Dedicated Servers represent the pinnacle of stability, performance, and reliability in the hosting product portfolio. When you’ve outgrown shared, reseller, and VPS Hosting, dedicated servers are the next reasonable upgrade option. But how can you ensure that the choice you’ve made is correct?
Hardware Model
It’s so often overlooked that it boggles the mind. But when you purchase a dedicated server, you really do need to know exactly what you’re getting.
There are many hosting providers that unfortunately resort to cutting corners in favor of profitability. They will utilise desktop component parts like cheap SATA drives, non-ECC memory, and Intel i5 and i7 processors instead of enterprise grade Intel Xeons.
If you’re looking for one of the best server models out there, go for a Dell, IBM, or HP server. Choose an HP dedicated server for the best overall value of price, reliability, and performance. . HP Proliant servers are available in both rack mount and blade format servers.
Network Connection
If you are a candidate for a Dedicated Server, chances are that you are hosting a high traffic website. This means that you’ll need to spend extra attention to you network connection.
1Gbps should be the minimum port speed that you should accept on your server in 2017. 10Gbps is generally an excessive upgrade, only suggested if you are streaming video at extremely high rates.
There are three methods of bandwidth billing. The quota method where you are given a set amount of TB per month, the 95 percentile bandwidth method, and the unmetered port method. There is no right or wrong method as each has their pros and cons.
Management Services
Even if you don’t need a fully managed server, make sure that at the very least your hosting provider has engineers on staff 24/7. The reason is simple. If your server’s hardware fails for whatever reason, who is going to fix it and within what time?
Most reputable dedicated server providers offer a 1-2 hour hardware replacement guarantee time. Make sure to ask them on live chat if this is something that is guaranteed with a money back SLA.
Datacenter Quality
When choosing a dedicated server, always know what datacenter it will be hosted at. It’s a critical factor during shopping for mindful buyers. Know what tier the datacenter is as well as this will help you predict future risk of downtime due to things like power failure. You want to choose a Tier 3 Datacenter as a general baseline. Tier 4 Datacenters are reserved for extremely high mission-critical purposes like finance, and health care and are usually out of budget for most customers.
Storage Type
There are three different types of storage that you can choose on a dedicated server.
SSD Storage
Solid State Storage (SSD) is to be chosen if you have an especially busy MySQL or MSSQL database and require low latency.
SAS Storage
Serially attached storage (SAS) is to be chosen if you want a balance between performance, reliability, and low price. It’s generally not as expensive as SSD storage (although the higher end 15k RPM drives can definitely get very pricy) and is a good “all around hitter.” SAS storage is rare with budget hosting providers.
SATA Storage
SATA storage is the most affordable storage type but is also the slowest and most unreliable. The largest advantage of SATA storage is the lower price per GB. You can purchase SATA drives in very large disk sizes (up to 8TB) for low pricing.
Hint: If coupled with a hardware RAID controller, you can offset the unreliability aspect of SATA storage and also drastically increase performance making it a seriously viable option.
Conclusion
Hopefully you have a slightly better idea as to what to look for when choosing a dedicated server! If you have any ideas of more important factors, feel free to let us know in the comments below!
