Renting a dedicated server: which businesses will benefit

When launching your own online service, blog, marketplace or other project, the question of storing and processing data has to be settled — and that means choosing a suitable type of hosting. Shared hosting cannot fully deliver fast, stable operation for high-load projects, so a virtual or a dedicated server is the better choice for large web services.

In the general case a virtual server costs less. There are situations, though, where you need to use the full power of a large processor, need more memory, or have to store large volumes of data. In such cases a VPS may not be enough and you will need to rent a dedicated server, whose capacity will host your site or online application alone.

What is the difference between a VPS and a dedicated server?

Let us work out the difference between a virtual and a dedicated server.

A VPS — a virtual private server — is a portion of the computing power and disk space of a physical server. A VPS imitates the workings of a physical server and is meant to store and process the data of one client. But a virtualisation server holds many client VPSs, and the hardware's resources are divided between them, so the full power of the physical machine cannot be used.

The main advantages of this solution:

1. you get a guaranteed share of the server's resources for your needs alone;
2. everything is there for installing your software;
3. the server's settings can be changed if needed;
4. you have root access to the server.

Managing such a server is harder than managing ordinary hosting, but that difference is not significant for anyone launching their own and their clients' online projects with the relevant skills. There are also plenty of server control panels that make the process considerably easier.

A dedicated server is a physical server sitting in a data centre, with reliable power, maintenance and the highest uptime figures.

Dedicated servers are the optimal solution for large projects. The main advantages of this kind of hosting:

1. full control and the ability to configure everything to suit you;
2. the maximum amount of resources and power, which you do not have to share with other clients;
3. the ability to install any software and run large projects on the server;
4. the highest security for your information.

How do you choose the dedicated server that is right for you?

Let us work out how to pick a dedicated server to fit your tasks and needs. There are a great many offers on the hosting market, and not every client knows what to look at when choosing.

When weighing up each option, we recommend paying attention to things such as:

1. the type and characteristics of the processor;
2. the RAM available;
3. the disk space you will be able to use;
4. the operating system installed on the server;
5. the location of the physical servers being offered to you;
6. whether remote access through KVM is available;
7. the volume of traffic the server will take (ideally it should be unlimited);
8. the speed and stability of the connection;
9. how promptly the technical support specialists work.

Differences in the price of renting dedicated hosting

The cost of renting a dedicated server depends on its specifications. We would not recommend renting a server with capacity you obviously do not need — that way you will not pay for resources you never use. All the same, some resources in reserve are needed for a project to feel comfortable, during a rush of visitors in an advertising campaign, for instance.

When should you rent a dedicated server?

Let us model a situation. Say you own a web resource whose traffic keeps growing and already runs to thousands of visits a day. At some point the load becomes too great and the virtual server cannot cope: the site starts showing errors, dragging, perhaps failing entirely for a while. In that case moving to a dedicated server will be the only right decision.

Your site will be stored on its own physical server. That makes the project entirely independent of other clients, since nobody else will be using the hardware's resources.

There are other situations where a dedicated server may be needed. On one you can set up a terminal server for collaborative work, install accounting software, configure shared file storage and solve many other business tasks.

Conclusions

Dedicated servers are needed by business projects that work with large volumes of information and a steadily growing number of visitors and users. How do you know it is time to move to a dedicated server? There is no clear-cut criterion.

But if you have been using 60 to 80% of a VPS's resources and the load keeps growing, it is time to prepare for migration to a dedicated server.

When choosing, take the server's location into account. Ideally it should sit closer to the project's main audience, which will have a positive effect on the speed of the site or service. Users in distant countries will barely notice a difference either, thanks to the power of the servers and a good connection.

Take Warsaw as a location, for instance: it lies close both to the post-Soviet countries and to western Europe. As a result, network latency when reaching servers in Poland is low from practically everywhere. Latency from Kyiv, for example, is only 14 milliseconds, and that clearly has a positive effect on how responsive our clients' dedicated servers feel in use.