Why and How to Choose A Dedicated Server

Perhaps, the most important decision you could make as a web master for your online business is what kind of hosting service to choose. In general, there are three main options:

Dedicated Server Hosting
Shared Web Hosting
Colocation Hosting

In this article we will discuss how dedicated server hosting is different from the other options, and why it may be worth the extra premium for you. We will also present a series of checklists that are necessary in choosing the best dedicated server, so you can make a more effective decision.

First, let’s quickly review what these three hosting services are.

Shared hosting is basically one dedicated server that is shared among a number of different clients. That is, the server’s storage, bandwidth, hardware and internet connectivity is all shared among all clients. So is the cost of this server. In other words, it’s very cheap, and is most desirable for end-users for personal websites, and sites with little traffic.

Now, if you have your own server equipment, you have the option of using the Colocation Hosting services. With this service, you get to rent a secure space in a datacenter and take advantage of its power availability, bandwidth, cooling system, and other operational services to store your server equipment. As a colocation customer, you are in charge of maintaining your own equipment. And so, you, or someone in your company, must have a certain level of hardware and software knowledge in order to be able to manage the server.

Now, if you do not want to share your server with others, or cannot afford to purchase and maintain your own server equipment, you can choose to have your own dedicated server. In simple terms, a dedicated server is a machine with all its hardware and software resources that is solely at your service. In addition to the basic operational services that are available in a datacenter such as reliable network connectivity, most dedicated hosting provides offer exclusive features to their dedicated customers including server management, backup servers, and more.

Dedicated hosting is an ideal choice for businesses from small to large enterprises. There is a wide range in price, depending on the hardware and software features that you choose for your server. One other great advantage of dedicated servers is that as the only one who has access to the server, you get to enjoy having additional security, since no one else is sharing the server with you.

Making the Decision

Choosing the right dedicated server depends on your technical requirements, financial constraints, and business needs. In addition, dedicated hosting services are not so cheap. Therefore, it is important to keep in mind that doing business with a competitive, trusted, and proven web hosting company is essential for your long-term success. Because, they can offer you reliability, flexibility, and great customer support, which are all very crucial and necessary.

Dedicated Server Specifications

There is a list of criteria you need to consider when choosing a dedicated server. But before we get in to that, you need to first ask yourself a very important question: Are you, or is someone in your company, capable of handling the required tasks of doing server system administration?
If your answer is no, then you should look in to advanced managed services. Most major web hosting companies, including us at Ravand Cybertech, offer expert advice on how to do load balancing or web clusters, as well as good support. But, if you are comfortable with performing maintenance tasks yourself, then you would probably be best off with an unmanaged dedicated server.

Now, let’s go back to the decisive factors in choosing your dedicated server. As for the hardware specifications, the followings are what you need to take into account.

Processor: how powerful a server do you need?
For websites with CPU-intensive scripts, SQL servers, video-transcoding severs, servers used for virtualization, or specialized servers such as game or chat servers, you need fast and strong servers with multiple processors, such as dual Xeon servers.

Memory: how important is fast-loading to you?
RAM (Random Access Memory) is basically the available data storage capacity that allows a user to access any “memory” on the server. The more RAM you have installed on your server, the faster your server is going to run and the quicker your website will load. You can never have too much RAM!

Storage: does your website use massive data or small sensitive data?
You can have multiple hard drives on your dedicated server. If your website contains highly sensitive data relating to your customers or any other unique information, then you can have one hard drive as your primary one while the other hard drive serves as back-up (mirroring). If you care more about having larger storage capacity, you may opt for a Raid 2 configuration in which there is a primary hard drive with the secondary drive being used once the primary storage becomes full.

Bandwidth: how much traffic do you need?
Your server bandwidth determines how much data can be transferred from and to your website within a specific period of time (per billing cycle). For a popular website with a large number of visitors, the required bandwidth is clearly much higher. In addition, if you plan to host high quality images, streaming multimedia files on your website, or run scripts with intense database communications, you also need to have a large bandwidth capacity.

As for the software specifications for your server, the first thing you need to consider is the operating system. Windows and Linux are the two main providers of server operating systems. Now, assuming that you have no restrictions on which operating systems you can use, here’s how you can figure out which one best works for you.

Operating System: what programming language you use to develop your website?
If you use ASP.NET or MS SQL Server, you will need to stick with a Microsoft platform, such as Windows Server. That’s because ASP is meant to be run on Windows Internet servers. However, if your website is designed using an open source stack such as Apache, PHP, MySQL, or Ruby On Rails, you will probably want a Unix/Linux server, such as CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora etc. In addition, when it comes to maintaining your server, you should discuss with the person that will be administering it to find out which one of the operating systems they are more knowledgeable about and experienced with before making a final decision on which platform to choose for your dedicated website host.

Dedicated Hosting Budget

It is clear that the more advanced a dedicated server you choose, the more you have to spend on it! So, you need to balance your dedicated server requirements to match with what your budget can realistically provide you.

So, here are the 7 most common service fees associated with dedicated hosting servers.

Monthly Dedicated Internet Server Fees
This is what you have to pay on a monthly basis for renting a dedicated server hardware. The price mainly ranges based on the associated hardware specifications. If the need be, you can choose to install more advanced hardware parts on your dedicated server, but subsequently the price would be higher.