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Dedicated Hosting Guide
What is Dedicated Hosting?
The Dedicated Hosting environment provides an exclusive server
or servers devoted solely to your web site. You do not share a server with other
customers, as with shared hosting.
When do you need a Dedicated Server?
While simple, text-based sites are better suited for a shared
server, enterprise-level web sites operate much more efficiently on a dedicated
server because the dedicated hosting environment provides higher reliability,
increased performance, greater security and exclusive use of system and network
resources. Therefore, those sites that have high traffic, secure information, a
high number of visitors or complex applications (i.e. e-commerce, dynamic
content, database applications and multimedia applications) are better suited
for a dedicated server.
Why
shouldn't I choose dedicated server hosting?
Dedicated server hosting is powerful, yet expensive. If your
site doesnt require huge resources or third party applications to operate, you
are probably not a candidate for dedicated hosting.
What
are the advantages of Dedicated Server Hosting?
Dedicated hosting offers many enticing features such
as:
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You do not have to purchase
or maintain your own equipment. |
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Better website performance
due to dedicated machine(s). |
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No chance of your website
being affected by another website on the same box, as in shared hosting. |
What are the disadvantages of Dedicated Server Hosting?
The most disconcerting factor of the Dedicated Server Hosting is
the cost but alas, there are other disadvantages such as:
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The cost is generally much
higher than shared hosting. |
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The Web Hosting Provider
charges hefty monthly fees as you're paying not just for the physical hosting,
but also for the hardware on which the site resides. While in the short run this
is cheaper than the large capital outlay required to get co-location up and
running, over time this model is more expensive. |
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The server is the property
of the service provider, which means all you own is the data you put on the
server. |
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Unlike co-location, you
cannot simply pick up your server and walk away if you're unhappy with the
service. |
What is the difference between a dedicated server and
co-location?
A Dedicated
Server is a server provided by a web host for you to rent. You have remote
access to the server and you can customize the server to your own needs. The web
host owns the server and you don't have physical access it. Co-location means
you store your own server at a facility of a co-location provider. A co-location
provider provides an Internet connection to your server and allows you physical
access to your own server when you need it.
I dont have a dedicated server now. When should I make the
decision to switch over to one?
You may want to move up to a dedicated server if your needs
match or surpass the following:
Programs require access by system
administrator
A backup server is required
Multiple IP addresses are
needed
Daily data transfer becomes excessive
Storage capacity
becomes excessive
Third party software needs to be run on your site
What
is the difference between Managed and Unmanaged dedicated hosting
service?
Managed Hosting is for customers who prefer to have
their web host provider maintain and monitor their dedicated servers, operating
system and all supported applications. Companies or individuals who do not have
the required system administration resources on-staff commonly choose this
option. Unmanaged Hosting is for customers who have extensive system
administration expertise to maintain and manage their dedicated servers. This
option generally provides customers with full access to their server allowing
them to customize configurations.
What should be my main concerns when searching for a dedicated
hosting provider?
First, you
need to determine whether or not your website is large enough to justify the
cost of such an endeavor. That aside, the most common concerns are:
The cost
Security of Data and equipment
Bandwidth Availability
The knowledge and integrity of the web-hosting provider
Technical support
from the web-hosting provider
Uptime
Hardware maintenance
Who
manages the hardware maintenance?
It is the web host providers job to maintain the hardware for
their dedicated servers.
How
does a web host provider guarantee the hardware?
There are many ways the web host may do this. Ideally, the
provider will have spare parts on hand to cover the most common problems that
may occur with a server. If there are components that are not carried on hand,
it is important that the provider has the ability to obtain replacement parts
quickly, preferably overnight. Finally, if the web host uses a certain brand or
make of computer, it helps if they have a relationship with the hardware
provider directly. This ensures top-level support in the expeditious repair of
the server(s).
What
exactly should I look for in regards to hardware for my
site?
Depending on the requirements of your website,
there are many answers to this question. Here are some of the most important
factors to consider.
| Brand |
Name brand
computers are very desirable when it comes to hosting business critical
applications, such as web sites. A name brand normally constitutes a reputation
for reliability, as well as a dedicated support channel for solving hardware
problems. A web provider who uses name brand equipment is normally more sought
after than a provider who builds their servers from generic
parts. |
| CPUs |
Obviously, the speed of the
CPUs of your server will affect its ability to serve your website. Depending on
the size of your site, and its load on the system, it may be beneficial to have
multiple processors available to better accommodate the
workload. |
| Memory |
For the most part, web
servers are inherently very memory intensive. This means that memory is a
valuable commodity when it comes to hardware requirements. If your dedicated
server runs on a windows platform, then much additional memory must be allotted
for, since the windows operating system itself is very memory
intensive. |
| Mirrored
Drives |
To ensure data redundancy,
most dedicated hosts offer drive mirroring, which in essence keeps two sets of
hard drives in sync with all of the data for your website. In the case of a
drive failure, the system will experience no downtime since it has an immediate
backup it can use until the broken drive is replaced. This is an excellent
add-on feature for dedicated hosted sites. |
| Multiple
Servers |
Depending on the
requirements for your website, it can sometimes be very beneficial to host your
site on more than one server. For example, if a website includes an integrated
database it would be recommended to host the database on its own server.
Separating the processes will enable one server to concentrate on processing web
requests, while the other concentrates on database activity. This kind of
segregation has immediate impact on the performance of a
website. |
Is it
possible to have the ability to remotely control my server?
The ability to remotely administer your web server and its associated
applications is usually available, depending on the web host provider. Tools
such as PC Anywhere and VNC are excellent tools when working with a dedicated
Windows server, while shell access is generally used to administer Unix and
Linux boxes.
What
are some good questions to ask a dedicated hosting provider before I sign
up?
As described above, some good questions to ask
your prospective hosts are:
What brand computers do you use?
If
something breaks, do you have spare parts to fix it immediately?
What kind
of maintenance plan do you have with your hardware provider?
What are the
hardware specs you have available (CPU speed, drive size, memory, etc.)?
What kind of connection to the Internet do you have?
What management
methods are available for me to administer my server?
What kind of backup
options do you offer to save my data?
Glossary of terms:
Co-location
In general, co-location is moving or placing
things together, sometimes implying a proper order. On the Internet, this term
is used to mean the provision of space for a customer's telecommunications
equipment on the service provider's premises. For example, a Web site owner
could place the site's own computer servers on the premises of the Internet
service provider (ISP). Or an ISP could place its network routers on the
premises of the company offering switching services with other ISPs. The
alternative to collocation is to have the equipment and the demarcation point
located at the customer's premises.
IP Address
In
the most widely installed level of the Internet Protocol (IP) today, an IP
address is a 32-bit number that identifies each sender or receiver of
information that is sent in packets across the Internet. When you request an
HTML page or send e-mail, the Internet Protocol part of TCP/IP includes your IP
address in the message (actually, in each of the packets if more than one is
required) and sends it to the IP address that is obtained by looking up the
domain name in the Uniform Resource Locator you requested or in the e-mail
address you're sending a note to.
Mirrored Drives
Drive mirroring (also known as RAID-1) is the practice of duplicating data
in separate volumes on two hard disks to make storage more fault-tolerant.
Mirroring provides data protection in the case of disk failure, because data is
constantly updated to both disks.
PC Anywhere
PC
Anywhere is a software program available for the Windows operating system that
allows a remote computer to take virtual control of another computer, as if the
user were sitting at the remote computer itself.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is Web hosting in which the service provider serves pages for
multiple Web sites, each having its own Internet domain name, from a single Web
server. Most web hosting companies provide shared hosting. Although shared
hosting is a less expensive way for businesses to create a Web presence, it is
usually not sufficient for Web sites with high traffic.
Uptime
Uptime is
a computer industry term for the time during which a computer is operational.
Downtime is the time when it isn't operational. Uptime is sometimes measured in
terms of a percentile. For example, one standard for uptime that is sometimes
discussed is a goal called five 9s - that is, a computer that is operational
99.999 percent of the time.
VNC
VNC stands
for Virtual Network Computing. It is, in essence, a remote display system which
allows you to view a computing 'desktop' environment not only on the machine
where it is running, but from anywhere on the Internet and from a wide variety
of machine architectures. In essence, VNC is a freely available application that
offers similar capabilities of PC Anywhere. VNC is available for several
platforms, including Windows and several flavors of Unix and Linux. |
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