How Dedicated Servers Function

When we talk about hosting servers, there are 3 main types - shared website hosting servers, VPS (private virtual servers) and dedicated servers. Shared web hosting servers host many clients and so the resources per hosting account are restricted, VPS packages give you more server configuration autonomy, but also influence other Virtual Private Servers on the hardware node if utilized imprudently, and dedicated servers give you the option to do everything you think fit without interfering with anyone else.

Why would you need a dedicated server?

Dedicated servers are commonly much more expensive than shared servers or Virtual Private Servers. Why would anyone, then, use them? The explanation is very simple. If your company has a high resource-requiring site, or simply has very exact web server setup requirements, the most reasonable option would be a dedicated server. For somebody who is inclined to invest in security and reliability, the bigger price is not a problem. You gain full root-level access and can utilize 100% of the web server's resources without anyone else sharing these resources and meddling with your online portals.

Hardware specs

Most hosting providers, incl. us at Small Business Digital Toolkit, offer several hardware configurations you can select from according to your necessities. The hardware configurations offer different kinds of processors, a different amount of cores, different RAM and disk drive sizes and different traffic allowances. You can choose a web hosting Control Panel, which is a useful interface if you would like to use the dedicated web hosting server for website hosting purposes only and choose not to use a Secure Shell terminal for all the modifications you will be making. We offer 3 kinds of hosting Control Panel software - Hepsia, DirectAdmin and cPanel.

The Control Panel of your choice

If you are a self-confident Linux OS user (our dedicated hosting web servers are running on Linux or other Unix-based Operating Systems), you could manage your dedicated server via a Secure Shell console exclusively. That, though, could be awkward, especially if you want to give complete server root access to someone else who has less technical knowledge than yourself. That is why having hosting Control Panel software pre-installed is a splendid idea. The Hepsia web hosting Control Panel user interface that we provide does not offer complete server root access and is mainly suitable for someone who runs multiple sites that consume a lot of system resources, but would like to administer the web pages, databases and email mailboxes via an easy-to-use hosting Control Panel. The DirectAdmin and cPanel web hosting Control Panels, on the other hand, give you full root privileges and have 3 levels of access - root, reseller and user. If you plan to resell web hosting packages instead of utilizing the web hosting server just for yourself, you should choose one of these two.

Server monitoring and backup procedures

Last but not least, there is the issue of monitoring the dedicated server and of backing it up. In the event of a problem with your dedicated hosting web server, such as an unresponsive Apache or a network downtime, it is good to have some kind of monitoring system enabled. Here at Small Business Digital Toolkit the system administrators monitor all dedicated servers for ping timeouts, and, if you have a Managed Services package, they monitor the separate services on the dedicated server too. Backups are also a bonus option - the hosting provider offers you data backups on our own backup web servers. You could choose a kind of RAID that would permit you to save the very same data on two disk drives as a precaution in case of a hard disk failure, or in case someone whom you have given complete root access deletes something by mistake.