Choosing a Dedicated Server: A Detailed Study

The benefits of a dedicated server is well accepted by all the business owners, no matter whether they are owners of SMBs or they run large scale organizations. When it comes to scale up your business, dedicated server is probably the best possible hosting solution that you can opt for. But then, choosing the most suitable yet cost-effective dedicated server for a business often turns out to be a complicated task. In fact, it also takes a lot of time to search through the different available options and then figure out the most apt one. However, even if the task is time consuming and quite complicated, it’s of crucial importance to make the right selection. After all, investing in a dedicated server is indeed an expensive affair and that’s why, you need to be extremely attentive to all the details.

Right from technology and business requirements to compliance and budget, there are thousands of factors that one needs to consider while making a selection for a dedicated server. It’s expected that most business owners are familiar to this process. But then, are they aware of all the minute details that are integral part of this planning? Here is a detailed study regarding the several aspects that business owners should consider while choosing a dedicated server –

· Business requirements – To begin with, it’s an established fact that no two businesses have similar requirements and hence, every organization should focus on their own specific requirements while making any kind of investments. However, there are some requirements that are common with most of the organizations. For instance, disaster recovery, high uptime, security and e-commerce are few to mention.

ü Security – While storing your mission critical data in a third party dedicated server, you should check its security thoroughly. It should be equipped with software and hardware firewalls. It should also have protection against the different types of distributed attacks.

ü Disaster recovery – No business would like to lose their mission critical data due to a disaster and hence, checking the disaster recovery plan well in advance is extremely important. Be sure to check whether or not the hosting service provider follows a proper disaster recovery plan and if the other team members are aware of that plan properly.

ü High uptime – If your website or application is accessed by a large number of visitors, high uptime is going to be a vital business requirement. Make sure the service provider will offer high uptime.

ü E-commerce – If you have been running an e-commerce website, you need to be a little more specific about your requirement. Be sure to check if they will offer safe and secure access to dedicated servers and complete integrity of data.

· Budget – Well, this is undoubtedly one of the most important factors that you need to think of right at the beginning of the plan. But then, there are several types of costs that you will experience while purchasing a dedicated server. Moreover, there might be a significant difference between the initial cost and the Total Cost of Ownership. Hence, it’s advisable to check out all the break-ups minutely.

ü Setup fees – Although most of the service providers configure the servers for free, it’s advisable to count this cost within the budget.

ü Monthly rental fee – Quite obviously, you should start the consideration with this. Check the different plans along with their monthly traffic. Be sure to include this in the entire budget.

ü Price for upgrades – In case you are planning to install some kind of upgrades like additional hard drive or additional memory, you should estimate its cost separately. Moreover, you should also keep in mind the maximum capacity of the upgrade of the motherboard and of the initial chassis. With some of the hosting providers, you might have to check these prices from the sales process.

ü Fees for software licensing – It’s advisable to consider certain additional cost for virtualization or database software and proprietary operating system. However, in case you are using an open source environment, this factor should not impact your decision to a great extent.

ü Price to manage extra traffic – You might come across certain service providers who will offer unlimited traffic. But then, there will be high chances that they will put some limitations on bandwidth. Don’t forget to check what amount of traffic is allowed in the monthly plan that you are subscribing for. Consider comparing it to that of the expected traffic and then check how much extra you might need to pay for surpassing the traffic limit.

· Technology – Technology is definitely one of the most important factors that you should consider while making a choice for a dedicated server. There are several factors that you need to think of –

ü Performance – One of the main reasons to invest in a dedicated server is to improve the performance of your website or application, isn’t it? Hence, it’s important to check the efficiency of the server. In fact, if you are planning to conduct virtualization, video transcoding or chat or game servers, it would be advisable to opt for a multi-processor server.

ü Database server and web server – The type of server you should choose depends entirely on the technology stack. In case, the architecture is built upon Windows, Ruby, Java etc., you might require a server that has plenty of RAM.

ü Bandwidth – In case you are planning to host multimedia like flash videos or high quality images, you should be extra careful for the bandwidth and the uplink speed. If you think what the service provider is offering would not suffice your requirement, consider asking for extra bandwidth and check its price accordingly.