Dedicated Servers

by Gilberto Cintron Viral, Local, Social & Mobile Marketing Expert

Review on Dedicated Servers

What is a dedicated server and why should I know this anyway?

If you are doing business online, it would behoove you to know all you can and how best to maximize your money and efforts.

I will explain this as best I can. This is meant to be informational only. My internet is not to interfere with anyone's business. The reason I am posting this is because someone asked me a question about the difference between having a web hosting account and having an dedicated server.

When you get a web hosting account, you more than likely got it from a reseller. You may not know they are resellers, but most web hosting sites are resellers. There is nothing wrong with this, but knowledge is power. An informed consumer makes the best customer.

This is how is works. A reseller buys a hosting account from a big hosting company which operates a data center.

A data center is a large building equipped with a wide range of security, power management, cooling and network access equipment. Additionally, it contains thousands of servers, power regulation systems, diesel generators and air conditioning systems are vital aspects to maintaining a functional, opperational facility.

Think of a dedicated server as a giant computer used for only one thing, to host websites. The reseller is in business to make money, nothing wrong with that right? We are in business to make money, or else we'd be in philanthropy - giving away money. Anyway, the reseller will sell as many hosting accounts as he or she can, the more they sell the more they earn. However, remember that all of these accounts are hosted on the reseller's portion of the dedicated server. The hosting company whom is also in business to make money, sells as many reseller accounts as possible.

So if a server has 1000 resellers and each reseller sells 1000 web hosting accounts we are talking about a lot of sites on one server. 1000 x 1000 = 100,000,000 websites, that is one million websites. This means that there is a lot of pushing and pulling straining the server. So the more traffic, video, chat rooms, forums, etc. there are on the server, the slower it can move. Can you imagine trying to process all these things at once? Sometimes the burden is just to much and the server simply crashes. This is not a bad thing if you have a hobby site or a personal blog. But what if you are running a business? How professional does it seem if your site goes down? Not very. Or worse, what happens if it takes a day or two to recover? You could lose a significant part of you business.

Luckily, most hosting companies employ more than one dedicated server. In fact they setup a relay of servers so that in the unlikely event that a server does go down, the back up server is still online. This is invisible to the eye and is seamless so that in most instances you will not even know that an issue occurred.

Now suppose you get your web hosting from a reseller that bought a resellers account from another reseller because he, or she, did not realize that ABX web hosting was in fact a reseller for XYZ web hosting. Do you see where the complications come in.

So what are good alternative?

Well you could buy, rent is more appropriate, your own dedicated server. That means you will have all that space to yourself. The problem with this is that you will require technical skills to set up and maintain your dedicated server. There would be no one to call for support. Additionally, dedicated servers are expensive. I think I saw the lease expense ones going at $179.00 per month.

There are services that the will maintain your server for you, that would entail an additional monthly charge. If you are not pulling in several hundred dollars a week, going this route may be out of reality.

Fully Managed VPS Hosting aka Virtual Dedicated Servers (VDS)
Then there are virtual dedicated servers. These are not as good as having your own dedicated server, but they are much better than having a shared hosting account. A virtual dedicated server (VPS) is a machine, although running in software on the same physical computer as other customers' virtual machines, is functionally equivalent to a separate physical computer, is dedicated to the individual customer's needs, has the privacy of a separate physical computer, and can be configured to run as a server computer (i.e. to run server software). Each virtual server can run its own full-fledged operating system and can be independently rebooted.

You would be surprised at the low cost for operating your own VDS. Not much more than having a good web hosting account. The VDS on the company I use start at just $44.00, and come with four (4) dedicated IPs.

If you have a business and your website has experienced any downtime, you may want to form a collaboration with three of your friends and look into a VDS. This comes with Cpanel, which I know many people are used to, and includes fantastico and all the other bells and whistles you may be used to.

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Created on Nov 22nd 2010 16:04. Viewed 745 times.

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