Understanding the nuances of dedicated servers can indeed feel like a deep dive into technical jargon. But let’s break it down to make it more digestible.
What is a Server?
A server is, fundamentally, a physical computer hardware unit housed in specialized data centers globally. Its primary purpose is to perform specific functions by processing requests.
To grasp this, it’s helpful to understand the concept of a “client.” In computing, a “client” refers to an electronic device (like your laptop or mobile phone) that makes a specific request for a server to perform an action.
Think of a server like a powerful CPU: it’s physical hardware that processes requests to carry out certain functions. For example, when you type a URL into your browser’s search bar (your device acting as the client), a request is sent to a server to load that page. The server then processes your request and delivers the web page’s content back to your screen.
This is just one of many functions a server can perform. Different types of servers specialize in different functions. In the example above, the server responsible for loading web pages is called a web server, which performs functions related to web hosting. Other servers, like email servers, are used to host email accounts and facilitate email migrations.
What is a Dedicated Server and What is Dedicated Server Hosting?
As its name implies, dedicated server hosting means that a business has a server computer entirely to itself. The hosting provider is the organization that supplies the physical server, a secure location to store it, and associated services such as technical support.
It’s crucial to distinguish between classifications of servers here. Web, email, and Domain Name Servers (DNS) are classifications based on function. In contrast, dedicated, shared, and virtual private servers (VPS) are classifications based on the number of sites or users hosted on the server. For instance, a web server can be either dedicated or shared.
Are They Worth It: Why Should You Consider Dedicated Server Hosting?
Dedicated server hosting offers significant advantages in specific scenarios, making them a worthwhile investment for many.
1. Your Website is Growing and Needs to Handle Increased Traffic
If you anticipate rapid growth for your website and desire scalability for your business, opting for a dedicated server early on can be a wise move. In a shared hosting environment, your site competes with others for the hosting provider’s resources to load web pages efficiently.
When your traffic spikes, your site’s performance could drop significantly. This can lead to a domino effect, negatively impacting other marketing and sales metrics like higher bounce rates and lower conversion rates. User experience (UX) will also suffer. Without preparations for a more robust server, your site could even crash under very high traffic loads.
Using dedicated server hosting is key in helping you scale your business.
2. Page Loading Speeds Will Plunge
Page loading times significantly impact almost every aspect of your website. Slow pages can lead to poor user engagement metrics and high bounce rates. You certainly don’t want your audience leaving your site for competitors’ pages due to speed issues.
Furthermore, page speed, along with site responsiveness and visual stability, are measured by a set of metrics called Core Web Vitals. Google has confirmed these are official SEO ranking factors. This means persistent page load speed issues could lead Google to deprioritize your site in search results. Google, as a business, aims to serve high-quality web pages to its users.
Opting for a dedicated server will provide the bandwidth you need to significantly enhance your page loading times. Server bandwidth refers to the amount of data that can be transferred between a server and its users within a specific time period. Higher bandwidth allows more data to be transferred faster, which is crucial for quick page loads.
3. Security is a Concern for Your Website
Security is paramount for every website, especially those handling sensitive information such as confidential emails, credit card numbers, or customer data. Protecting this information and your website from viruses, hacks, and other risks is crucial.
With a dedicated server, you are completely in charge of your site’s security. This allows you to optimize security features for the specific requirements of your website and its stored files. Of course, this also means you’re responsible for implementing these features, which is a key benefit of the flexibility a dedicated server provides.
However, many hosts offer fully-managed and semi-managed maintenance plans. This allows you to specify what responsibilities both you and your host will undertake, enabling you to entrust mission-critical functionality to experts while managing other concerns directly.
4. Having Control Over Your Server is Important to You
The final reason to choose a dedicated server is simple: control. Dedicated hosting gives you complete responsibility over how you utilize your server.
For instance, you’re free to choose your preferred server software. If you favour the resource control of NGINX over Apache, you have the power to do so. NGINX (pronounced “engine-x”) and Apache are both popular open-source web server software. NGINX is known for its high performance, efficiency, and ability to handle many concurrent connections, often used as a reverse proxy or for serving static content. Apache, while also powerful, uses a more process-driven model and is known for its flexibility and extensive module support.
You can also adjust hardware specifications and install your own operating system (OS). An operating system is the software that manages computer hardware and software resources, providing common services for computer programs. For servers, common OS choices include various Linux distributions (like Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian) or Windows Server. Linux is a popular open-source Unix-like operating system known for its stability, security, and flexibility, making it a common choice for servers.
Furthermore, you gain direct access to all the tools needed to manage your website’s folders via control panels like cPanel, Web Host Manager (WHM), databases, email accounts, SSL certificates, subdomains, and more. cPanel is a web-based control panel that helps you manage your website and hosting account. WHM (WebHost Manager) is a control panel used by hosting providers to manage multiple cPanel accounts on a server. Plesk Obsidian Webhost Edition is another popular web hosting control panel, similar to cPanel, offering a comprehensive interface for server and website management, particularly useful for web hosts.
You can even choose your server’s data center, ensuring the best possible speeds between your website or application and its global visitors. Because of this extensive control, dedicated hosting is an enticing option for advanced web developers and those with unique and specific requirements.
How Many Websites Can You Host on a Dedicated Server?
The number of websites you can host on a dedicated server depends heavily on the type of websites and the server’s resources:
- Static HTML Sites: If you mainly plan to host static HTML sites, a server with large hard drive space and fast spindle speed is key. You can easily host 250 to 500 websites on one such server.
- CMS-Based Sites (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal): If most of your sites use Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, you’ll need to increase the processing power (CPU) and memory (RAM) on the web server to handle the load. A medium-sized dedicated server might be suitable for up to 150 websites in this scenario.
Dedicated Server Aside, What Other Types of Servers Are There?
You might be asking, what’s the difference between a dedicated and non-dedicated server?
1) Shared Server vs. Dedicated Server
Unlike a dedicated server, a shared server hosts multiple websites simultaneously. It’s akin to having one large computer where everyone shares resources. Files, databases, email accounts, etc., are all stored on the same physical machine.
If you’re just starting out, shared hosting might be fine. But consider what happens when your blog or business gets popular. Shared hosting is great for smaller sites, but once your traffic starts growing significantly, you’ll likely need to upgrade. When running multiple web servers, each needs access to the same data, making it harder to scale quickly as everything must work together. This poses not only a security threat but can also impact your site’s performance, as server resources are divided among all hosted sites.
On the other hand, a dedicated server is like having your own computer. Your site has its own isolated space, separate file storage, database, email account, etc. You don’t have to worry about compatibility issues from other users, and you can customize every aspect of your environment. You could even run multiple dedicated servers as virtual instances on the same physical machine (though this leads into VPS territory), effectively giving you benefits of both worlds, but with more defined isolation.
2) Virtual Private Server (VPS) vs. Dedicated Server
As the term suggests, a Virtual Private Server (VPS) is virtually similar to a shared server in the sense that multiple sites are hosted on the same physical server. However, unlike a traditional shared server where resources are freely shared among all sites, sites hosted on a VPS have a micro-environment that mimics a dedicated server.
Because of this isolated micro-environment, VPS offers better hosting than shared servers as it doesn’t require open sharing of resources and provides higher security. You can think of hosting your site on a shared server as renting a room in an apartment, while VPS hosting is like renting an entire apartment in a building. You can overcome the challenges of shared hosting, but the benefits aren’t quite as extensive as dedicated hosting. The suitability of VPS versus dedicated hosting depends on your specific needs.
Who Should Use Dedicated Hosting?
Dedicated hosting is not for everyone, but it is ideal for specific types of users and businesses:
1) Midsize to Large Companies
These companies typically manage large websites with numerous web pages and extensive amounts of data. If your business involves large databases, complex supply chain infrastructure, and thousands of e-commerce transactions per hour, a dedicated web server is essential.
2) System Administrators, Developers, and Information Technology Businesses
For system administrators, developers, and IT professionals who need to customize their server environments to meet specific needs and run resource-intensive websites—including software development kits (SDKs), cloud platforms, and content management systems—dedicated servers remain the best choice for hosting requirements due to the deep control they offer.
3) Agencies and Web Hosting Resellers
Many agencies and web hosting resellers require dedicated servers to host their clients’ websites. A dedicated server allows them to manage multiple client sites efficiently without the complexities of juggling numerous web hosts.
How to Get and Set Up a Dedicated Server?
1) Choose a Reliable Hosting Service Provider
As with any service-based industry, countless companies offer dedicated server hosting. To identify trustworthy providers, assess the strength of their customer support services. A reliable business prioritizes helping customers with any issues they face. GoDaddy, for instance, emphasizes direct access to their customer support team for quick query resolution.
2) Decide if You Want Help Managing It
If you’re not a highly technical person or don’t have a technical team member, you might want to consider managed dedicated hosting services.
Opt for managed dedicated hosting services if you need professional expertise in setting up and managing your server. GoDaddy’s managed dedicated hosting service provides:
- 24/7 technical support and server management: Experts monitor your server around the clock.
- Managed updates and patching: Automatic updates for servers, ensuring they’re current.
- 99.9% server uptime guaranteed: Server uptime is the period during which a server is operational and available for use. A 99.9% guarantee means the server is expected to be available for 99.9% of the time, minimizing downtime.
- Monitoring and alerts: Tools to monitor server uptime, resources (CPU, RAM, Storage), and domains, with alert notifications.
- Security with a free SSL certificate: 24/7 network monitoring with advanced DDoS protection, and a dedicated IP address for the first year.
- Support in scaling your business: Worry-free server upgrades and management as your business grows.
- Higher availability and faster performance: RAID1 mirrored disk drives for faster read performance and data redundancy in case of disk failure.
- Easy access to your website’s folders: Control panels like cPanel/WHM or Plesk Obsidian Webhost Edition for easy server administration and access to website folders for technical implementations.
3) Choose Between HDD or SSD NVMe Disk Types
Different business needs dictate different disk types:
- HDDs (Hard Disk Drives): Traditional spinning disks that offer the highest disk space storage capacities, but are not the fastest options.
- SSD NVMe (Solid State Drive Non-Volatile Memory Express): For high demand on read/write performance, SSDs are much faster than HDDs due to their lack of moving parts. NVMe SSDs use the NVMe interface specification for PCI Express-based solid drives, providing significantly stronger computing power and handling heavier workloads. NVMe drives bypass the bottlenecks of the older ATA interface, delivering up to 4X better IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) than the fastest SAS option available.
4) Choose Between the Different Hosting Plans
GoDaddy offers separate hosting plans for managed and self-managed dedicated server hosting. (Note: Specific pricing tables would be inserted here, as per the original article’s context, but as an AI, I cannot provide real-time pricing data. Users would need to check GoDaddy’s website for current rates.)
And that’s it!
This covers everything you need to know about dedicated servers and how to set one up yourself. If you’re seeking powerful server capabilities, deep server access, complete control, and flexible configurations, dedicated server hosting with isolated resources is ideal for securely running mission-critical applications and those where processing time latency and uptime are crucial.
Setting up an unmanaged dedicated server requires a certain level of technical expertise. If you’re not inclined towards unmanaged services and need assistance, GoDaddy’s managed dedicated server hosting service offers technical support for setup and ongoing server management, along with 24/7 support for all your queries.