Dedicated Server Price Check by www.vipwh.com

 The price of dedicated hosting services has really come down in the past couple of years. In fact, prices have dropped so much for the "budget dedicated server" market.

The price of dedicated hosting services has really come down in the past couple of years. In fact, prices have dropped so much for the "budget dedicated server" market.

The price of dedicated hosting services has really come down in the past couple of years. In fact, prices have dropped so much for the "budget dedicated server" market. While competitive conditions in both the hosting industry and the computer hardware industry have contributed to the reduction in dedicated hosting costs, don't think that prices were that inflated in the first place. Budget servers are fantastic but it takes more than a competitive market to offer services at such great prices. 

Much thanks to the great overbuilds of networks, data centers and computer hardware in the dot-com days, companies with a bit of buying power can acquire the hard-resources it takes to provide a good quality un-managed dedicated server for a great price. Finding a dedicated server for $199 a month or less these days is not that difficult. When shopping for your dedicated server, consider more than just price. 

Managed Services 

Before just lining up the amount of ram, the processor speed, the data transfer and the price ask yourself - what else can this company do for me that I need now, or may need down the road. While there are plenty that do it, a 1 person effort to maintain a mission critical or high traffic server is no easy task. It helps to have others helping look out for your interests as well. Check to see if your host provides managed services such as backups, monitoring, firewalls and intrusion detection. Sometime they may be included in the plan but nearly always can be negotiated in at a reasonable price and can be well worth the investment. 

Technical Support 

The level of support received with your dedicated services is important as well. Some dedicated hosts offer email only support in order to keep costs down while others flat out charge a fee for a support ticket. Your preferred method of receiving support plus the level and frequency in which you will need it should certainly be considered. 

The Quality of Your Network 

Most dedicated hosting providers these days have pretty substantial internet connectivity. Nonetheless, it is something you should be aware of. Look for a host that has redundant connectivity via multiple providers insuring as much connectivity uptime as possible. Some of the major connectivity providers these days are Sprint, UUNet, Savvis, AT&T, Qwest and Cogent. 

Summary 

A very cheap server deal does not simply mean you are dealing with an overly generous hosting company or that another provider is ripping you off at a higher rate. While some hosts do price more competitively than others, there are associates costs that must be covered. When shopping for your next dedicated server just keeps in mind you may not always be comparing apples to apples. 

Please refer following web sites for useful resources related to web site hosting: 

http://www.vipwh.com
http://www.thehostingguide.com

Paras Shah

Chief Technology Officer
VIP PowerNet, Inc.

Phone: (713)787-6501
Email: paras@vippowernet.com
http://www.vippowernet.com

 

A Change in Paradigm: Dedicated Server

I found it hard to believe, but suddenly I was faced with a real problem. Well, I suppose most people would not consider it a huge problem, quite the opposite, in fact. However, it was stressing me out complete, interfering with my writing. I even had trouble sleeping.

What was this horrendous problem? My web site was becoming very popular. So popular, in fact, that I was getting very worried about bandwidth charges.

You see, this was happening after September 11th, 2001, and I had been reading about some people who had created very special and beautiful sites. These sites were so incredible that they attracted lots and lots of visitors. So many visitors that they received hundreds of gigabytes worth of traffic. The webmasters suddenly found themselves charged hundreds or even thousands of dollars for using bandwidth over their allocations.

I had purchased a contract with a shared hosting service which allowed 27gb/month of traffic. This seemed like more than enough at the time. However, I was noticing the bandwidth increasing at an alarming rate - about 2gb/day. At that rate, I would exceed the allotment by quite a bit. I had some time, but not much.

Okay, what to do? I looked around at the various shared hosting options and didn't see much that was all that attractive. There were some that offered "unlimited" bandwidth - I didn't trust these at all. Most of the terms and conditions actually did place a "reasonable" limit of some kind. I preferred a limit that was know verses a limit that was unknown.

Actually, truth be known, I was getting a little tired of the paid host option. I mean, it's far improved from free hosts, but there is still much room for improvement. Some of the things that were bothering me were:

Downtime - All of the shared hosting servers that I'd checked out so far seemed to be down more often than desired. I've been in the computer industry for over 23 years, and to me a few hours of downtime in an entire year is about all that's acceptable. It's not that hard to achieve these kinds of statistics - I've been doing it myself for years.

Support - The level of support from virtually all hosting companies I've used to date has been pathetic to mediocre. My expectation is simple. My site is down, I want someone to work on it quickly. I want to call someone, get an answer right away, and get the problem resolved. Especially during normal business hours. I have never received that level of support from any hosting company yet.

Strange errors - I've noticed that my web sites will run fine for a few days or weeks, then start having strange delays. I know this because I monitor my sites with an automated service. These delays are probably caused by things that other customers are doing on the same server.

Lack of communication - Web host support people seem to forget that we webmasters and businessmen depend upon our web sites. I don't know about you, but if my site goes down for any length of time I completely freak out. I want to know why it's down and what's being done about it. And virtually always I get no answers. This is most annoying when the downtime has been planned - these hosts have my email address, why is it so hard to send an email and let me know what's going on?

Log file issues - Log files are very important to any true webmaster. They are useful for finding errors, gauging traffic and determining the success of promotions and articles. Yet so far all of the shared hosts gave me incredible grief about log files. They seemed to want to initialize them at odd intervals (unpredictable), didn't allow easy access, allowed too easy (unsecured) access and generally made it difficult.

Okay, given all of that, it was time to make a change. Not just a change to another host, but a change in paradigm.

I had tried free hosts (three of them) before deciding they were not at all suitable for anything except a small hobby web site. I moved up to paid shared hosts and for a while was happy. I moved, then moved again, then again. The hosts were all fine for a while, then starting having trouble.

Shared hosting was not doing what I needed. The straw that broke the camels back was a question of bandwidth. Internet Tips and Secrets was exceeding 50gb a month (almost four million hits and three quarters of a million page views). Wow.

I could not find a shared host that offered a package of a full gigabyte of disk and upwards of 50gb a month. Not a single one after looking at over a hundred different packages.

I had a real problem. You see, go over the monthly bandwidth charge and you get smacked with huge overcharges. For the web host I had at the time, the charges were $6 per gigabyte. This would make my hosting bill very large indeed.

Thus I began looking for a dedicated hosting service. I quickly found a company and purchased a single month.

Here's what I got. A web server all to myself. I could define as many as 250 different web sites on the server, and I had complete control of the DNS. I had root access to the server (meaning I was more or less god on the box) and could literally do anything I wanted. I could install anything, do anything and control or not control everything.

I had 9gb of disk space. Best of all, the service provided a whooping 400gb of bandwidth usage per month. The server was extremely fast for my needs. All for around $200/month plus a setup fee.

The downside (there is always a downside, isn't there)? The price was a little steep, but a predictable $200 a month is far superior to a surprise $500 or even $100 hosting charge. They also didn't provide any real autoresponders (but I solved that by purchasing a package) or web based email. Their support is also very basic - they have a 24 hour help desk which is friendly and competent, but they do not appear to be technical heavyweights.

Thus I have now, after a week of hard work, begun a new adventure - a dedicated web server for the 16 sites that my wife and I own. So far, the experience is far superior to the shared hosting nightmares that I've been facing.

Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets at http://www.internet-tips.net - Visit our website any time to read over 1,000 complete FREE articles about how to improve your internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.

Web hosting Benefits of a Dedicated Server

Hosting your web sites on your own dedicated server may seem a little expensive in comparison to shared web hosting, but the end result is more advantageous. Shared web hosting, no matter how well managed, cannot be 100% reliable and stable. However if you have your own dedicated server you can manage to avoid most of the variables affecting the reliability and stability of a server, commonly experienced by shared hosting accounts; variables such as: overload, bad codes and scripts from other users (especially beginners); and, too many applications and components uploaded, and so on.

On a dedicated server you will install only software and applications you want to use, while on a shared hosting server you will find a host of other softwares and applications installed for other users.

By the very nature of the account, a dedicated server: reduces your dependency on the web host; and bypasses time delays and possible expenses incurred from these. With dedicated server hosting you can provide instant support to your own clients whenever required, which is not possible if you are on a shared server. A reliable, and fast support service is vital for your own business growth just like the stability and reliability you wish for your own website. In business, reliability is reflected through word-of-mouth as one of the most effective promotional activities.

For people with clients, such as Graphic Designers and Web Designers a dedicated server is invaluable. A dedicated server will bring extra income into the studio, not just as a hosting facility, but, as a designer knows only too well, for the extra bread and butter income value. If you have 24hour access to your own dedicated server then you can adjust, correct or update a clients website in minutes, allowing you to keep the dollar back in your studio and not in someone elses. Ready availability results in reduced labour costs for the client, but higher studio-income frequency for the designer. Hence you will see the return of all your regular offline clients, bringing their web work with them.

The need for a dedicated server to your average shared server user is realised when stats tell you: how quickly people left your site because it was taking too much time to download; or how many daily visitors you are down by, because your site was not up. The true negative is the worry of how many lost visitors could have been your future paying-customers. The loss could easily equal the value of the upgrade to a Dedicated Server!

For a business, a website that is quickly downloadable and up all the time gives the visitor encouragement that your service is just as reliable, hence you will be more likely to make a sale. It will also enhance the companys image and encourage existing customers to refer your service to others. This will result in more sales for less promotion.

If you are serious about your online presence you need to get a Dedicated Server.

M6.net http://www.m6.net/dedicated_table.asp

Affordable & Reliable Web Hosting & Dedicated server sales

All of XpressAccess web hosting is run on lighting fast dual P4 3.06 processors with at least 1 gig of DDR ram. We use Linux OS Fedora Core 1 on our servers so you get the very best in dependability and reliability. We run daily backups on all of our servers so you can have piece of mind that our servers will be up and running. XpressAccess web hosting offers the very best in web hosting and we strive to bring you the absolute very best service that we can.

Providing some of the most unique packages and plans, The XpressAccess Network continues to grow. Offering a service that is not comparable by any competitor. Blazing through multiple Gigabit connections to our servers, The Xpressaccess Network manages to provide it's customers with 99.9% network uptime, Guaranteed!

If you need dedicated web hosting we have you covered. We offer the same great service and competitive pricing on our dedicated web hosting as we do our starter packages. Our dedicated web servers are reliable and super fast. If you have questions please contact us, we are glad to assist you with your questions.

Dedicated Servers: A Summary

What is dedicated hosting?
This is a server which is owned by the hosting company which they will
rent out to you for a monthly fee along with an allotment of bandwidth
which you can use with it. This means that you get a whole server to
yourself to use for what you desire, this is needed for scripts which
use a lot of server resources (for example large message boards, for
one of which I pay for a dedicated server). As a customer, you would
have full control over the server and could change the configuration as
required, a facility not available when you have to share a server with
others. With a dedicated server, the web hosting company is responsible
for the hardware as they own it, not the customer.

What are the advantages of it?
You can do anything you like on it that you like (although most hosts
have acceptable use policies which state that illegal content is not
allowed, and in some cases they prohibit connecting to IRC). This means
that you can login to the server, set up programs as you desire, then
run them without having to worry about the effects on server resources
for other people. You can run games servers (for games such as
Half-Life, etc), IRC servers or bots, or just run a web server which
uses a lot of resources (and with a special setup which isn't found in
shared hosting).

What are the disadvantages?
The main disadvantage is the cost, which will put many people off
getting one. The cheapest seem to come at about $50/month, and the most
expensive cost thousands of dollars each month. The price can be
reflective of the quality (such as the cost of running - or your host
renting a space in - the datacentre, the hardware in the server, the
technical support provided by your host and so on), alternatively it
can just be an over inflated price for what is a poor quality product.
It's important to compare the prices and packages offered from several
companies before coming to a decision, also you should ask your friends
if they have any opinions on the matter, and research information about
the hosting companies and datacentres - are the constantly offline due
to DDOS attacks? do they have a poor record of customer service?

Another disadvantage is the added responsibility involved in keeping
the software on your server secure, for example you may have to update
builds of apache, control panel software, etc as security holes are
found.

Is it for me?
That depends, if you want to a game server then you'll need one - but
it may be easier for you to buy one from a dedicated games server
comapny, they know their stuff and would probably be able to install
and configure the servers for you. However they would place
restrictions on what you could do with the server and maybe the setup.
If you want to run a small IRC server, bot or bouncer then you would
probably be easiest paying a smaller fee to hire one of those from an
IRC or shell provider company, also you don't have to worry about
restrictive datacentre AUPs which prohibit IRC use.
If you are starting a small web forum or site then you probably won't
need one initially, wait until it grows and you can determine if you
need the server to ensure further growth is ok.
Otherwise you could possibly look into getting one, you could even
email hosting providers asking what package they think your site would
require (although take their replies with a pinch of salt, they could
try to sell you stuff you don't actually need).
vdhri.net is a website dedicated to providing free lessons and tutorials in many programming languages.

Dedicated Server: A Smart Choice for Web Site Hosting by www.vipwh.com

Hosting your personal or business web sites on your own dedicated server may seems expensive choice in comparison to shared web hosting, but at the end, it proves a smart choice. Shared web hosting, no matter how well managed, cannot be 100% reliable and stable. However if you have your own dedicated server you can manage to avoid most of the variables affecting the reliability and stability of a server, commonly experienced by shared hosting accounts; variables such as: overload, bad codes and scripts from other users (especially beginners); and, too many applications and components uploaded, and so on.

On a dedicated server you will install only software and applications you want to use, while on a shared hosting server you will find a host of other software and applications installed for other users.

By the very nature of the account, a dedicated server: reduces your dependency on the web host; and bypasses time delays and possible expenses incurred from these. With dedicated server hosting you can provide instant support to your own clients whenever required, which is not possible if you are on a shared server. A reliable and fast support service is vital for your own business growth just like the stability and reliability you wish for your own website. In business, reliability is reflected through word-of-mouth as one of the most effective promotional activities.

For people with clients, such as Graphic Designers and Web Designers a dedicated server is invaluable. A dedicated server will bring extra income into the studio, not just as a hosting facility, but, as a designer knows only too well, for the extra bread and butter income value. If you have 24hour access to your own dedicated server then you can adjust, correct or update a clients website in minutes, allowing you to keep the dollar back in your studio and not in someone elses. Ready availability results in reduced labour costs for the client, but higher studio-income frequency for the designer. Hence you will see the return of all your regular offline clients, bringing their web work with them.

The need for a dedicated server to your average shared server user is realized when stats tell you: how quickly people left your site because it was taking too much time to download; or how many daily visitors you are down by, because your site was not up. The true negative is the worry of how many lost visitors could have been your future paying-customers. The loss could easily equal the value of the upgrade to a Dedicated Server!

For a business, a website that is quickly downloadable and up all the time gives the visitor encouragement that your service is just as reliable, hence you will be more likely to make a sale. It will also enhance the companys image and encourage existing customers to refer your service to others. This will result in more sales for less promotion.

If you are serious about your online presence you need to get a Dedicated Server.
Paras Shah
Chief Technology Officer
VIP PowerNet, Inc.
Ph: (713)787-6501
Email: paras@vippowernet.com
http://www.vipwh.com
http://www.vippowernet.com
http://www.thehostingguide.com