What is Dedicated Hosting?
Last updated on March 16th, 2023
Dedicated hosting is a type of internet hosting option where a physical server is dedicated to a specific business customer. The customer has full control over the machine and can optimize as per requirement. The hosting service provider supplies the environment, physical server, and any required technical support.
Dedicated hosting is also referred to as a dedicated server. It is also known as a managed hosting service or dedicated hosting service. Unlike a shared server, the resources of a dedicated server are available only for a single customer. This ensures increased speed, security and reliability. Further, the customer has complete control over how the server is set up.
Do you really need a Dedicated Server? Find the answer
A dedicated server is trusted by many as it features a brilliant performance. An example will further clarify your understanding. Consider a dedicated server as owning a house. As opposed to a rented or shared apartment, you have nothing to bother about while staying at your house.
In the case of a shared server, you have to share everything with other customers, as you would do while living in a condo.
Here are a few exclusive benefits of a Dedicated Server Hosting:
- Fast internet connection speed
- 24/7 uptime
- Regular or on-demand maintenance as per your requirement
- Less risk of virus attacks or bugs
Remember, a dedicated server is not designed to meet a single purpose. It can be used for hosting websites, game servers, and anything that demands a place for storing multiple computers and reading files.
A dedicated server ensures the following:
Enhanced Control
The IT staff of an organization becomes the single tenant of a dedicated environment. Therefore, they have full control over the apps and operating systems.
Better Performance
The organization can always optimize a dedicated server hosting in order to support their applications. The server can be tweaked as per the unique business requirement. This ensures an enhanced performance of the applications.
Security
When many websites are hosted in one server, your site security can be exposed. A virus attack to any website in the shared server may threaten your site security. However, dedicated hosting allows businesses to customize the server as per their compliance requirements. This ensures tight security – something a website must have in today’s digital landscape where cybercrime is rapidly increasing.
More Uptime
In a shared server, many websites are hosted. If one or two websites suddenly face a huge traffic load, the server may crash and it will impact all the sites hosted in the server alike. It can affect your site’s user experience and may lead to a drastic drop in conversion rate.
Whether you own an eCommerce website or a business website, ensuring site uptime is the primary step to enhance UX. And a dedicated server facilitates just that. It can support any high traffic driven website around the clock.
Greater Flexibility
A dedicated server enables businesses to easily mould and change server configurations, adjust resources, and add new software to meet their requirements. This renders greater flexibility to the website admin or the business owner.
Dedicated vs VPS Hosting
As discussed earlier, dedicated server hosting essentially indicates that your site has its own server to support its varied requirements. Any other website doesn’t share its ownership. It offers great flexibility and power to the business owner. However, it comes at a premium rate. Before opting a dedicated server for hosting, it’s important to conduct thorough research on business requirements and plans provided by a hosting service provider like Serverwala.
A VPS or Virtual Private Server hosting is where different websites use one server. However, each of them has its own resource limitations on aspects like bandwidth and RAM. It also has special software (hypervisor) to borrow various resources from other websites on the server once you have maxed out and others have not.
Usually, VPS hosting is ideal for small business websites. Large personal websites can also use it that doesn’t require extensive resources. On the other hand, dedicated hosting is suitable for medium and big business sites that may exhaust the bandwidth within a short time span.
Pros and Cons of Dedicated Hosting
Pros of Dedicated Hosting
- Customization
If you opt for a shared server, you have to settle for a “one-size-fits-all” approach once it comes to server configuration. On the other hand, a dedicated server hosting allows you to configure your server as per your website’s requirement. This may include a configuration for CMS (Content Management System) platforms such as Drupal, WordPress, and Magento for eCommerce.
Further, if you rent a dedicated server, you can upgrade it as your business and website scale up. You need not worry about paying for the equipment of the server and software.
- High Bandwidth
Sharing a server with another website means sharing the resources of the server including memory, processing, and bandwidth. If other sites hosted on the server generate huge traffic, it may adversely impact your site’s loading speed. On a dedicated server, all the resources, processing power and bandwidth belongs to your website.
- Control
The biggest facility of owning a dedicated server is owning the entire control. With a shared server, the hosting company has the responsibility and makes the choices for the customers. A dedicated hosting prioritizes your choice and you have full control to optimize the site performance.
Cons of Dedicated Hosting
- Technical Knowledge
Unlike a VPS or shared hosting, when you choose a dedicated server for hosting it demands adequate technical expertise – setting it up, managing or running it, installing, administering, and so on.
- Cost
If you have just launched a start-up, you may look for a cost-effective solution. A small business website may not need extensive server resources. Dedicated hosting will definitely charge you more than a shared hosting service. If you don’t have to worry about site downtime, investing in a dedicated hosting may not appeal to you. In the case of shared hosting, you can share the cost of the server with other businesses.
Which Dedicated Hosting Plan is best for you?
Once it comes to selecting a hosting plan, you have to first analyse your needs and determine the usage of the database. For example, a stand-alone blog needs distinct resources than a budding eCommerce website. Some of the reasons why you may need to pick a dedicated hosting plan may include the following:
- You are confident about business growth in the near future and want to scale up your website.
- You need enhanced security at your website. This is a mandatory thing for an e-store.
- You plan to use various custom features such as high-resolution images, streaming video, gaming, etc.
- Your website experiences or may experience high traffic surge.
Now that you have understood your growth, it’ll be easier to pick the right plan. Here are a few things that you should take into consideration:
- Do you want a specific operating system?
Many website owners don’t always care about the OS but if you have a preference for either Linux or Windows Dedicated Server, you have to select the one you want. You may also want a Windows dedicated server if you have a plan to host Microsoft IIS, ASP.NET, MS, and SQL.
- How much memory do you want?
Even if you don’t need a massive amount of memory for your website, you may want to have some free memory. This will come in handy when you seek to scale up your site. Having more RAM will help your site to load faster and in an efficient manner.
- How much bandwidth do you want?
If you believe that your site has to deal with a huge volume of traffic regularly or want to stream multimedia files or use HD pictures, you require more bandwidth.
- What, according to you, is the ideal processor power?
The more features you want to add into your website, the more powerful and robust your processor should be. For instance, if you want to integrate video-transcoding features or other custom dynamic features, you need to own a powerful processor.
Some of the determining factors for picking a hosting plan in Serverwala may include the following:
- Keep an eye on the RAM. You can pick 8 GB DDR3, 16 GB DDR3, or 16 GB DDR4. Also, each plan has a different CPU.
- Storage is yet another determining factor. For the same number of features, diversity in storage will lead to distinct plans.
- Pay attention to the budget. Depending on your state and currency, the prices will vary. Go through the dedicated server hosting plans minutely before making your decision.
There are numerous hosting service providers on the web. In order to avail quality service, you need to find a reliable team. A reputed service provider like Serverwala will always guarantee state-of-the-art server performance. Therefore, while selecting a hosting service provider, pick the one who provides value-for-money service instead of a cheap one. The cheap one may cost you less but your website will have to compensate for it! You must not risk that!
Renting vs Buying a Dedicated Server
Whether you should rent or buy a dedicated server depends on your requirement. Here’s a study into both of them.
Buying a dedicated server
Once you buy a dedicated server, you have full authority on it. You don’t have any headache renewing the plan after 1, 3, 6 or 12 months. You need not worry about the server downtime if you fail to pay for a premium plan in due time. It’s a one-time thing.
On the flip side, you need technical expertise to maintain the server. Or, you may have to contact tech experts every time you require maintenance. Buying a server will also cost you more than renting it. If you are just starting your business and own a small-scale website, buying a server may drain your initial resources.
Renting a dedicated server
Renting a server is a preferable choice for many business owners. If you rent a server, you need not worry about its maintenance. The hosting service providers will maintain it as and when necessary. Therefore, you need not worry about server issues or website crashes.
Secondly, it is less expensive. You need not spend a lot right from the beginning. You can rent a server at a reasonable cost while starting out. It will offer you moderate features. As your business scales up and the website receives huge traffic, you can opt for a more expensive plan with more features.
However, make sure to pay the rent before your plan expires. If you rent a server for 6 months, pay the rent before 1 or 2 days before the expiry date. This ensures to keep your site live all the time and provides a positive UX.
In most cases, renting a dedicated server offers more flexibility to the business owners. You can migrate to a more powerful server or a cheaper server whenever you want.
How to Set up a Dedicated Server Hosting
Setting up a dedicated server hosting need not be hectic if you follow the right steps:
Start Configuration
Once you have a hosting account, simply log in and access your dashboard to start the configuration process. You can find a dedicated server tab in the dashboard.
Select the CPU Cores
Determine how many CPU cores you want. It will determine the performance of the website. Each core can execute one action at a time. Using multiple cores will enable the server to execute more actions simultaneously.
Choose Storage Solution
Next, you have to choose the storage your server needs. There are various options like 1 x 1 TB HDD, 2 x 1 TB HDD, 1 x 128 GB SSD, 2 x 1 GB SSD, etc. With the difference in storage, CPU processor also changes.
Quick fact: HDD refers to Hard Disk Drives and SSD points to Solid State Drives. There are many differences between the two. The most significant one is that SSD is considerably faster while HDD offers more storage.
Select a Payment Plan
Once you are done selecting the specifications, it’s time to pick the payment plan. As per your requirement and budget, you may pay monthly or annually. If you pick a yearly payment, you have to pay more but in the long run, you will save more money.
“Where can you get Dedicated Server Hosting? – Serverwala”
When you are looking to get a dedicated server for hosting your website, you will be overwhelmed with thousands of choices available on the web. Failing to make the right choice will produce an adverse impact on your website.
You can engage Serverwala for server hosting. Here are a few reasons why we recommend this service provider:
- The hosting service provider is operating in the field for a long time and has powered many websites. Therefore, you can rest assured about the maintenance service.
- Reliability is a crucial factor when it comes to picking a hosting service provider. It’s problematic if you pick one service provider and after a month they go out of business. With Serverwala, you need not worry about it. They will support you month after month.
- No matter whether you own a large or small business, you don’t want to squander your resources, right? Serverwala has different packages and depending on your requirement and budget, you can make a choice. They also have special prices and sales going on most of the time. If you keep an eye on their site, you can leverage its benefits.
- Customer support is a crucial factor. If you require a maintenance service or have a query, you need to contact the hosting service provider. You can reach Serverwala just when you want.
