can be seen at http://www.ogtv.org/.