Managed Dedicated Hosting for Your Business
Quite often a business will outgrow shared hosting and it will require its own managed dedicated hosting server. Unmanaged Dedicated hosting, is a type of hosting in which you rent your own server from a dedicated hosting company. This company will maintain a stock of servers and operate its own data center and network. The server is for your exclusive use only, meaning it does not share resources with other users or websites.
If you don’t have the in house technical experience, you could consider hiring a technical person to handle these tasks if you feel the self managed server is what your business needs. Check out the many freelancing sites where you could advertise for additional system administration work. Unless you have some technical experience with web servers you may struggle to perform your own server management and administrative tasks. However your host may be able to perform additional task at an additional hourly rate.
With Managed dedicated hosting the hosting provider gives very basic technical support and basic system help. They will have technicians on site on a 24 hour basis in order to carry out a reboot of your server if neccessary. Increasing numbers of dedicated server providers give access to a “reboot switch” or offline management. In most instance you still have complete technical control thee server, and additionally you will also have access to optional managed services such as an upgrading service, security hardening, firewalls, and online backup services
Managing your server and carrying out routine tasks such as setting up users and creating mail boxes much easier if you install a “control panel.” The most popular control panels are Cpanel (Web Host Manager) Plesk, Helm and H-Sphere. A server without a control panel is sometimes known as a “root server.” If this is a Linux server this will often require command line expertise. Dedicated hosting providers usually offer a choice of operating systems which are usually Windows 2003 and Linux (Centos, Ubuntu, Fedora etc).
Whether renting an unmanaged dedicated server or a managed server, try and explore all options before making a decision. Use online review sites and forums to research the various hosting companies and find out what each offers. Ensure that if they offer 24/7/365 support, make sure they can actually provide it. When choosing a dedicated server provider, always go for quality of service rather than price, as the old adage that you get what you pay for applies to dedicated server hosting, as with anything else.
