When upgrading to a dedicated server hosted, it is important to remember that not all dedicated servers are the same. Nor are the hosting solutions that service providers offer. Since it can be hard to know the key features to look for when choosing a provider, we’ve put together this list of the ones we think are the most important.
Here are 8 Essential features of Dedicated Server Hosting
Operating System choices
The freedom to have your own choice of operating system is one of the factors in choosing a dedicated hosting solution. The applications that you need for your business may require a particular type of operating system, such as a Windows Server OS or one of the various Linux distributions. The software you run may, in some circumstances, only be compatible with a legacy version of the OS. Make sure the company that you are going with allows you to run the OS that you need.
Hardware Choices
Always look for a hosting provider that offers plenty of hardware options as dedicated servers can be expensive. This way, you get a hardware setup that has the capabilities and performance you need, without having to pay for something that is far more powerful than you need.
Ideally, you should have a range of options regarding the CPU model, number of cores and rpm, RAM size, RAM type (e.g., DDR3 or DDR4), hard disk power, hard disk form (HDD or SSD), bandwidth and RAID.
Security
If your server is hacked, it could take your IT operations offline and put your company at a standstill. If there is a data breach, the risk of huge fines, reputational damage and legal action against the customer is also present. That’s why 60 per cent of hacked firms go out of business within six months.
With that in mind, when choosing a dedicated hosting provider, security should be a decisive factor. As part of your package and as additional services, you should consider everything from the location and physical security of the datacentre to the range of security features your host provides.
You should look for firewalls of the next generation, intrusion prevention, security of the web app, protection against DDoS, and prevention of malware and viruses. They should also supply SSL certificates, dedicated IP addresses and spam filtering.
First Class Technical Support
There may be occasions when your IT team needs technical support from your service provider to perform a task or troubleshoot a problem. This service should be an integral part of your contract with the company and should be available 24/7 by telephone, email, live chat or ticket.
After all, if on Friday night your dedicated server goes offline, you don’t want to wait until Monday before it becomes fixed.
Technical support is entirely different from the customer support. By technical we mean having a specialist IT team at the point of contact that can provide solutions. They will have the required expertise and will be able to deal actively with any problem.
Apart from person-to-person assistance, a successful hosting company will also be providing a variety of useful online resources for their clients. Such as knowledge bases, guides, technical forums and blog posts on “how-to.”
Server Configuration
What is important is not just the choice of operating system. Another key requirement is being able to have complete control over your server so you can configure it to suit your needs. For example, you might need full root access to SSH / RDP root.
Control Panel Options
Great control panels make management of your server and the applications that you run on it much easier. While vanilla control panels may be enough to meet the needs of some companies, many benefits from using cPanel & WHM (only for Linux servers) or Plesk (now both for Windows and Linux servers).
Easy to navigate and offering a wide range of incredibly powerful integrated management tools, cPanel and Plesk are industry-leading control panels used by millions of businesses around the world.
Server Management
Not only does it make things easier to outsource server management to your service provider; it could also save you significantly over the long run. This service will include things such as OS updates, patching, installation of applications, and monitoring of servers. Server monitoring constantly checks your server’s health and performance to ensure it stays in top condition.
High Availability
If you run critical applications on your server, you cannot afford to go offline. Could have disastrous consequences. That’s why it’s essential that you select a host that can guarantee high availability. That your server stays online for 99.95 percent of the time or more.
If that isn’t good enough for you, we can deliver 100 percent uptime here at eUKhost, guaranteed by SLA.
Conclusion
Dedicated servers offer companies a high-performance, large storage solution for hosting their applications. However, to get the best from your dedicated server, you need to consider a number of options. Such as your choice of operating system, hardware and control panel. Your freedom to configure the server as required, the security, server management and technical support put in place by a provider and the guaranteed up-time offered.
