Dedicated Servers Definition

When we speak of hosting web servers, there are three principal categories - hosting servers, VPS (virtual private web servers) and dedicated servers. Shared hosting servers accommodate many customers and thus the system resources per user account are limited, VPS offer more server configuration liberty, but also influence other virtual web servers on the hardware node if utilized heedlessly, and dedicated servers offer you the opportunity to do everything you want without meddling with anyone else.

Why would you need a dedicated servers?

Dedicated servers are traditionally much more high-priced than shared web servers or virtual web hosting servers. Why would anyone, then, want to use them? The answer is rather simple. If your company has a high resource-devouring web portal, or just has very specific server configuration requirements, the right choice is a dedicated servers. For someone who is inclined to invest in safety and dependability, the bigger price is of no concern. You gain complete root-level access and can utilize 100 percent of the dedicated web server's system resources without anyone else sharing these system resources and interfering with your online portals.

Hardware specifications

The majority of web hosting distributors, incl. us at 2U2 Web Hosting, provide several different hardware architectures you can pick from based on your demands. The configurations include different kinds of microprocessors, a different number of cores, different RAM memory and server hard drive sizes and different bandwidth allowances. You can select a hosting CP, which is a convenient graphical user interface if you want to utilize the dedicated servers for website hosting purposes solely and choose not to use an SSH terminal for all the modifications you will be making. We provide 3 kinds of web hosting CP software - Hepsia, DirectAdmin and cPanel.

The web hosting Control Panel of your choosing

If you are a confident Linux user (our dedicated web hosting servers are powered by Linux or other Unix-based OSs), you could manage your dedicated servers through an SSH connection exclusively. That, however, could be inconvenient, even more so if you want to grant root access to somebody else who has less technical proficiency than yourself. That is why having web hosting Control Panel software activated is a good idea. The Hepsia hosting Control Panel GUI that we provide does not include complete root-level access and is chiefly suitable for somebody who runs lots of web sites that swallow plenty of resources, but would rather administer the web sites, databases and email mailboxes via an intuitive web hosting Control Panel. The DirectAdmin and cPanel hosting CPs, on the other hand, grant full server root privileges and include 3 levels of access - root, reseller and user. If you plan to resell web hosting plans instead of using the dedicated servers only for yourself, you should pick one of these two.

Server monitoring and backup procedures

Last but not least, there is the matter of monitoring the dedicated servers and of backing it up. In the event of a problem with your web server, like an unresponsive Apache or an outage, it is good to have some sort of monitoring system activated. Here at 2U2 Web Hosting the system administrators monitor all dedicated servers for ping timeouts, and, if you order a Managed Services upgrade, they monitor the individual services on the dedicated servers as well. Backups are also an extra feature - the web hosting supplier offers you data backups on our own backup servers. You could pick a type of RAID that would permit you to have the same data on 2 hard drives as a protective measure in case of a server disk drive failure, or in case someone whom you have given complete root-level access deletes something by mistake.