How to Choose the Best Dedicated Server: An Ultimate Guide
Choosing the best dedicated server for your business could be a task. But once you have found your soul web hosting provider, it is a ‘hurrah!’ moment.
Before deciding on the best dedicated server for you, let me clarify what ‘best’ means here. Best is a very subjective term. For finding the best dedicated server, you need to understand your requirements, look for the web hosting providers who fit those requirements, and then make a decision.
Finding Best Dedicated Server: Baseline Qualities to Look for
Technology
1. Processor: How powerful you want the server to be?
For virtualization, video-transcoding, SQL, or specialized applications like chat servers, you need a Xeon or dual Xeon server.
2. Bandwidth: After having an idea of the traffic to your website, decide on the bandwidth required. If your website sees high traffic, go for more bandwidth. If you plan to run scripts, have HD pictures, or stream multimedia files, then go for high bandwidth servers.
3. Memory: Memory is important in order to decide the efficiency of your server and faster loading of your website. More RAM = Better Speed.
4. OS: Depending upon your needs, decide if you want a Windows dedicated server or Linux dedicated server. You must also take into account the type of your application.
5. Storage: Know your data storage requirements of your website. You can pick from several hard drive options. Usually, RAID is preferred because if there is a hardware failure, all your data will be lost. RAID is critical for mirror copying. best dedicated server
6. Application: You need a Windows Dedicated Server if you are looking to host MS SQL, ASP.NET or Microsoft IIS. Go for Linux Server if you use LAMP or MEAN stack or an application that does not need a specific Microsoft license.
Datacenter
Tier
Tier 1: 99.67% uptime, no redundancy, 28.8 hours of downtime/year.
Tier 2: 99.74% uptime, partial redundancy in cooling and power, 22 hours downtime/year.
Tier 3: 99.98% uptime, N+1 fault tolerant, 1.6 hours of downtime/year.
Tier 4: 99.99% uptime, 2N+1 fully redundant infrastructure, 26.3 minutes of annual downtime.
Security
Before choosing a dedicated server hosting, you need to ask questions related to access to data, power supply, hardware, fire protection, building, data privacy etc.
best dedicated server
Analyze Your Requirements
If you go in the market without analyzing your requirements, you may not find anyone who will fit the bill. I know self-introspection could be hard. But if done (correctly), it will surely give you the best results.
Here are some of the important aspects you should consider while analyzing your requirements:
1. Types of Server: Depending upon your activity, you can consider:
File Server
Database Server
Domain Server
Application Server
Communication Server
Print Server
2. Traffic: How much traffic do you see in a month?
3. Application: If it is a resource hungry application, then you should go for a server having high computing power.
4. Operating System: Are you looking for Linux Dedicated Server or Windows Dedicated Server?
Budget: Obviously, money is an important factor, always. But if you find the right dedicated server for yourself, it is going to be worth the investment.
Having difficulty analyzing your needs? Get assistance from a certified professional.
Other important aspects
Customer Reviews: If you have a chance to get in touch with their customers, then do take a review. Ask about the guaranteed uptime, how swift they respond, the time they take to solve queries, and more.
Do they provide any additional services for free? For example, DDoS protection. (If they do, they care for you!)
No server should go live without the backup. If it goes, there are chances of you losing the data.
Case Example
Here’s a hypothetical example to comprehend the situation better:
“I run a Jewellery website. Usually, the traffic is somewhere between 40,000-45,000 in a month. There are about 4,000 products listed on my website. Which dedicated server will fit my needs?”
best dedicated server
In this case, the best possible fit would be a server having memory 64GB RAM and a good process. Prefer going for an SSD for a better UX. The main job of SSD is to faster the speed. Since you have a lot of product images, RAID 1 will be preferable. This will mirror your data to the second drive, so that, if by any chance, a drive fails, you can still recover it and continue the operation.
Assuming there will be a good number of high-quality images, 2TB Bandwidth would suffice the purpose. Depending upon your Operating System, you have the choice of Windows and Linux dedicated server.
Conclusion
To be honest, deciding on the best dedicated server is not a stroke of luck. Instead, it’s a well-planned decision that will pay off in the long run.
While you compare different hosting providers, don’t forget the value for money they offer. People usually make the mistake of seeing the high prices and closing the tabs. You need to find if that service provider justifies the amount they are asking for. If they do then make a judgment call.
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