| Do I need to dedicate? Good question. If
we knew the answer to this in life, we could spend less time worrying
about what to do, get on with the show, and never look back.
Life, alas, comes without an owner's manual,
and we pretty much have to wing it. The regrets may or may not come
along later - that depends on you.
Fortunately, however, this article is not about
dedicating your life, but rather about the more straightforward
matter of making a decision as to whether or not you may need -
or simply want - your own dedicated server.
Imagine this! You put up a website - half for
fun, half to try to make a bit of cash (this was before the dotcom
storm cloud blew in over cyberspace). Nevertheless, miracle of miracles,
you started getting lots of traffic, more and more inquiries about
your products, and, one thing leading to another, you quit your
day job and began focusing full-time on your thriving Internet business.
Then you began to realize that the package you
had signed up for with your web host wasn't quite up to what you
now needed. In fact, you needed a great deal more space, memory,
and bandwidth.
The time has come to look into different types
of hosting plans, and in particular, to decide whether or not you
might not need your own server - dedicated to you alone!
We at HostSearch believe that the best
decision you can make is an informed one. So let's look at the different
hosting options available to you first.
Just as you might decide to move into a room
in the family house with your partner as a trial run or experiment,
or opt to live in an apartment before buying a house and dedicating
your life to one another, so with web hosting packages, metaphorically
speaking of course. It's much easier to change servers than, well,
let's get on with it, shall we
Non-Virtual Hosting is when you lease
or rent space on someone else's server. As the name suggests, this
is not even "virtual," which doesn't exactly inspire a great deal
of confidence, legitimation, commitment, or dedication. But this
may be fine for your current needs - a cheap room in the back of
the house.
There are many sites offering cheap or even
free space, and they will allow you to put your site in a sub-directory
on their domain. The obvious advantage is price. This is
a great way to experiment or to host a small personal or fun site.
However, for a serious company, it is much better
to create a more professional corporate identity on the Internet
with a virtual server and your own domain name. It is definitely
worth the small investment necessary to purchase your own domain
name - $70 for two years. And, you and your clients need not put
up with your free or cheap host's banners, pop-up windows, or intrusive
presence.
Virtual Hosting is more like renting
your own apartment in a complex or block. You have more privacy
and your own space. And your own domain name; for example, www.hostsearch.com
versus www.freewebspace.com/hostsearch. Which of these domain names
would you click on first?
There are additional features with virtual hosting
that are also important for your company or even your own more serious
site, such as an FTP, telnet, statistical packages, and POP3 email
accounts.
Although you have your own apartment or flat,
which is nice and the most common way to go, you nevertheless are
still sharing a building with others, all of whom are to some extent
sharing a number of the same resources.
A Dedicated Server, however, is more
like having a house of your own. Your site will be served faster
as it will generally only have your site on the server versus 100
or 150 other sites on a server with virtual hosting. This option
may cost thousands of dollars a month instead of the twenty you
pay for virtual hosting, but if your traffic and business warrant
it, this is surely the way to go. Let's take a closer look at exactly
what dedicated hosting is.
Dedicated web hosting is a service in
which the customer leases an entire web server from a web presence
provider, including the hardware and the operating system. Typically,
you would receive connectivity to the Internet, redundancy measures,
and monitoring.
Dedicated hosting is in contrast to shared
hosting, in which multiple customers share a single web server.
Dedicated server solutions are for large, professional web sites
with either: a great deal of traffic, secure e-commerce applications,
sensitive content, non-shared web or Internet software applications
hosting, or value-added resellers (VARs) and developers providing
shared hosting services to their customers.
Dedicated web hosting is a service that provides
a high-speed Internet-connected server on an outsourced basis for
individuals, organizations and small-to-medium sized businesses.
The dedicated server hardware is owned by the Internet Service Provider
(ISP) and leased to the customer.
The hardware, operating system, connectivity,
redundancy, and monitoring costs are usually spread out over the
duration of the service agreement. Unlike shared hosting services,
dedicated web hosting implies that a given customer has total use
of the server; i.e.: it is "dedicated" to a single user
- you!
Why Pay for Dedicated Hosting?
If your Internet business or application
falls into one of the categories above, leasing a dedicated
server from a web host can save you time and money in the long
term, as well as reduce the risk involved with owning and maintaining
the hardware yourself. You don't have to bear the upfront costs
of purchasing the hardware yourself, plus the installation and
Internet connectivity costs, plus the costs of continuous monitoring
and hardware maintenance. Resellers
and developers can benefit from a dedicated solution since
the price per account drops as the reseller adds new customers.
Another important reason to choose a dedicated
hosting solution is the need for large amounts of bandwidth
or data transfer capacity. If you have a heavily trafficked
site, you will certainly require a large amount of bandwidth
each month.
With a dedicated server solution, you
should certainly receive a higher bandwidth allowance than
you do when your site is hosted in a shared environment.
Finally, and best of all, only your data
is on the server. You are not sharing the memory, processor,
or bandwidth with anyone else. Your server has it's own port
to the Internet. It is there to serve you. |
Popping the Questions
Now that you're "virtually" decided you
want to dedicate, here are a number of questions you may want
to ask. You should ask hosting providers about their facilities,
technical support, customer service, satisfaction guarantees,
uptime guarantees, etc., the same as you would if you were considering
shared hosting. (Please see HostSearch's
other articles on these issues.) As
with airlines' quotes for the same flight, different hosting
companies will quote you very different prices for what seems
to be the same hardware and the same amount of bandwidth;
but, again, beware. There are certain things you need to consider
and research before making your final decision, such as:
System: your first question
should be related to the type of software you
prefer and what they, the host, have to offer.
OK, here's what out there:
| Operating System (OS)
for a server:
There are two platforms that
are popular: Unix and Windows NT (2000).
Which is better? It really depends on what you
prefer and what applications you plan to use on
your site.
On Unix's side is the
fact that it is not owned by anybody (you know
who); it is reliable, has been around for over
twenty years, and supports a wide range of software,
development toolkits and utilities. With respect
to the Internet, it is used on almost every hardware
platform. There are several flavors of Unix available,
the most popular and robust which web hosts use
being Linux.
Windows NT (2000), on
the other hand, is monopolized by a single vendor,
namely Microsoft (not necessarily a bad thing),
and shares the same APIs and system calls. It
also has multithreaded and multiplatform support,
standardization allowing easy transfer to another
NT version, and strong software support with a
large software resource availability.
You could say it is a case
of scalability (Unix) versus standardization (NT).
|
| Web Server Software:
The most popular web server on Unix is Apache
and the most popular web server for NT is Microsoft's
Internet Information Server (IIS). |
| Programming and Database:
There are two popular programming languages for
Unix: Perl
and PHP.
PHP is a new wave wonder and has become extremely
popular because it offers a way of connecting
to your database very easily. The most popular
combination nowadays is PHP + MySQL
database. NOTE: MySQL is a free database.
NT on the other hand comes with ASP
(by Microsoft). ASP can be used with MS Access
and MS SQL server. |
|
| Hardware:
What kind of equipment do I get? Your choices here involve
the speed of the machine, single or multiple CPUs, how
much RAM, how big your hard-drive is, and whether the
hard-drive is SCSI, or IDE. Also, very importantly,
who pays for hardware maintenance?
And don't forget about the all-important
issue of Data Backup and Redundancy. Ask
if they use RAID - not for bugs (although that's
always a good idea), but for other kinds of protection.
If you really want to know, RAID, short for Redundant
Array of Inexpensive Disks, is a method whereby information
is spread across several disks, using techniques such
as disk striping (RAID Level 0) and disk mirroring (RAID
level 1) to achieve redundancy, lower latency and/or
higher bandwidth for reading and/or writing, and recoverability
from hard-disk crashes. The numbers are not hierarchical,
which is to say that RAID5 is not necessarily better
than RAID0, just different. |
| Back-up options:
Always ask about their back-up options! The importance
of this cannot be overstated, as those of us who have
lost all our data at one time or another can testify!
You don't know what you got till it's gone. |
| Bandwidth:
How much bandwidth do I get each month? Can I pay to
have more? |
| Port:
A more technical question, but also
very important, is whether your server is on a dedicated
port, or on a shared port. A related question
is whether the network you are connected into is based
on a switch or a hub. Switched networks are higher performance,
and offer more security. |
| Connection:
Ask what kind of connection(s)
the hosting company has. Make sure you ask if those
figures relate to their network, or the network
of their provider. |
| Network:
Be sure to ask how much of your network
is utilized. A hosting company may have a couple of
DS3s (45 Mb connections), but if they are 95% utilized,
there isn't much room for growth on those lines. The
speed of the network will suffer because of congestion. |
| Other questions well worth thinking
about and getting answers to are:
Can I get a custom system/server
configuration?
How easy is it to set up
my site(s) on my dedicated server? What kind of support
do you offer?
How easy is it to administer
my site(s) on my dedicated server?
Are server ports monitored?
How many? Can I pay to have more monitored?
How long is the contract
term? How long is my obligation?
Do you offer additional support
at hourly billable rates? What are those rates?
What if I want to resell
shared hosting sites on my dedicated server? You got
any problem with that? |
|
Parting Shots
There
is indeed a great deal to consider, and a bit of research to
be done. But your time will be well spent if you find a good
company that is able to meet your needs and assist you in the
dedication process. Also, remember that when you search for
a company on HostSearch using given criteria, your search
results will contain a link to much of this information about
the different web hosts. You can then compare packages and pricing
and make an informed decision as to what is best for you.
HostSearch's list of leading dedicated
server web hosts can be found at: http://www.hostsearch.com/dedicated_web_hosting.asp
So, in conclusion, if you have a website
and you've been thinking of getting a dedicated server, do
some homework, look around HostSearch, e-mail or
call a few companies, and ask them what they have to offer
you. Finding a company to manage your dedicated server is
like looking for a house. You should look for a good location,
ease of access, security, size, and space, and feel comfortable
with it. What (or who) you put inside it is up to you! |
|
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