What are requirements for Dedicated Server Hosting?
Businesses want to sign up for dedicated server hosting when they begin to realize that their existing hosting plans, whether it is shared hosting or VPS hosting, can no longer accommodate their demands. Either dedicated server hosting may also be a conscious decision on part of companies, which are planning for a new project that is likely to need much more resources than shared or VPS, plans can offer. However, whatever be your requirements, the decision to sign up for dedicated hosting plans should not be taken in a haste, without carefully considering your business resources requirements.
So, one of the first things that you will need to do before you sign up for dedicated server hosting is look at how much resources you will need from such a best web hosting plan. While making the exact estimate of resource requirements may be tough, you can always have some numbers to start with.
What are some things to consider before choosing dedicated server hosting?
- It is true that different applications are going to have different resources needs. Therefore, considering the kind of software you will use to run on your dedicated server will be one of the first things to look at. Depending upon requirements of your software, you will be focusing on specific resources. For instance, the applications which database-driven are going to require high-end I/O operations which is why SSD disks are recommended for them and not standard HDDs. Again, for hosting game server, you will need top-of-the-line dedicated servers equipped with robust GPUs and CPUs. For hosting regular files, you can use low-end servers but you may need to deploy multiple disks. For websites, which offer streaming media, you will need higher bandwidth.
- When you have understood your resource needs you will need to make a correct estimate through reviews, investigation and assessment of existing workloads, future resources expansion etc. When you switch to dedicated server hosting from either VPS or shared hosting plans, it is easier to predict as you already have an idea of how much resources you need currently. You can use these statistics and keep a note of the resource usage during traffic spikes. You will need the numbers of daily and monthly visitors to your website, the numbers of concurrent viewers accessing your site during high traffic surges, monthly bandwidth needs, CPU, and RAM usage during such peak periods. Such statistics are easy to get from control panels such as Web Host Manager and Google Analytics. Based on such figures, you can understand how much resource you are going to need to keep the site functioning optimally without overworking the server.
- When you are starting with dedicated server hosting you can opt for a single CPU with multiple cores and at least 8GB of memory with a RAID controller. For higher fault resilience and enhanced performance, it is better to choose RAID 5 or RAID 6. Finding out, which dedicated server operating system to use, is not much of a challenge. For sites, which run .Net technologies or ASP.Net or MS SQL servers, they must install Windows as their operating system. Linux OS are popular as these are open source and therefore, free to use.
- When you plan to host popular applications, you can get their server requirements from their respective providers. For instance, for Minecraft game servers, you can get the resource requirements from their official website. However, for the custom software or applications, you may need to run various performance metrics when they are being developed. When you know your virtual users, you can also gauge RAM usage. Besides, resources requirements for running applications, you will also need to consider memory requirements for services like SQL servers, mail servers, FTP servers etc.
- When you run an ecommerce site, you will also need ample disk space for the HTML files to be stored. When you have a decent budget to work with, it is advisable to invest in SSDs.
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