Dedicated Servers Definition

When we speak of hosting web servers, there are 3 principal kinds - shared website hosting servers, VPS (virtual web hosting servers) and dedicated servers. Shared servers host lots of clients and therefore the resources per account are limited, virtual private server packages offer more configuration autonomy, but also affect other private virtual web hosting servers on the hardware node if utilized unwisely, and dedicated servers give you the autonomy to perform everything you want without meddling with anyone else.

Why would you require a dedicated server?

Dedicated servers are traditionally much more expensive than shared servers or private virtual web hosting servers. Why would anyone, then, want to use them? The answer is pretty simple. If your corporation has a resource-intensive online portal, or simply has very explicit server configuration requirements, the most logical option is a dedicated server. For somebody who is inclined to invest in security and dependability, the greater price is not an issue. You gain full root privileges and can use 100 percent of the web server's resources without anyone else sharing these resources and intervening with your web portals.

Hardware specs

Most web hosting companies, including us at The Host Office, offer several different hardware configurations you can select from according to your needs. The hardware architectures include different kinds of microprocessors, a different amount of cores, different RAM and hard disk drive sizes and different monthly bandwidth allowances. You can pick a web hosting Control Panel, which is a useful software tool if you want to use the server for hosting purposes solely and prefer not to resort to an SSH console for all the changes you will be making. We provide three types of web hosting CP software - Hepsia, DirectAdmin and cPanel.

The web hosting Control Panel of your choosing

If you are a self-assured Linux OS user (our dedicated hosting servers are running on Linux or other Unix-based OSs), you could administer your dedicated server via a Secure Shell terminal only. That, though, could be awkward, particularly if you wish to give full root privileges to somebody else who has less technical proficiency than yourself. That is why having Control Panel software pre-installed is a smart idea. The Hepsia web hosting CP interface that we provide does not offer complete server root access and is chiefly appropriate for someone who has plenty of sites that devour a lot of resources, but would rather manage the web portals, databases and mail accounts using a user-friendly web hosting CP. The DirectAdmin and cPanel Control Panels, on the other hand, give you full server root privileges and have three access levels - root, reseller and user. If you plan to resell web hosting plans instead of utilizing the dedicated hosting web server only for yourself, you should pick one of these two.

Web server monitoring and backup services

Last but not least, there is the matter of monitoring the dedicated server and of backing it up. In the event of a predicament with your server, such as a non-responsive Apache or a network downtime, it is desirable to have some kind of monitoring system enabled. Here at The Host Office the system administrators monitor all dedicated servers for ping timeouts, and, if you have a Managed Services package, they monitor the individual services on the dedicated server as well. Backups are also an additional option - the web hosting solutions provider offers you data backups on our own backup web servers. You could choose a kind of RAID that would permit you to keep the very same data on 2 hard drives as a precaution in case of a disk drive failure, or in case someone whom you have ranted full server root privileges deletes something unintentionally.