How Dedicated Web Hosting Functions

When we talk about hosting web servers, there are three major sorts - shared hosting servers, VPS (virtual web servers) and dedicated servers. Shared hosting web servers host a lot of clients and hence the system resources per web hosting account are restricted, virtual private server plans give you more server configuration liberty, but also influence other private virtual web hosting servers on the hardware node if used unwisely, and dedicated servers give you the independence to do everything you choose without interfering with anyone else.

Why would you require a dedicated server?

Dedicated servers are typically much more expensive than shared hosting web servers or private virtual web hosting servers. Why would anyone, then, use them? The reply is quite simple. If your firm has a resource-intensive web site, or simply has very exact server architecture requirements, the most relevant option would be a dedicated server. For somebody who is willing to invest in security and reliability, the greater price is not an issue. You are granted full server root access and can use 100% of the web hosting server's system resources without anyone else sharing these resources and meddling with your web pages.

Hardware configurations

The majority of web hosting companies, incl. us at Compufix Professionals Inc., offer several different hardware architectures you can pick from in consonance with your needs. The hardware configurations offer different types of microprocessors, a different amount of cores, different RAM memory and server hard disk sizes and different monthly traffic usage quotas. You can pick a web hosting Control Panel, which is a convenient GUI if you wish to use the dedicated web hosting server for website hosting purposes solely and choose not to resort to a Secure Shell client for all the modifications you will be making. We offer 3 types of Control Panel software - Hepsia, DirectAdmin and cPanel.

The web hosting Control Panel of your choice

If you are a confident Linux user (our dedicated web hosting servers are running on Linux or other Unix-based OSs), you could administer your dedicated server through a Secure Shell console exclusively. That, however, could be awkward, even more so if you choose to give full root access to somebody else who has less technical skills than yourself. This is why having hosting CP software pre-activated is an excellent idea. The Hepsia web hosting CP graphical user interface that we provide does not give you full server root privileges and is mostly appropriate for someone who runs many web sites that absorb a lot of system resources, but wants to manage the sites, databases and e-mail box accounts using a user-friendly hosting CP. The DirectAdmin and cPanel hosting CPs, on the other hand, give you full server root privileges and offer three access levels - root, reseller and user. If you intend to resell web hosting packages rather than using the hosting server only for yourself, you should select one of these two.

Web server monitoring and backup services

Last but not least, there is the matter of monitoring the dedicated server and of backing it up. In the event of a problem with your dedicated hosting server, like a non-responsive Apache or a network downtime, it is desirable to have some kind of monitoring platform enabled. Here at Compufix Professionals Inc. the system administrators monitor all dedicated servers for ping timeouts, and, if you order a Managed Services upgrade, they monitor the separate services on the dedicated server as well. Backups are also an additional feature - the web hosting company offers you data backups on our own backup servers. You could select a kind of RAID that would allow you to have the very same data on two disk drives as a precaution in case of a server hard disk drive failure, or in case someone whom you have given complete root access deletes something by mistake.