Dedicated Server - Dedicated Server Hosting - Managed Linux Windows Servers

“Unmanaged dedicated servers” - this is a pretty uninviting term to many, especially the non-gurus, but in most cases is not as “non-servicing” as it seems. In fact, I think someone one day soon, ( who knows maybe me ) will coin a new phrase to replace the term “unmanaged” - similar to how “used cars” is now “pre-owned” or how “apartment complexes” are now “rental communities”. The truth is that unless you just picked a lousy provider or have unreasonable expectations, unmanaged hosting offers more service and support than most think.

The Difference
While exact definitions vary among providers, generally speaking managed hosting means your provider takes complete or near complete care of your server. This can include anything from basic system maintenance and patches to applications maintenance, security, monitoring, etc. Someone that needs dedicated hosting and wants to rely on their host for pretty much anything and everything regarding their server needs to strike a relationship with a managed service provider. Full blown managed services involve lots of skilled people hours. Not only that, since every managed customer is unique, it’s hard for a managed provider to be overly systematic. For this - expect to pay a great deal more than today’s budget server provider but if your needs demand it, and you choose a solid provider it should be money well spent.

Unmanaged dedicated hosting obviously refers to dedicated servers with less, little or none of the skilled people support you’d expect to find in managed. You signup, you pay, and in a few minutes to a few hours you get a welcome email with IP address, login, FAQ’s, etc. - Beyond that you are pretty much on your own. Relax - you are not really as own your own as it seems.

First off, most unmanaged providers do in fact offer technical support, and most that we’ve seen is very good. If you choose unmanaged dedicated service you do need to have someone on your team that knows the technical side a good bit, but they don’t necessarily have to be experts. While you may have to wait 12 - 24 hours or you may even have to pay extra for it, nearly all the unmanaged providers I know do have high level techs available to handle serious issues. In addition most providers give some sort of immediate reboot service. Unless you’ve been tinkering with some critical config files or have a hardware failure, a reboot can help with a range of issues. Lastly, unmanaged providers may not support you or whatever you put on your server after you move in, but they do stand by the hardware and software they sell you. If a hard drive crashes they are going to replace it for you (although you had better be doing your backups) and if your system crashes most will fix it for you.

Summary
The bottom line is if you’ve got mission critical needs and don’t have the in-house staff to efficiently keep your servers performing the way they should, then you are going to need managed services. Even still it’s a more cost effective route that hiring your own staff and most likely you will receive a higher, more consistent level of service. If your needs are more basic, and or you or your staff has the time and know-how to perform 75% - 80% of your server’s maintenance then an affordable unmanaged service should do you just fine.

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There are thousands of ways to make money on the Internet. If you create a website, you may try, and the customer to your site, either to purchase goods or click on ads. Ads on Web sites generate substantial revenues for site owners. Some sites solely dependent on advertising revenue to continue.

All sides need a host. A host is a server that is the connection between your site and your customers. All websites have a server. Most small business Web sites using a shared server. This means that they pay a small fee each month shares of a server with other companies.

Large companies, but with a dedicated server. A dedicated server hosts only your website. Since you are not sharing space and bandwidth on the server with others, you have a lot more space. You also have the option of a lot more visitors to your site because of bandwidth.

If you are on a dedicated server, you can use the space to affiliate sites. They can generate revenue through advertisements and even a link to your company’s Web site. By adding a little smaller content of this site is that you can earn revenue from advertising and affiliate ads. Affiliate ads specify a percentage of the profits, if a customer buys a certain product or service, having him on your site.

Thanks to the freedom of space and bandwidth offered by a dedicated server, you can earn an unlimited amount of money on the Internet. Although a dedicated server costs more than a single server in the monthly fees, the differences in fees can be more than mitigated if the additional space for a good purpose.

Once you understand the concept of a dedicated server, the sky is the limit when it comes to making money to access the Internet.

Another way to make money on the Internet with dedicated servers is to use other host-business Web sites. If you have the opportunity, to a dedicated server with a template, and quite a bit of a computer literacy, you can use either the dedicated server to provide service to other pages on the Internet, or you can use it to your own host - Group websites.

Ads are a great way to the revenue on your site. If you have your own dedicated server, you can decide what kind of ads can be found on your website as well as the partner products that you want to sell. You can use a variety of sites, all of your dedicated servers and have total control over the money, the characteristics of each individual.

Whether you decide on the dedicated server to host your own web sites or other sites host, you money on the Internet with a dedicated server. Whether you advertising revenue, affiliate sales, your own product or service sales of other individuals and businesses, the Internet has unlimited opportunities for making money.

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When choosing a dedicated server package it is well worth your time to look at the type of control panel that comes with your server.

I should say right now that I am very biased. I have several dedicated servers and also recommend to my own clients  that they look for a server package that includes WHM (Web Host Manager). WHM is the control panel that is used with hosting accounts that have the CPanel control panel. WHM is like the ‘master control’. I have used the Plesk and Ensim control panels and they really don’t come anywhere near WHM/CPanel in terms of functionality, control and user friendliness.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a learning curve involved. With any application or script that provides many functions there is always going to be some learning involved. Here are my top 5 reasons I choose WHM / CPanel over other control panels:

Total Control - With WHM you have control over many more system parameters and constraints than with any of the other control panels.

Security - WHM provides a security center that allows you to easily allow and deny IPs, set the security level of your firewall and carry out basic system scans for trojans, rootkits and viruses.

Versatility - You can use a WHM/CPanel server to operate hundreds of your own domains and sites or you can provide reseller style accounts, giving control to others.

Utilities - Most WHM/CPanel installations include Fantastico which provides you with a large range of scripts and tools which can be installed with just a few clicks.

Support - CPanel provide excellent support and there is also a very active community forum and WHM/CPanel related training available from third parties.

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If you are serious about your online business, you might just consider looking for a dedicated web server. A dedicated server is actually an entire server which is at your disposal, and which is not shared with anybody else.

Right from the beginning, the advantages are very clear: you, as the webmaster, have full control over your server, including the choice of operating system, server hardware, addons etc. Almost everything on a managed dedicated server can be customized as per your own personal needs, while the administration part is taken care of by the hosting company.

The most important advantage of using a managed dedicated server is that your website performance will not be affected by the traffic of the other websites with which you would have been sharing your server’s bandwidth.

Dedicated hosting environment provides an exclusive server devoted to the sole purpose of serving one user only. You do not share the resources with other users.

Before dedicated servers became popular, a webmaster used to have two hosting options, low-priced shared hosting model and the premium-priced dedicated server. A person who bought space on a shared server would get a certain amount of disk space and monthly transfer, and would have the web site served from a common web server.

The hosting provider would attempt to provide a wide range of options for the web site developer, in order to increase the popularity of their products. But, for example, if a customer needed a non-standard program installed or maybe wanted to use a privileged account in order for a particular utility to run, he would not have the ability to do so on a shared server.

A simple example might be a site which requires a database to store the information in. Many hosting companies provide the standard MySQL database to use on their servers. If your application requires another type of database though, then it could prove to be incompatible with the shared hosting account.

And a dedicated server can be customized anyway you want. But, there’s also a catch. Because it can handle much more traffic than a shared hosting account, their much better performance doesn’t come cheap. A typical dedicated server can cost the savvy webmaster hundreds of dollars per month depending on its size, network connectivity and the amount of management required from the hosting company.

Webmasters who don’t fit into the standard shared hosting model and find that it doesn’t work anymore for them, or whose sites grew very popular and required a large amount of resources have the alternative of a dedicated server. It can be customized to exactly fit the needs of you as a site developer. And as long as your business is very successful, you are probably way better with a dedicated server at your disposal.

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Most dedicated server provide a 24×7 server monitoring feature as standard with their dedicated servers which ensure that the sites and servers are on line at all times. Without server monitoring, one would know what is happening with the web server he/she is using. Is PHP running? Does MySQL need to be restarted? You would be without direction just in case a bad situation comes up. Server monitoring is indeed one of the most important aspects of the web hosting business.

Now with shared hosting, monitoring is a standard feature however most people hosted on shared server have no clue what is going on. They just know their Joomla install isn’t working and they want it fixed. With dedicated hosting though server monitoring becomes much more important and critical because the web host you go with may or may not support you in this regard.

The basic things you need to keep your eyes on are HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP3. Then you have other services that are second tier to that and you go down the line service by service.

In case your hosting provider doesn’t offer monitoring service as standard, there are numerous third party monitoring services out there that will monitor the server 24×7 for you. If you are not sure how, when, where and why your own web host does server monitoring you might want to ask.

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Managed hosting is best suited for the large companies with a strong online presence.It can be defined as an expanded dedicated hosting service where the web host will manage the dedicated server for you. The service has been described as ‘a glorified dedicated server armed with extended features and support’.

A Managed dedicated server is a dedicated server for one high resource account that takes care of the setup, software installation, security monitoring, backups, and technical support that is needed to help you focus on growing your business.

It eliminates the headaches and support costs associated with having to run your own server. In case of a managed hosting the complex task of server administration is thus handled by the web host rather than by the company. In dedicated servers the web host generally offers a choice of the operating system, routing equipment, network connection etc. but in managed hosting the web hosts offer even more.
Managed dedicated servers are the right solution for any website that has outgrown a shared hosting account, needs dedicated resources, runs processor intensive scripting, requires customized software installations, and for those sites that want the added security of being the only ones accessing the server. In other words managed dedicated server solutions are targeted to those customers who need the performance, reliability and security benefits of a dedicated server but don’t want to face the day-to-day hassles associated with the server or other technical problems.
The advantages of managed hosting are:

1. Security
Today’s fast-paced and competitive marketplace requires organizations to open their networks to all customers, suppliers, and business partners. This same openness, however, brings security risks that must be properly managed. This difficult task is delegated to the web host in case of managed hosting services.
2. Data Assurance
The web hosts provide daily back up of vital data that assures a secured and expandable data storage.

3. Server administration
The web hosts provide, maintains and monitors the server and related technical complexities. So the company doesn’t need to provide for expensive system administration resources.

4. Network management
The web hosts take the responsibility of the software, hardware and processes, but also the investments you’ve made in your own infrastructure.

5. Customer Support
You can expect premium customer support that is perfectly tailored to meet your managed environment and requirements. Customer Support staff of the service provider are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Whether you contact them by phone, email, or live chat, you are directly connected to a knowledgeable and professional representative of the web host who can help you pinpoint, resolve, and prevent any issues from impacting your business.

6. Flexible packages
Most web host companies keep their prices low by giving the clients’ the freedom and flexibility to choose the support plan that best fits their needs. Hence the companies get the opportunity to select the plan that meets their budgetary constraints.

7. Effective trouble shooting
As and when any problems related to hardware or software happens, the web hosts promptly and accurately diagnoses and cures the root of the problem. Hence it assures you of uninterrupted service that helps to run a successful business.

8. Constant Monitoring
Automated and human systems work simultaneously to monitor your server and network connection, preventing any issue from impacting your business.

9. Assurance of quality of equipments
Some web hosts provide high quality hardware from reputed manufacturers for managed hosting of clients to ensure reliability and compatibility with their application. The servers are generally provided with hardware-mirrored drives and base components that allow upgrades to the client’s server with minimal downtime and expense.

10. Regular upgrades
Hardware upgrades are handled by the web host service providers in case you provide some additional charges as specified in the contract terms and conditions. As your business grows you can afford to reconfigure or expand your growing needs.

In managed dedicated hosting the web hosts offers the customers a graphical user interface integrated with monitoring tools, control over their own domain name entries and operating systems. Hence a managed dedicated hosting service is a must for all large companies that have a huge web presence and an abundance of traffic. It ensures better risk management, control and flexibility, and a renewed focus on your core business strategy.

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