Thursday, June 26, 2008

When Is a Dedicated Server Needed?

By Ricardo d Argence

You had many choices to make when you made the decision to start your own website. Most likely you were offered many design choices, email addresses, blogging interfaces, and e-commerce choices. Once your decision is made on everything above, it is necessary to decide about hosting and the different kinds you would like for your website. Most of the people start the computer business in a small manner and hence they would not need too much on the hosting server. A lot of people decide to go with basic or deluxe shared hosting.

Shared hosting means that multiple websites are being hosted on a particular single server. Typically the simple and small business owner finds this to be okay, but say your business is gaining momentum, or if your website processes client matters that are top secret. Are you going to be worried if someone hacks into your website that will cause havoc even on your server? Is there a legitimate way to ensure that your server, files and databases are secure from anyone else accessing them? Of course there is. That assurance arrives in the style of a dedicated server.

In contrast to other types of servers, a dedicated server is distinct. Not like a shared server that is not secure. When hosting companies get customers ready to host, the selection of shared servers is used often, hard drive space and monthly bandwidth is shared by each customer on the server. If you use this method, you can have a lot of security issues with people on that server. The complete opposite of this is a dedicated server.

There is nothing on that server but your website and yourself. Having a dedicated server means it is used only by you. A dedicated server would be a good idea if you are running a highly confidential website such as a banking institution, doctor's website, high traffic ecommerce site, and anything with content-sensitive material.

Dedicated servers are popular with financial and medical institutions. Your host company should be able to provide you, at your request, with a dedicated server. But beware, unlike shared hosting, dedicated server hosting can be be expensive, because you have your very own server. No other person or entity will be able to contribute to the cost with you. You can check with your current company to learn dedicated server options that best meet your website needs.

There are many benefits to using a dedicated server. Security is one of the main benefits. You dont have to worry about people hacking your website anymore. The complete server and everything inside is yours. You have maximum storage space, more bandwidth, data transfer, and above all you have your own control panel.

Most control panels use Plesk Cpanel. And with the Cpanel come the many choices in software, for instance: Wordpress, PHPBB, Joomla (CMS), Drupal, Siteframe, phplinks, MySQL databases, phpAdmin, apache, and the list goes on! However, as mention before dedicated servers can get very expensive. Sometimes it's cheaper to get a dedicated server as opposed to renting shared space per month and per year.

Take all these things into consideration and then ponder over them for a while. Before making your choice to switch to a dedicated server or to stay with a shared server, decide whether or not you can risk any compromises in your website's security. It's better to be safe than sorry. If you deal with credit cards and other personal information on your site, you should really consider switching to a dedicated server hosting plan.

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