What is a Dedicated Server Hosting and Why Do You Need it?
Businesses, large or small, have a range of hosting options for their website—shared, VPS, dedicated, and cloud hosting. One of the most common options that businesses use, especially small businesses, is shared hosting, wherein the resources of a single server are shared by multiple websites.
You’ve probably opted for shared hosting when you launched your website first. This is because it’s the most affordable option. However, as your site grows, it’s important to upgrade to the next hosting option to accommodate the high traffic. One of these options is a dedicated server.
What Is Dedicated Server Hosting?
Dedicated server hosting means that your website has its own server. This means you won’t share the server’s resources with multiple applications or websites. In addition, it provides you flexibility and power wherein your users can still have a reliable and consistent user experience even with sudden traffic spikes.
The dedicated servers also give you complete control over the configurations of your server, such as choosing what its security infrastructure would be and which software it would run on.
Broadly, there are two types of dedicated servers—managed and unmanaged. While the managed server is completely managed by the web hosting provider, unmanaged servers need to be managed by the company that is using them.
READ: Managed Dedicated Server: Pros & Cons Your Business Shouldn’t Miss
Why Do You Need a Dedicated Server?
A dedicated server is widely known to be one of the high-performing web hosting options. Hosting your website on a dedicated server is just like owning your house, where you have free reign to do whatever you want. In contrast, shared server hosting is like living in an apartment building where you need to share the resources.
A dedicated server provides 24/7 uptime, full control over the resources, and a lower risk of virus attacks. Moreover, dedicated servers can also be used as game servers or for anything that requires a place for various computers to store as well as read files.
What Are the Advantages of Dedicated Server Hosting over Shared Hosting?
Some of the many noteworthy benefits of dedicated server hosting are:
1. Flexibility
Dedicated Hosting gives you full flexibility to customise the server to your needs for RAM, CPU, software, and disk space. You can choose the software and platform you need, leverage a customisable environment, and enjoy enhanced control over the server’s configuration.
However, with shared hosting, a customer is usually limited to the software, operating environment, and applications that are already loaded on the server. They may either offer software that you might not need or lack important features that you may need.
2. Offers a Greater Degree of Reliability
When your website is hosted on shared hosting, there is a high chance that the performance of your website may degrade during traffic or usage spikes. High bounce rates as well as loss of revenue are common consequences in such a scenario.
On the other hand, a dedicated server ensures that your app or website always runs smoothly and fast, even during peak traffic hours. Until you have configured your device correctly, users will always enjoy a good experience, irrespective of how much traffic the server is processing.
3. High Levels of Scalability
Dedicated server hosting enables you to scale up or down the server resources based on your current hosting requirements. You can easily request more storage space, bandwidth, or processing power, and the provider will adjust the server to meet new requirements.
However, when you request a setup update, their internal team would need time to build the configuration, procure parts, and set it up. Few custom configurations may take hours to deploy or sometimes even days if you have an on-premises server.
To leverage the maximum benefit of a dedicated server, you must schedule your scaling plans carefully. Align the server changes with your business plan instead of adding or removing components regularly while causing unnecessary downtime.
4. Unique IP Address
Multiple clients that are hosted on a shared server operate from the same IP address. And if any one of them starts practicing black hat SEO (practices against the guidelines of the search engine) or spamming, search engines may penalise the IP address—thus, impacting every website hosted on that server.
Businesses that opt for dedicated hosting get a unique IP address. You won’t have to worry about the activities of other websites as it’s just you who is responsible for your server’s IP address’s health. This feature is important for hosting an e-commerce website or a dedicated mail server that processes credit cards.
5. Superior Security
Dedicated Hosting is one of the widely preferred options for any company with high-security needs. With this, most of your security issues like suffering a virus or malware attack from a server tenant, facing downtime, losing access because of another website experiencing a DDoS attack, or the fear of accidental or malicious neighbour impacting your application or website, are eliminated.
The in-house measures of a provider contribute to high levels of security. These capabilities include real-time server monitoring and high-level protection against cybersecurity attacks.
Moreover, dedicated hosting enables you to tailor the hosting to your security needs and customise the protection measures. Complete control over the server allows you to deploy the solutions besides the safeguards of the provider. You can use any malware and anti-virus program, limit admin access, protect data with encryption at rest, and force users to update their credentials regularly.
How to Choose the Ideal Dedicated Server Hosting Provider for Your Website’s Needs
Choosing the right dedicated hosting provider is crucial. Before you make any decision, you should do your research to ensure that the services they offer fit your business’s needs. Some of the factors that you should consider are:
Customisation: Check if the hosting provider offers both Windows and Linux options, if you can partition the hard drive space as per your requirements, and which type of hardware options are available.
Stability: This is the measure of the server’s overall accessibility, performance, and usability. To ensure this and minimise the chances of costly outages, always opt for the service provider that offers 99.9% uptime.
Customer support: Look for a dedicated server hosting provider that provides 24/7 customer support with multiple contact options (like email, live chat, and telephone). You’ll need technical help with a quick response time whenever you face a problem with your server.
Security: Dedicated servers are much more secure than any of the shared options, but that does not mean you are 100% safe from hackers. To ensure website security, look for a hosting provider that deploys advanced and robust security measures.
Select a Dependable Hosting Provider Today
For your website to perform its best despite sudden surges of traffic, you must choose a reliable hosting provider for your dedicated hosting. This is where BigRock’s dedicated hosting plans come in handy. We guarantee enhanced performance, flexibility, storage, reliability, and scalability to ensure maximum performance of your website.
Talk with our representatives today to know more.
