Things To Know Before Hosting A Dedicated Server

In an ever competitive era of today, every business requires a global web presence to stay ahead in the marketing game. A fully functional website not just represents a business online but also helps in reaching out to a wider audience. But hosting a website is not that straightforward. There are several different things that must be accomplished for making a website fully functional and live.

The very first stage is indeed selecting a web hosting service. Initially, you may opt for a shared hosting platform. But with the growth of your online business and the growing number of regular visitors, you might eventually want to switch to a dedicated server. Using a dedicated server will not only increase security but will also help in effectively managing traffic and load balancing requirements. With custom programming options, you can further improve website experience and page load times.

Why Should You Use A Dedicated Server?

Dedicated servers are resources reserved for a specific purpose as the name suggests. They are not shared between multiple users. An organization can use a dedicated server for many different reasons such as web hosting, hosting internal resources, or managing dedicated resources.

Dedicated servers work best in a single-tenant environment. This implies that they are not shared between multiple users, individuals, or organizations. They are exceptionally useful for storing sensitive data as the server can be accessed only by legitimate and authorized sources of an organization. This helps to reduce the possibility for potential breaches. Moreover, the organization can utilize 100% capacity of the dedicated server for resource allocation.

Dedicated servers provide numerous options for customization. They are best for hosting resource-heavy websites and web applications which require high performance.

What Is A Dedicated Server?

A dedicated server is a remote computer entirely dedicated to performing a specific task. It is usually owned by an organization or individual but is hosted, deployed, and managed by a managed service provider (MSP). A dedicated server is not shared between customers, services or applications. It is exclusively dedicated to performing resource-intensive tasks such as hosting a web application or website.

Your dedicated server can be hosted on-site within your place of business. In this case, you have exclusive control of the hardware. You can manage access to the dedicated server and can ensure stringent security measures. This is extremely important for companies dealing with sensitive data such as medical records, financial data, or confidential government-regulated data. However, in-house dedicated servers require heavy maintenance to keep them scalable. This involves regular hardware and software update, backup and redundancy management, as well as downtime management costing money, time, and resources.

Organizations can also opt for an off-site dedicated server through a hosting company. Many hosting companies rent these servers for resource-intensive task requirements. In this case, the hosting company itself handles the complexity of maintenance, backups, redundancy, and upgrades. In other words, the hosting company updates the operating system, updates installed applications, monitors the server and the applications, maintains the firewall, detects and prevents intrusion, backups data, and manages disaster recovery. Moreover, the hosting company employs stringent security measures for safeguarding the client’s data. The client companies need to pay a fee on a yearly, monthly, or quarterly basis for using the dedicated server. This helps them save a lot of money for hosting, managing and maintaining an on-site server.

Does Your Business Require A dedicated server?

Do you need to manage regular e-mails from and to numerous people on a daily basis? Do you require a centralized data storage which can be accessed by multiple users at the same time? Do your business applications require a secure central database? Do you need to manage resources which are shared across your workspace? Do you think your network requires a centralized control for security management? If any of the answers is YES, your business could benefit from the use of a dedicated server.

Benefits of Dedicated Server Hosting

Dedicated server hosting devoted to a specific purpose within a single organization offers various benefits such as:

Customization

Dedicated hosting services provide extreme freedom and control not granted by other hosting solutions. The server is dedicated to a single client and can be exclusively tailored to their specific needs. This ensures that the companies select and pay for only the features they require.

Support

Different dedicated hosting services offer varying level of support. Most customers use the dedicated server for hosting mission-critical, important computing functions and resource-heavy websites. Effective support keeps the site disruption to a minimum. Usually, the managed hosting providers offer 24-hours support each day throughout a year. You can find the details regarding the support levels and reliability statistics in your service level agreement (SLA).

Uptime

Businesses understand the adverse effects of downtime and the importance of keeping a website functional at all times. Customers do not like to wait and can move to a competitor website during downtime. Dedicated hosting services ensure stability and high performance by keeping the website as well as other business applications virtually operational most of the time. Service providers offer server monitoring as well as backup facilities along with regular support services for keeping the applications running seamlessly throughout the day.

Security

Dedicated platforms let you deploy strict security measures through anti-virus software and secure firewall configurations. Moreover, they also ensure physical security measures through biometric authentication, mantraps, and security guards.

Congestion

Dedicated servers have zero congestion due to noisy neighbors. Shared hosting options often suffer from the risk of congestion because of heavy traffic, increased usage levels, and hosted applications from other sites competing for disk space, bandwidth, and CPU usage. On the contrary, dedicated hosting services ensure zero congestion and nil-disruption for a resource-heavy website.

Dedicated server hosting services ensure speed, agility, security, control, customization, and scalability. They serve as a boon to organizations that entertain heavy web traffic, require heavy resource usage, and need to ensure secure centralized management to sensitive data. You should choose a dedicated server if you work with confidential data or need to comply with the regulations laid by the government. This will save you from the potential loss of revenue due to data security breach. Moreover, dedicated servers work perfectly for e-commerce businesses that require agile web applications.