What is a Dedicated Server?
A dedicated server is also known as dedicated hosting service. In this type of service the website uses the whole server exclusively – i.e. it does not share it with any other website. The advantage of this arrangement is that the website has total control on the server which includes the choice of operating system, hardware and any software used on it. You will find dedicated servers housed usually in data centers and they will usually be run by services which would provide the system administration.
Dedicated servers will usually run on operating systems that are most compatible with the running of the website. With server that is dedicated to your business, you will not need too many updates for new application and software to access your website features. You can choose your platform such as Unix, Linux, Mac, Windows NT, FreeBSD and so on, according to what you need and is compatible with the design of your website. With a dedicated server you will never have to worry ever again about compatibility with the host server – since this server will serve only your website.
The dedicated servers will be able to offer you with high quality uplink providers with multi-home anchor, so when and if one fails another will back it up so your website will always be online and accessible. The dedicated server will offer KVM/IP connectivity which will make the website accessible even when the server is down through file system recovery. In this line, you will find that a dedicated server will have periodic backups of your website on remote backup space and hence, you will never have the worry of loosing your data.
There are other plus points with the dedicated servers, such as total administrative maintenance of the operating system which will include adding and managing users, managing programming, extra domains, daemon updates and security patches. This is a benefit that one can get only from the dedicated server, because when you share a server with hundreds other websites, the possibility of a customized service is very limited.
Some dedicated servers do not permit daemons, eggdrops and/or clients. This is because their use and maintenance sometimes attracts DDoS assault on the provider/ host destroying the networking and interfering with the services.
From the above you will understand that having a dedicated server can be a boon for you, and also a curse. A boon if you have an immense website with a multitude of applications and features; curse if your website is tiny and does not the back up of the whole server which can be become prohibitive in cost and maintenance for you.
Todd Mumford is co-owner and operator of GDO Web Hosting, offering state of the art web hosting with Cpanel 10, Fantastico and free setup on every new account.