Dedicated Servers Definition

When we talk about hosting web servers, there are three main varieties - shared web hosting servers, VPS (virtual web servers) and dedicated servers. Shared web servers accommodate multiple customers and hence the resources per hosting account are restricted, VPS accounts offer more configuration freedom, but also influence other private virtual web servers on the hardware node if used heedlessly, and dedicated servers give you the independence to perform everything you please without intervening with anyone else.

Why would you need a dedicated server?

Dedicated servers are typically much more high-priced than shared web servers or private virtual web servers. Why would anyone, then, want to use them? The explanation is rather simple. If your company has a high resource-consuming website, or just has very exact server architecture requirements, the best choice is a dedicated server. For somebody who is inclined to invest in security and stability, the greater price is not an issue. You are granted complete server root access and can use 100 percent of the physical server's system resources without anyone else utilizing these system resources and intervening with your web portals.

Hardware specs

The majority of hosting providers, including us at DomainsVM, provide several different hardware configurations you can pick from according to your needs. The hardware architectures offer different types of processors, a different amount of cores, different RAM memory and disk drive sizes and different bandwidth quotas. You can choose a hosting CP, which is a convenient GUI if you want to use the dedicated server for web hosting purposes only and prefer not to resort to an SSH client for all the changes you will be making. We provide three types of Control Panel software - Hepsia, DirectAdmin and cPanel.

The web hosting CP of your choice

If you are a self-reliant Linux OS user (our dedicated hosting web servers are powered by Linux or other Unix-based Operating Systems), you could administer your dedicated server via an SSH client only. That, though, could be awkward, even more so if you want to give complete server root access to somebody else who has less technical abilities than yourself. This is why having hosting Control Panel software installed is an excellent idea. The Hepsia hosting Control Panel GUI that we provide does not offer full server root access and is mainly appropriate for someone who runs many web sites that swallow a lot of system resources, but desires to manage the sites, databases and electronic mails through an intuitive hosting CP. The DirectAdmin and cPanel hosting CPs, on the other hand, grant full server root access and offer 3 access levels - root, reseller and user. If you plan to resell web hosting packages rather than using the web hosting server solely for yourself, you should select one of these two.

Web server monitoring and backup procedures

Last but not least, there is the issue of monitoring the dedicated server and of backing it up. In case of a problem with your dedicated hosting web server, such as a non-responsive Apache or a network outage, it is good to have some kind of monitoring platform activated. Here at DomainsVM 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 a bonus option - the web hosting solutions provider offers you data backups on our own backup servers. You could select a type of RAID that would permit you to have the very same data on two server disk drives as a protective measure in the event of a hard drive failure, or in case someone whom you have ranted complete root access erases something unintentionally.