Would it be a normal practice to have a cron job running /etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd restart on a managed server or is this something that the datacenter should be monitoring instead of just automatically restarting?

I believe you can make a cronjob to do it. However, techs in datacenter can monitor your web service, if it's a REAL fully managed server

This is what I'm wondering.
I would assume that on a fully managed server and hourly cron job to restart apache is unnecessary.

Why would you want to restart apache? Normally you would never restart apache unless you are adding new websites. So most hosts will not restart apache automatically. keep in mind that a restart will shut down all sites while it is restarting. So having this happen on an hourly basis would not be a good idea unless you are adding new sites every hour.

In that case, look at a "graceful" restart. That will prevent connections from being terminated. Still, hourly is a bad idea.

Restarting Apache hourly on a "managed" server is just silly...
The only people who should be doing something like that are sites like zone-edit and dnspark who offer web redirection services which get new domains and subdomains every few minutes...

That is pretty much what I figured Equinox.
Seemed like the lazy man's way to monitor a server.

In my experience, doing that wouldn't help at all. If your web server crashes good enough, rebooting it 1000 times wouldn't help. There are certain circumstances where files can become corrupted, a recompile may be necessary, and so on. It really depends on the circumstances. My advice would be to hire a server management company like www.serverwizards.com or www.platinumservermanagement.com to monitor your server. That way there is human interaction in the event your server goes unavailable.

If a managed server you should ask data centre if they have any port monitoring, you could install R-fx's SIM too http://www.rfxnetworks.com/sim.php

port monitoring is what you should be looking into, this is a great tool to have, but not all dataceneters offer this. Looking into port monitoring

I second www.platinumservermanagement.com. I've used there services for years, and I am now a reseller for them as well. Great great great service.

Restarting apache helps freeing up garbaged memory and clearing unused connections etc. However, hourly restart is unnecessary in my opinion. Daily restart can help keeping a healthy httpd service though.

AquariusADMIN,

A question for you and everyone else. If I upgrade to a unmanaged VPS then use a company like platinumservermanagement.com to manage it - would that be a viable option to me getting a managed VPS?

Are there any potential problem spots or things I should look for?

Regards..

pyramids, the difference in price of managed and unmanaged VPS (to be honest, I haven't heard much about "unmanaged VPS" - unmanaged dedicated yes, but not VPS) is so small that its not worth hiring a tech support company just to take care of it. Especially that a lot of companies would do anything that you ask them with the server. Blue mentioned ServInt.com, there is also another company called Dehe.com that will take care of every small thing you ask them.

Best,

I don't think managed VPS is a need. As it is a dedicated server shared buy a few people, it is already somewhat managed. If you do some search on internet on managing a VPS server, you will not need a tech to take care of it anyway.

Especially for Linux platforms, there are great free helpful scripts that take care of all security settings etc. For example Easy Linux Security is one of them
http://www.servermonkeys.com/els.php

If you have some experience managing a server, a VPS will be a good option. You can always do a google for advanceed stuff, but IMHO, you must be familier with the basic administration. A lot of options are avilable for around 70$ per month. best of luck!