Dedicated Server: How to Choose the Best One?

In other words, in dedicated hosting, a person or organization gets to lease an entire server exclusively for their own use.

Dedicated hosting services are more flexible than their shared hosting counterparts because organizations gain full control over the servers involved. With a dedicated server, you get to determine the operating system to be used, the hardware device, and so on.

Service providers, cloud providers, and hosting providers generally manage dedicated servers on behalf of their clients. Dedicated servers offer advantages like high-performance outcomes, security, and stability, to mention a few. Individuals and firms opt for dedicated servers because of the numerous benefits offered by such servers.

Why you should use a dedicated server

• Reliability is usually high up the priority list for most individuals and firms. You need your server to be as reliable as possible. A dedicated server is considerably more reliable than the average server because it is not shared with other entities. Since it is dedicated to a specific individual or firm, it is generally more available for use, and improved availability translates into an increase in reliability.

When people, businesses, or organizations use a shared server, they end up sharing the same resources, which then impacts the speed and overall performance of that server. In a dedicated server hosting configuration, you will not have to share the same (limited) resources with other people or firms.

• If you go with a dedicated server, you can get your own unique IP address – and this means a lot. On the other hand, when you use a shared server, you are forced to share a single (or the same) IP address with other individuals or organizations using the same server. This configuration is prone to different unfavorable outcomes or problems.

Consider this event: If one of the websites that use the same IP address (associated with the shared server) gets blacklisted for any reason, your site is likely to be impacted negatively. For example, due to the imposed restrictions, your site ranking might suffer. However, if you have your own unique IP address (associated with a dedicated server), you will never have to face such a problem in the first place.

• Security is another reason individuals and firms choose dedicated servers over the alternatives. When you get assigned a dedicated server, you end up with a personal server, which means you are the only individual with access to that server. You are in charge of your firewall settings. You can modify your configuration to improve your site’s security and safety while simultaneously monitoring the changes to ensure they do not impact your website’s performance.

• Another benefit we have to associate with a dedicated server is the availability of customizations and flexible options. Since you have a server all to yourself – which means you have full control over the server environment – you get to customize the CPU (or processor), RAM (or temporary memory), and drive space to suit your needs. You can also choose a specific hosting location, such as a dedicated server in Europe or Asia.

In general, you get the chance to make changes to the platform and operating system being used to ensure that they manage your projects in the best way possible.

How do you choose the best dedicated server?

Dedicated servers provide first-rate or top-level options for website management. If you are going to get a dedicated server, then you should try to get the one that suits your needs and offers the best features.

1. Examine the speed factors:

We already established speed as one of the reasons (if not the most important reason) people opt for dedicated servers, so it only makes sense for you to look out for this attribute. Dedicated servers are easily faster in response times and better at handling traffic than shared servers, but you will still do well to check for offers with the following parameters:

• Good processor: Dual Intel Xeon processors rule the industry. If you go with the latest models of such processors, then everything is basically guaranteed to turn out fine.

• Bandwidth: Here, it all depends on your needs. A dedicated server is an ideal option if you are expecting over 30K page loads per month.

• RAM: You can never go wrong with getting as much RAM as possible – especially if you can afford the costs. Get at least 16GB. Scale things up for more traffic and intensive sites. You should go as high as 64GB if your business demands it.

There are other speed factors that you must take into consideration, such as page size, media, and so on.

2. Review the disk and operating system involved:

The amount of disk space available is an important factor. However, since the price of raw hard drive storage has fallen so low (in recent times), the cost here is likely to be negligible. The vast majority of dedicated server providers are ready to offer large storage spaces at very cheap rates.

Instead of space, you should pay more attention to redundancy (in the form of RAID), which is a more important variable. With a RAID setup, you get little boosts in speed. More importantly, the backup associated with such a setup will come in quite handy if things go wrong. At least, you will not have to deal with permanent data loss.

To be fair, the software stack tends to be the last or least important thing users consider when they are making decisions on using dedicated servers. Your choice here should be easy and straightforward. It should be somewhat dependent on the technologies you use.

If you employ Microsoft ISS, ASP.Net, or MS-SQL, then it makes sense for you to go with a Microsoft server. Otherwise, for everything else, you are unlikely to regret choosing Linux. You can get a LAMP stack, which corresponds to the all-star formula (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP).

Some people still choose Sun and nGinx systems (especially as their third and fourth options), so you might want to look into them too. We are not holding out our breath, though. If you do some research to find statistics on all active sites, you will realize that Apache dominates the market. If you must go with something else, then you better have a good reason for charting a different path.

3. Make security evaluations:

Well, when your server is active on the web and working to answer requests from devices all over the world, you have to make provisions for security. You cannot get away with having a lax defense protocol or setup. Before you make a decision on a dedicated server hosting firm, you must check for these functions or attributes:

• Delivery of OS updates and patches (to fix security holes or vulnerabilities)
• Guarantees on power uptime
• Arrangements for backups and monitoring
• Firewalls and DDoS protection; SSL support

Other features or packages include encryption and on-site security. Nevertheless, you must understand that one dedicated server provider or firm might not offer every security attribute. You still have to factor in the previous choices you made and other properties peculiar to your server.

For example, if you already made up your mind to use Microsoft IIS, then you have to pay more attention to security measures and setups (than usual). If you opted for Linux instead, then you will probably have fewer reasons to worry because Linux and similar Unix-based operating systems are tighter on security out of the box than operating systems designed by Microsoft.

Depending on what you do or what services your firm offers to its clients, you might have to review security in eCommerce, SaaS deployment, and similar environments or scenarios where you are liable (by law) for users’ data.

Hopefully, from the descriptions we provided, you will be able to make an informed decision on dedicated servers. IKOULA offers superb dedicated server with options that allow you to customize everything that matters.