The classic way to develop a successful site is as follows: at the beginning, it is hosted on a shared hosting and shares server resources with other projects (the estimated traffic limit at this stage is 500-1000 people per day); then the site grows to VIP hosting or VPS, where it is located almost on allocated resources (up to 5000-10000 visitors per day); Further, the project already requires the resources of a physical dedicated server.
In this article, I would like to give some advice to webmasters on how to approach the issue of choosing a dedicated physical server.
1. Where to place the server?
The choice of server colocation is significantly affected by the nature of the audience of your project. If the site is aimed at an audience of runet – the best option would be to host a server in UK or Ukraine. If the project is designed for an English-speaking audience, your choice in the USA, Germany, the Netherlands or other European countries. For example, the European network of data centers Lease Web offers servers in all these countries and has many resellers in the CIS. The advantages and disadvantages of renting servers through reseller resellers will be discussed below.
You need to understand that if the server with the site is geographically far removed from the place of residence of most visitors (say, it is located on a different continent), this may cause additional delays and other access problems.
The subject of the project sometimes also imposes restrictions on the choice of location for hosting the server. If the content of the site directly or indirectly conflicts with the legislation of your state, it is better to protect yourself from possible problems and rent a server abroad, in a country where the legislation allows the placement of such projects without consequences.
2. What is the difference between renting a server directly in the data center and resellers?
At first glance it seems that it is always best to rent a server directly from the selected data center, avoiding intermediaries. This is true only if we are talking about renting a server in you’re or neighbouring country: you really will not have any problems either paying for services or communicating with the support service. And renting a server through intermediaries, in this case, will not bring noticeable benefits, except, perhaps, for small discounts – resellers rent servers at partner prices and may well provide them.
If you plan to rent a server abroad, you should take a closer look at resellers, because, firstly, there may be problems or inconvenience in paying data center bills, and secondly, difficulties in interacting with the support service just like in the last article for cheap email hosting. It is better to give preference not to those resellers who offer the lowest prices, but to official partners of data centers. Such resellers almost always have their service delivery regulations (SLA), which also provides advanced technical support. The advantage of being able to pay for services in any convenient way is also obvious, and the discount that resellers can provide will be a nice addition.
3. What should I pay attention to when renting a server?
So, you have decided in which country you will rent the best dedicated server hosting UK, and how – directly, or through a reseller intermediary. What’s next? What factors are crucial when renting a server, and which factors can be neglected?
Check the possibility of receiving discounts on the server, even if these discounts are not officially announced. If the project involves renting a server for a long period, then it is more profitable to pay rent for example for six months, and almost every provider can provide a discount of about 10-15% when renting a server for such a period.
Check the actual speed of the network connection, which is allocated by the provider to the server. The fact that the server is connected to the Shared 100 Mbps port does not mean at all that you can count on such speed. Most likely, you will be provided with a stable 10-25 Mbps, with the possibility of using the port at 100% in peaks. It is also important to know if there is a division of traffic into incoming/outgoing, domestic/foreign, and so on.
Find out what monthly traffic volume you can count on and under what conditions its cost overrun is paid. These restrictions are not always indicated.
Check if you are dealing with a new machine or if the server was previously used. New hard drives must be installed on the server! This is the most vulnerable element of the system, and if the disks even have normal test results, but are not new, the risk of data damage or data loss due to their wear increases. It is also necessary to clarify under what conditions server nodes are replaced when they fail. This should be done free of charge and only at the expense of the provider.
Can your colocation hosting provider offer you access to server management through KVM (remote access to the server at the hardware level – the ability to install the OS from the disk, configure the BIOS, and so on), and access to remote power management and server reboot? These are very convenient options that reduce the need for technical support services from the provider to a minimum.
Besides, be sure to think about organizing backups by colocation UK that will be hosted on another server. Do not forget that the safety of your data is only your responsibility.
We hope this article will save you from pitfalls when choosing a dedicated server and will help you make the right choice.
