I own a number of website with varied traffic. I am considering moving to a dedicated server but want to know if it's worthwhile for the huge price increase. 1. What are the main advantages of a dedicated server? 2. How much traffic can a normal (non-dedicated server) handle before it has downtime issues? 3. Where is the best, but most affortable hosting company for dedicated servers? (right now I'm with BlueHost and have several WP websites) Any help would be much appreciated, Thanks
What are the space and bandwidth requirements you are looking for? Maybe you keep in mind server config?
topsurveysites, before answering your questions I would like to ask you some questions: 1) How many sites you have? 2) What is the current traffic of your websites? 3) What is the total amount of bandwidth your sites consume (In total) ? Now come to your questions, Dedicated servers can give you full freedom from any respect. Bandwidth, CPU usage everything. Capacity of dedicated server differs according to its configuration. If you have a Quad core Xeon server (cost $250+/m) than it will be able to handle more traffic than the normal Intel P4 (cost $50-$60/month). There are a lot of firms which can provide you good dedicated server deals. It will depend on your budget and requirement. Managed dedicated servers with cPanel will cost more. Additional RAM or hard disk can add more to the dedicated server price. In your post you said that you have some WP blogs. Do you really think they have too much traffic which can't handle the shared host. Why are you not considering about VPS? I don't think that your WP sites need a dedicated server and you can easily host them in VPS.
Thanks for the help, I own about 5 sites. 1 of which is about to hit the front page of digg, which will drive about 20k traffic in a very short time, and I am unsure if my shared hosting can handle this. Right now on my best site I'm getting 1800UVs/day Thanks
Its always better to have a dedicated server as your sites can use the full resources and u can add whatever you like.
Hi, Total control over resources. You can have anything you want on your server (such as PHP extensions). Depends on your current specifiction and how 'oversold' the host is. For unmanaged servers, check out SoftLayer, LayeredTech and ThePlanet. Jay
If you run a simple text based site, on a simple script like wordpress, with all the optimization done, you won't need to worry for atleast 15000 visitors per day. My experience so far, but sites with lot of graphics causes trouble way before reaching 15000 visitors per day traffic.
On top of that, i think you need a control panel like cpanel, plesk..this will make your life easier when managing all your domains on the server. -- joseph
There is no reason to jump from shared to dedicated. Its a waste of money. If you outgrow your shared then you go to semi-dedicated or VPS. Dedicated servers are only for people who have an extreme amount of traffic, which practically almost no one has.
If your only concerns are bandwidth, CPU cycles and space, then yes, in that case you are 100% correct and have almost no need for a dedicated server. But a server is much more than just hardware. You have more much more control over what applications, scripts, and plug-ins that you can run in the background on a dedicated server as compared to the other options.
Actually a VPS is basically a dedicated server environment. The only difference is that its partitioned because it has to be split up between multiple people on the server, but you get root access and everything and resources are allocated to you at a fixed amount just like as if it was a dedicated. Thats why its called virtual because it gives the illusion of being dedicated.
well it's all down to bandwidth an your sites, I know one guy who has a forum with about 20 worth of hits each day an needs a serious amount of resources and bandwidth, and disk space but he has 5 or 6 other pages that are low under 200 visitors a day so he decided to upgrade from a Virtual server to a Full blown dedicated server (I built it for him quad socket mobo with quad core zions 32 GB ddr2 ram 500 gb raid 5 etc) an he can handle it all now but his Virtual server had daily an hourly brain farts that made me an other admins have to restart the server. A Virtual server is ideal for small to medium application or when you have a number of pages that have a small number of hits a day but when you have a large site with a large number of hits a day a full blown dedicated box is the way to go.
True. Sorry about the quick answer, I'm (always) sleep deprived. To be more particular, I haven't been able to run some specific, demanding WP plugins and, um, "not whitehat" Windows Apps on VPS's. Honestly, my skills could be the limiting factor here, and not the webhost -- but I don't think so and I don't have the time to find out if that's the case. Right now I've got a dedicated server, an "unlimited" account at eboundhost that really isn't all that, and I might switch to running my blogs 100% at home soon. (Have been pricing hardware all day.)
How much did you pay for that server? I've been looking at $450-500ish for a quadcore with 4gb RAM and 500gb hdd. Not counting the OS - got w2k8 for free today, that's why I'm looking at new hardware. Planning on using it as my home workstation, too, and a 2ghz/2gb/160hdd with CentOS for the blogs.
He paid 4k for the whole thing, I built it from scratch in a 4U case. He is lucky an knows a guy who owns a data centre with a OC3 connection an he is allowed to provide his own hardware an this guy will host it. He uses Debian X64 for the OS this forum get's so much trafic a day an one of the other sites is high bandwith with low hits, he sells some software (unsure what) nice guy just just a little inept when it comes to hardware an server issues. Me an a few others give him a hand running it, the main page is a tech community an we just eat bandwidth like crazy.