Dedicated Hosting
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A Newbie’s Guide to Dedicated Hosting
Most websites are hosted on a web server that hosts many other sites. Some websites are much too resource intensive to share a web server however. These sites could take one or more servers to host the pages and in particular the databases, and/or they get too much traffic to run efficiently with other sites sharing the same resources. For these sites, it is best to get one, several or many dedicated servers.
By hosting on one or several dedicated servers, you will always know that the performance of your site will not depend on whether or not other sites are concurrently getting hit with traffic. Unlike a virtualized private server, 100% of the web server’s resources are being allocated to your site. Monitoring and controlling a site’s performance becomes easy because you only have to predict the traffic of your own site, not that of dozens of others.
A dedicated server is not for someone with little experience, but it does give its user a lot of freedom. Users get full control through root access and can set up custom server configurations. There are also custom software and installs possibilities for a seasoned webmaster as well. Essentially, with shared hosting, you can set up the software available to you in your control panel. This generally limits you to about 50 applications. Through dedicated hosting, you can install any application you need to get set up.
Dedicated hosting is also the most secure form of hosting and is used to host highly sensitive information. If you used shared hosting, most hosting companies offer shell access, allowing other users on the same servers to run scripts. This gives them the potential to hack into the files owned by other domains on that same host. Although developers can create safeguards to protect against such incidences, there is no failsafe protection against leaving your data vulnerable when using shared hosting.
Most websites start on either shared hosting plans or on their own virtual private servers, as dedicated servers are very cost prohibitive and not necessary unless a website needs a lot of hard disk space, is getting hit with a lot of traffic, or has a unique application. Starting a website on a dedicated server would be like opening a multi-story office building for your business. If you have established business already, it may be necessary, but chances are you would be better off buying or renting an office within a building if you are just getting started.
A seasoned hosting professional who either works at a hosting company or resells hosting should be able to inform you as to whether or not a dedicated server is necessary. If you would like more security than shared hosting offers, consider a virtual private server.
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