July 10, 2010

The Best Dedicated Hosting Option

If you are reading this article, you are probably looking into website hosting. You are probably weighing the options of whether to do shared hosting or dedicated server. Well, this piece may just narrow down your choices. Whether you have a product or service to sell or an idea to blog about, let’s face it, you need a website of your own. If you expect your website to support multiple online services such as filling out forms and exchanging reports or serious video, photo and audio downloads or have heavy traffic from forums or online classes or you just expect heavy data management; then read on, you may need dedicated hosting.

Dedicated servers give the organization or the website owner the flexibility of having full controls over the hardware. If you have full control of these beauties, you are able to manage the operating system. Having your own in-house dedicated servers means high overhead costs: from employing experts on network administration to purchasing the hardware to installing and later upgrading software to providing power sources and HVAC systems. However, you can outsource this service from hosting providers in exchange for a reasonable monthly fee. Think about your savings.

Managing your own dedicated servers requires advanced server administration skills and knowledge. Or you can have the services of qualified server administrators. Every dedicated server is has an installed operating system of your choice. You can have root access to the server and can therefore install and configure any software you need. With dedicated hosting you can take advantage of the server’s full resources for online and offline content management operations.

Finding the best provider still remains in your judgment. Bear in mind that this industry is not regulated by any government or international standardized agency. It means that even if the terms are standardized in the server-community, terms are still subject to various interpretations. Let’s take “fully managed” for instance: some providers interpret this as just having a web-based control panel. Other members in the community construe this term as having an engineer committed to server and network administration operations. Hosting providers will maintain the security of the network and offer you various support levels to choose from: fully managed, managed, self-managed or unmanaged. Read their product or service description for terms and conditions and how they define the support level you are getting.

From the thousands of hosting providers available, ensure yourself the following minimum requirements: full root-level access, the highest uptime, your choice of operating system and control panels, 24/7 customer support at the least cost possible. To top it off, you must be assured that your data is safe. These providers ensure safety by constantly doing systems scans so that the network is free of viruses, worms and crashers. Remember that some providers have data restrictions as well, like no adult content or copyright infringement.

Outsourcing dedicated servers can be cost efficient. All you need to have is advanced knowledge or at least have the support of a network professional to manage the dedicated hosting of your website.