How Dedicated Servers Work

When we talk about web hosting servers, there are three main types - shared web hosting web servers, VPS (private virtual web hosting servers) and dedicated servers. Shared web hosting servers accommodate multiple customers and thus the system resources per hosting account are limited, VPS packages give you more configuration autonomy, but also affect other private virtual hosting servers on the hardware node if used unwisely, and dedicated servers offer you the option to perform everything you prefer without messing with anyone else.

Why would you require a dedicated server?

Dedicated servers are typically much more expensive than shared web hosting servers or private virtual hosting servers. Why would anyone, then, use them? The explanation is quite simple. If your firm has a high resource-swallowing website, or simply has very specific web server architecture requirements, the most relevant option would be a dedicated server. For someone who is inclined to invest in security and reliability, the higher price is not a concern. You have root-level access and can utilize 100% of the physical machine's resources without anyone else sharing these resources and intervening with your sites.

Hardware specs

The majority of hosting companies, including us at Fast PHP Hosting, offer several different hardware architectures you can choose from in accordance with your requirements. The hardware architectures offer different varieties of processors, a different amount of cores, different RAM and hard disk sizes and different monthly traffic usage quotas. You can pick a hosting CP, which is a convenient graphical user interface if you would like to use the dedicated web server for hosting purposes solely and prefer not to resort to an SSH terminal for all the modifications you will be making. We provide three kinds of hosting Control Panel software - Hepsia, DirectAdmin and cPanel.

The hosting Control Panel of your choosing

If you are a confident Linux OS user (our web hosting servers are powered by Linux or other Unix-based Operating Systems), you could manage your dedicated server through an SSH client only. That, though, could be inconvenient, even more so if you wish to grant complete server root access to someone else who has less technical experience than yourself. This is why having web hosting CP software activated is a brilliant idea. The Hepsia web hosting CP software tool that we offer does not offer full server root privileges and is chiefly appropriate for someone who maintains numerous websites that devour lots of resources, but would rather administer the websites, databases and mails using an easy-to-use hosting CP. The DirectAdmin and cPanel web hosting Control Panels, on the other hand, grant root privileges and have three levels of access - root, reseller and user. If you plan to resell web hosting plans instead of utilizing the dedicated server solely for yourself, you should select one of these two.

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 predicament with your dedicated hosting web server, like an unresponsive Apache or a network outage, it is good to have some sort of monitoring platform enabled. Here at Fast PHP Hosting 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 too. Backups are also a bonus option - the web hosting services provider offers you data backups on our own backup servers. You could pick a kind of RAID that would allow you to save the same data on 2 hard disks as a precaution in the event of a server hard disk failure, or in case someone whom you have given complete root-level access erases something by accident.