You’ve come quite a distance from your fledgling website that only got 2 hundred hits per month. At this point you have a 3 hundred page monster on its way to getting millions of hits per month. You are going to need a better hosting plan than you had before. A much better hosting plan.

Sure, your shared hosting plan worked fine in past times. Ok, well, not counting those intermittent down-times and oh yeh, that other time when someone (one of your competitors, maybe, but most likely an ex-girlfriend) determined your account password and deleted your entire website. But that simply won’t do for the website as it is now. You’ve invested too much time and money into this project and its finally beginning to yield some results. There is no question about any of it: it is advisable to find and review dedicated server plans and choose the right one fast!

A dedicated server is itself, the physical little bit of hardware your hosting provider rents for you. It has its own processor, hard disks(s), Random Access Memory (RAM) and bandwidth capability. Your site and its own associated software will undoubtedly be hosted exclusively on this dedicated server’s hard drives. Dedicated servers allow you to install and run almost any program. They additionally allow other users, whom you have given access, the ability to hook up to your dedicated hosting server and use those same programs simultaneously you do. This has made dedicated servers extremely popular amongst internet gamers. Dedicated gaming servers offer all the same top features of regular dedicated hosting servers however they are designed for less serious pursuits.

But what are the other great things about utilizing dedicated servers? That’s certainly a valid question considering that dedicated server hosting costs significantly more than shared or virtual hosting plans. But with the increased cost comes features and benefits that are significantly worth it.

There are many great things about using dedicated server hosting for your high traffic, software intensive website or gaming application. We’ve listed the most crucial below to steer you in the right direction.

Customization: Most dedicated server hosting plans permit you to fully customize or build your personal dedicated server. It is possible to therefore select and pay for only the features which you will demand. You often are certain to get your choice of operating-system software (Windows Server Edition & Linux Redhat being the most popular options). The selection of such software ought to be informed by considering which system your web applications will run best on. A major feature with dedicated hosting plans is also which control panel to utilize. Plesk and Cpanel control panels will be the hottest choices. Both allows the hosting of multiple domains and websites but Plesk control panels have proven more popular largely because of their ease of use and their capability to facilitate event management, Postgre SQL, Support Ticketing Systems, various Language Packs and advanced dedicated game server hosting.

Reliability: Because your site or application is hosted exclusively on this dedicated server, you don’t run the risk of the server being congested by requests for other people’s websites or applications. On a shared enviroment plan, the speed of which your web application loads depends upon just how much traffic other websites that are on the same shared enviroment server are getting. This causes slow loading times for high traffic websites along with other websites that share a server with them. Dedicated server hosting avoids all of this by affording your online application exclusive bandwidth. Shared enviroment is also risky because you have no idea who is uploading what to the same server you are hosted on. John in Nantucket may be uploading a web application containing an as yet unidentified virus that deletes everything it touches. If your website resides on a single server as John’s, then, to put it technically, you’re screwed. Dedicated hosting avoids all of this and enables you to sleep just a little easier at night.

Security: No-one else has access to your server but you. You are in charge of all its contents so there is absolutely no possibility of viruses or other malicious software if you don’t put them there. Additionally, most dedicated server plans come with the option of an external firewall to help you better enforce your specified access rights.

Unique IP: All dedicated servers have their own unique IP address therefore the IP address of one’s domain points and then your website. Shared hosting plans assign 1 IP address to every domain and website hosted on that one server. Web site traffic is then directed by host-header-reading software installed on the server. This process is usually very quick but can be slowed down on a congested shared server. Cheap Offshore WordPress Hosting Your dedicated server could have its own unique IP address which can only point to your site or web application. No header-reading software is needed to slow down the loading process (unless you decide to host multiple websites).

Upgrades, Upgrades!: Without doubt, your website will continue to grow and so will your budget. Whenever throughout your dedicated server hosting you can add more bandwidth, RAM and boost your processor speed. While some hosting providers will allow you to switch operating systems this is generally not recommended. Make your mind up initially and adhere to one OS. This will save you several hours of tedious software conversions and ‘unexplained’ downtimes.

Other Options:

o Hard Drive Arrangement: If you have opted to have two hard drives on your dedicated server then you can certainly arrange them in another of two ways: Raid 1 or Raid 2. Raid 1 or disk mirroring, enables you to select one hard drive as most of your ‘work from’ hard disk drive while the other hard disk drive serves as an exact copy of the primary drive. This is essential if your web application will contain highly sensitive data relating to your customers or any other unique information. If you are not particularly worried about this type of back-up utility you may decide on a Raid 2 configuration where there exists a primary hard drive with the secondary drive being used after the primary storage becomes full. The Raid hard disk drive arrangements make dedicated server hosting often more reliable than regular non dedicated server hosting.