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If you are wondering what dedicated servers are for or you already know you need a dedicated server, but are stuck on moving forward with the decision. Here are a few guidelines that you will need to follow to assure that you get what you require.
What are the most common forms of hosting?
Let us first define the two most common forms of hosting:
- Shared Hosting (commonly referred to as 'Virtual hosting' and 'Budget Hosting') is the most popular form of hosting.
- So what is shared hosting? Shared hosting refers to web hosting services where many websites reside on one web server and share the same internet connection.
- Dedicated Server Hosting is another popular form of hosting where a single server is offered to the customer for their information only.
- So what is Dedicated Server Hosting? Dedicated Server Hosting is a form of hosting in which a client leases a dedicated server that is solely for that clients information and no one elses. The server also has its own internet network connection.
So we have defined the two most popular forms of hosting. Now you need to decide if you need a dedicated server or do we stick with our current hosting plan?
What are some benefits of using a dedicated server verses your current hosting plan?
While shared servers are the most popular form of hosting and most cost-effective option for small web-sites, they may not be a good option for large, "mission-critical" or high-traffic web-sites. For these types of websites a dedicated server may be a necessity.
Dedicated servers do cost more to lease than shared servers, and they often require a higher level of technical skill to operate. However, if your company is making thousands of dollars a day from e-commerce and your business could fail if the server went down for more than a few hours, then you should seriously consider leasing a dedicated server. Here's why:
Dedicated servers offer you the ability to maintain your own server by allowing you to manage, your server traffic, your server response time, your server security, your data backups, and what applications you want to use on your server.
How does being able to maintain your server traffic help with server response time?
The server's response time on a shared hosting environment is solely dependent on how much traffic the other sites on the server are receiving. Here is a scenario that occurs very often with shared hosting environments; let us say one of the sites on the shared hosting environment all of a sudden receives and influx in traffic which cause the other site on the server to slow down because the server load is increased. Therefore your site's response time will slow dramatically and you cannot do anything about it because you do not control the server the traffic.
As on a dedicated server you can control the amount of traffic allowed in the server which in turn keeps your site response time at its maximum performance. So if your site has ever experienced this type of scenario than a dedicated server is your option.
How does security of a dedicated server help in making a decision?
Shared hosting environments are more likely to have security issues than other sites due to the fact that everyone on the shared hosting server does not implement the full security offered. Therefore your site is more likely to have security issue on a shared server than on a dedicated server where you can control the level of firewall security.
Also when purchasing a dedicated servers you have the choice to pay for a higher level of security than you do on shared hosting which can help in with server load management and any security issues that you may be currently experiencing.
In a shared hosting environment you are stuck with the security that the hosting company provides and what others on the server decide to implement. If you have a dedicated server you can implement your own security and can pay for extra security.
Which do you think is a better choice?
How important is data retention and backups to you?
Does your current hosting plan offer data retention and backup solutions? If your answer is no, you should consider how important your data is. If your data is important to your company and you lost your data and it took 1 – 3 days to restore how much revenue would your company lose? Unlike when you have a dedicated server you have the options to run RAID on your server or you can have the hosting company backup the data for you to an offsite facility for an additional fee. This means that if your server goes down your likely hood of losing data and being back up and in minutes or hours verses days.
I was speaking with a customer that was doing shared hosting with a company and the server's hard drive failed and it took them 3 days before they could restore the data. This customer lost $72,000 per day.
How much revenue daily do you think E-Bay.com or Amazon.com would lose if there servers were down for just one day and they did do have a backup or data retention plan in place?
How does the right platform affect your application experience?
A platform (commonly known as the control panel) is a vital role when making a decision to get a dedicated server. The platform you choose depends on the extent of what applications you are familiar with and what applications you would like to run.
On a shared hosting environment you are limited to the applications available on the server. Unlike on a dedicated server you can choose which platform that you want and the platform you choose determines what applications you will be able to run. Some platforms are customizable such as Parallels PLESK Platform.
Dedicated servers are not for everyone but if you company plans on major growth over the next year and have a little extra cash than you probably need to consider moving to a dedicated server. Hosting companies right now during this economic downturn are offering some great incentives for powerful dedicated servers. This is great for those of you that are penny conscious.
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