Dedicated Server - What's That?
By Ricardo D Argence
Web hosting comes in two general flavors - shared servers (where you and a bunch of other clients of the hosting provider are all hosted on the same physical machine) and a dedicated server (where your hosting is on a single machine for all your own web sites.)
Shared server solutions are great for getting into the business, because they're usually set up to be more user friendly to the novice web site administrator. They'll have consoles, lots of menus to select from and they're also usually a lot cheaper. They're also usually on lower-end hardware, because the people who sell hosting packages know that the people who need more will upgrade.
The downside of shared servers is that performance can take a serious hit. Now, if you're mostly using WordPress for a blog, hosting a couple of database driven items, that's not so bad - up until your traffic spikes. Or, worse yet, if one of the other people on that physical box has their traffic spike, or they get hacked, or spam-scripted into oblivion.
Much the same way that everyone sharing the same bathroom means you have to wait for the shower, the same thing applies to splitting CPU cycles, disk space, bandwidth and RAM on a server. If you notice that your site is consistently loading slowly, you're probably in the market for a dedicated server package.
Other signs of this need include wanting to use a piece of software that isn't already installed on the server; most hosting providers won't let you install, say, your own custom software on a shared server, because it's possible you could bring down a lot of other web sites if you screw up with it. On your own server, they'll give you enough rope to hang yourself, and may even give you shell access.
Dedicated servers are a lot more expensive than shared ones. But they're critical if you've got a piece of functionality that must always run, like a shopping cart package. They're also important if you want more direct control over your metrics and your own web site administration.
When it's time to get a dedicated server, you should talk to your hosting provider and see what can and is available, and how scalable the packages are. Most will be happy to give you the upgrade, and will usually bundle something with it as part of a contract setup.
The major downside of a dedicated server is that there's a lot less handholding, and the tech support gets a lot more expensive. Hosting providers are trying to minimize expenses, which is why shared hosting exists - it's less expensive for them, and from a software installation perspective, it's the equivalent of a fast food order - you can only get the things off the menu. It costs less to train the techs, there's less need for the techs to do things...and when you go to a dedicated server, in a lot of cases, you're going to be your own technical support agent.
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Dedicated Server - What's That?
