Select a Web Server Dedicated to Your Success

If you have a successful online business, you might want to consider looking for dedicated web hosting. The dedicated web hosting gives you the opportunity of having an entire server at your disposal, and that server is not shared with anybody else.

Even for a person who doesn't know too much about servers, the advantages are clear right from the start: you, as the webmaster, have full control over YOUR OWN server, including options of what operating system to use, the type of hardware, etc. You can customize everything according to your own personal desires, while the administration is handled by the hosting company.

The most important advantage of using an online dedicated web hosting is that your website performance (like loading time, which is an important factor for your visitors) will not be affected by the traffic of the other websites with which you would have been sharing your server's bandwidth.

The online dedicated web hosting environment provides you with an exclusive server or servers devoted to the sole purpose of serving yourself and your business only. You do not share hard disk space with other customers, and you avoid shared hosting.

Before dedicated web hosting existed, a web site developer used to have two hosting options, the low-priced shared hosting model and the premium-priced dedicated web hosting. A person who bought space on a shared host would get a certain amount of disk space and monthly transfer, and would have the web site served from a common web server.

The hosting company, in its' attempt to increase the popularity of their products, would provide a wide range of options for the web site developer. But, limitations would still be there. For example, if a customer needed a non-standard program installed or maybe wanted to use a privileged account in order for a particular utility to run, he would be completely not be able to achieve these goals.

A good example would be a web site which required a database to store the precious information in. Many hosting companies provide the standard MySQL database to use on their servers. If your application requires another type of database though, then it could prove to be incompatible with the shared hosting account. And trust me, databases are a very important element in the success of your internet business.

A dedicated web server can be customized anyway you want. But, there's also a catch. Because it can handle much more traffic than a shared hosting account, the far better performance doesn't come cheap. On average, dedicated web hosting can cost the savvy webmaster hundreds of dollars per month depending on the size of the server, network connectivity and the amount of management required from the hosting company.

Webmasters who don't quite fit into the standard shared hosting model and find that it doesn't work for them, or whose sites grow very popular and require a large amount of resources have the alternative of dedicated web hosting.

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Hard Disks for Web Servers Explained

A web server's hard disk drives are vital because they are where your website data is actually stored. There are several important technical terms to describe hard disk performance. They sound complicated at first, but they are actually very simple. Knowing what these terms mean can help you to choose a hard disk drive, or understand whether a web hosting company is giving you a good deal on a server. Here are the main terms used to describe hard disk drives.

Capacity-- How much data can be stored on the drive. This is measured in Gigabytes (GB). Note that hard disk manufacturers use what is known as a decimal Gigabyte, which is 10 to the power 9 or 1,000,000,000 bytes. Computers use what is known as a binary Gigabyte, which is 2 to the power 30 or 1,073,741,824 bytes. Therefore the hard disk capacity in GB claimed by the manufacturer is smaller than the number your computer will report. This has been standard practise for many years, but it can catch out beginners. You will need to choose a disk with several times more capacity than your website takes up, in order to leave space for future growth.

Spindle Speed-- This is simply how fast the platters (the hard metal disks that store the data) rotate. It is usually between 5,400 and 15,000 rpm. In a low to mid range web server you should be looking for a 7,200 rpm drive. A high end server would have 10,000 or 15,000 rpm drives. The faster the spindle speed, the faster the drive can read and write data, so faster is better.

Seek time-- A measure of how long it takes for a hard disk drive to move its heads to the correct part of the platters to find the data that it is looking for. This is measured in milliseconds (ms). This will be somewhere around 10 ms, give or take 5 ms. The lower the figure, the faster the drive finds the data.

Cache-- The drive stores some data in Random Access Memory known as the cache buffer. It is much faster to access the buffer than it is to find data on the drive. The drive controller keeps data that you have recently used in the cache in case you need it again, and it also reads data from the disk that it thinks you might ask for next. This makes it faster to access data, so long as the data you asked for is in the cache. Otherwise the drive will have to find it on disk. Cache memory is especially important for accessing small, frequently used files. Cache sizes start from around 8 Megabytes, the more the better.

Sustained Transfer Rate-- How fast the drive can transfer large files that do not fit into the cache buffer, or small files that were not in the cache. In other words, this is the maximum rate that the drive can read files from the disk itself. The greater the rate, the better, especially if most of your data is stored in large files.

Interface-- This is the connection between the drive and the computer's processor. Older servers use PATA, also known as Parallel ATA or IDE. Newer servers use SATA, also known as Serial ATA. High-end, expensive servers use SCSI, and very high-end servers use Fibre Channel. If you are just starting out with your first dedicated web server, you will probably want a SATA hard drive.

RAID-- This is where two or more hard disks are connected together, which gives improved speed and/or reliability compared to a single hard disk drive. You should consider RAID hard disks for your web server to improve reliability.

Now you know the vocabulary, you will be better able to choose hard disk drives when you rent or buy a web server.

Jimmy Martin is a writer and webmaster. You can read more of his guides at www.eejitsguides.com

Advantages Of A Dedicated Server

 

Many websites are hosted on a shared web hosting server. The main reason is the cost. A shared web hosting server costs a great deal less than a dedicated server. The number of sites on a shared web hosting server can be anywhere from 1500 to 2000 sites. The number of sites on the shared web hosting server will vary due to availability of disk space, allowed bandwidth per site and overall speed. Although shared web hosting is reliable and has minimal problems, there are advantages to host your site(s) on a dedicated server.

A dedicated server for your web hosting allows you to have a server solely dedicated to your site(s). In addition, a dedicated server will allow you complete authority to control and administer your server. When and if you decide on a dedicated server for your web hosting, you should have a fair understanding of dedicated servers. Although most dedicated server web hosting providers will provide technical support, you will find it a lot easier if you have the technical expertise to manage the server yourself. However, if you find that you will not be able to manage your server by yourself, opt for a managed dedicated server hosting. This option is especially for those who want to have dedicated web hosting but do not have the required expertise to manage it. This service allows you to have an entire server managed by a specialized hosting company. The cost of a managed dedicated server is quite expensive. Therefore, if you think that you can run and manage your website server by yourself, you should opt for an unmanaged dedicated server web hosting rather than a managed dedicated server.

You should consider a dedicated server web hosting when you find that the traffic to your site has increased substantially and your site is taking too much time to load. An analysis of the traffic to your site will tell you whether you should go to a dedicated server. The main thing to understand is that when you have many users working concurrently on your website, you should replace your shared web hosting with a dedicated server web hosting.

Since a dedicated server web hosting does not share its server with other websites (like shared web hosting), you will find that you have a lot more command over your server operation and its bandwidth. One of the advantageous features of dedicated server web hosting is that it can also be remotely configured and operated. The only obstacle is the cost. You are required to pay a lot more for your dedicated server web hosting as compared to your shared web hosting. Nevertheless, the facilities more than compensate for the cost.

When you choose a dedicated server web hosting provider, you should keep in mind that it should provide you good network stability, reliable operation, and the ease of operation of sophisticated applications. A dedicated server web hosting provider can be the perfect solution for anyone who is serious about his online presence.: For more information about a dedicated server and web hosting, visit http://www.dedicatedserveranswers.com and http://www.webhostinginfoguide.com