Are you looking for a cheap dedicated server?
Do you wish to create a custom hosting environment for your website and applications?
A dedicated hosting server is a type of internet hosting service where the client or user gets access to an entire server and does not have the need to share the server with anyone else. If you have a website or an application on shared hosting and it has started to slow down or be unresponsive due to increased traffic, then it is time to set up a fully managed dedicated servers with OS.
Creating a custom hosting environment with dedicated servers can be a little challenging in some situations, as you are free to decide how you would like to manage your dedicated server. You have the ultimate liberty to choose the operating system, RAM, storage option, HDD or SSD, and bandwidth.
Why Dedicated Server Hosting?
Because it is dedicated!!
You have complete control and access to the server. That server will only be controlled by you and will host your applications or your website. That does not happen in shared hosting or VPS hosting service where your site or application shares the same server resources with other neighbours.
You can think of this situation as the difference between owning an entire house or renting an apartment with others. With your dedicated server hosting, you have complete freedom to configure it as you like.
The Linux and Windows dedicated server hosting plans come with many other additional benefits for you and your application or site like the ones mentioned below:
- Better Speed & Performance: If your website doesn’t share server resources like RAM, and storage with other clients, your site speed will increase significantly, even with high traffic of users.
- More Freedom & Control: You have full freedom to configure the server resources of dedicated servers according to your requirements. Due to this fact, you enjoy more freedom and control compared to shared hosting environments.
- Better Security: Although shared hosting is safe, there is a risk of getting vulnerable to cyber-attacks. This unfortunate situation will not arise in dedicated servers as the whole server is at your service.
- More Storage Space: Most dedicated hosting plans offer higher storage space, like 2 TB or more; at the same time, most hosting providers will offer you the service of dedicated SSD, not HDD when you shift from shared hosting to dedicated hosting.
Different Types of Dedicated Servers
After discussing the key benefits of a dedicated server, it is time to discuss the types of dedicated servers. You must make a judicious decision between managed or unmanaged dedicated servers.
Managed Dedicated Servers
When you choose a managed dedicated server, the hosting provider company takes care of all the server maintenance tasks on your behalf. The IT team of that company will ensure that your server and site are well maintained and they will also attend to your calls during the time of any distress. Your web host also will do other regular tasks like monitoring security threats and creating backups of your files stored on the server. You don’t have to worry about any type of server-related tasks, you only concentrate on the operation of your company.
Unmanaged Dedicated Servers
The situation is just the opposite in unmanaged dedicated servers. You need to manage all the above mentioned tasks by yourself. Consider this option if you have enough knowledge of IT to manage a dedicated server or if you have an in-house dedicated team to help you.
How to create a custom hosting environment with dedicated servers?
The steps below will help you to customize your dedicated hosting environment as per your requirement.
CPU
The central processing unit or the CPU is the heart of any computer, the same concept works with a dedicated server. When choosing the CPU, you should consider two factors, its number of cores and its frequency, or clock speed. Next, the brand comes into consideration, Intel and AMD.
They both have excellent track records and are considered brilliant processors; you can choose according to your budget. Generally, a CPU with a higher core count and a higher frequency delivers better performance. However, keep one fact in mind a multi-core processor will perform better, even if it has a little lesser clock speed than a single-core CPU. A CPU with 8 or more cores and a frequency higher than 3GHz is considered enough to run any dedicated server smoothly.
Operating System
You have two options to choose from, Windows or Linux. Linux is the most popular choice, around 90% of servers in the world run on Linux. A Linux dedicated server offers various advantages over Windows servers. The servers with Linux OS are more stable, they can run for a longer period without crashing, and they don’t need to reboot. This is the most sought-after feature as this ensures less downtime for a server. Linux servers can run multiple operations simultaneously, this results in lower hardware requirements. Security is another prime factor to consider in this era of increasing cyber-crimes.
RAM
Random Access Memory or the RAM is another prime factor to choose while customizing the hosting environment with the dedicated servers. Your server will perform faster with more RAM as it will enable your server to run multiple processes and applications at the same time. Your site visitors may wait a little longer to load the whole site with not enough RAM. If your website gets huge traffic, a dedicated server with at least 16 or 32GB of RAM is needed. You always have the freedom to upgrade the server later.
Storage Option
You need to analyse two important factors: what type of storage you will use, and how much storage you need to run your dedicated server smoothly. You have two options: solid-state drive or SSD, and hard disk drive or HDD while choosing the storage type. SSDs are faster and more durable than classic HDDs, however, you have to pay more for an SSD. A good decision is to combine SSD and HDD in your dedicated server. You can store your data in HDD and use SSD to load your server software. Your dedicated server storage capacity will depend on the size of your website. A small company with less staff will work well with a 2 TB dedicated server, larger companies will need dedicated servers with higher capacity like 5 TB or 10 TB or even higher.
DDoS Attack Protection
The DDoS or distributed denial of service attack on your server makes the website or network unavailable for the legitimate end-users. This attack is usually done by flooding the target system with numerous requests. The attacker uses multiple controlled or compromised sources to generate the attack. This attack is a nightmare for the clients of dedicated servers, as this is a threat to their website and company reputation. A good practice to stay safe is to use a Web Application Firewall (WAF) against attacks. You should ask your hosting provider to enable a DDoS protection shield on your dedicated server.
Consider Addon Services
Choosing only the above-discussed factors is not sufficient to build a fast, secure, and durable dedicated server. Different addons like software addons, control panel addons, additional resource addons, security addons, application addons, and admin and management addons play important roles too. Some web host companies give you access to your cPanel to add those extra services, and others do that on your behalf.
Conclusion
A dedicated server offers more value for money to their clients as they can customize the hosting environment with the dedicated server. The users here have more opportunities to handpick additional features for their dedicated servers to enhance the web hosting environment. The cPanel dedicated servers are considered more useful than shared servers for better day-to-day business activity.
In most cases, the dedicated servers are physical, it is easy to modify the hardware configuration of that server. Yet, up-gradation of the hardware arrangement of a dedicated server can cause downtime to your website, to avoid this risk, it is advised to take an additional testing server with your dedicated server. You can do development, and testing on that extra server, and if needed you can upgrade the hardware resources of your server after transferring your site or application to that testing server.
Getting a dedicated server is a complete value for money as it allows you to scale and provides the best resources and security for your website and applications.
