Choosing a dedicated server can be technically challenging for both the expert and amateur alike and so should not be rushed as there is a risk and you may live to regret your choice. There is a number of steps that you need to plan and write down to start with.
What are you going to be using the server for? You should be aware of this but not everyone is. What about game servers, disaster recovery, download mirrors or just e-commerce and webhosting? As will need to know what your going to run on this server from both what operating system to the software and the services. This is to make sure you are not paying for something completely oversized but also not something that is under powered or has little room for expansion.
Hardware
Once you know the software, we can move along to talking about the specification in mind. We are going to ignore money at this point as thats not needed until your ready to choose a host, each specification will be different depending on what you want it for. The CPU is something to look at alot as many providers may offer multiple physical CPU’s as well as having dual or quad core CPU’s as well. Depending on what your doing the RAM is potentially more important then the CPU but don’t try and cut corners by trying to opt for less as this may cripple your server under peak loads. Storage space is set by what software your using and how much you data you need to store as you don’t want to fill it too quickly,you have also got to consider if you’re going to be backing the data up and where to. For redundancy or extra space you could use a RAID array in 0, 1, 10 or 5.
Bandwidth
You have to think about how you want your server to communicate with the internet for your managed server you then need to think about the data allowance. Bandwidth is shown in gigabytes, and can be difficult to know how much you need. When you find your host like Melbourne, they will be able to help with this, and choosing the best dedicated hosting server. Now you know what your server is for, what the spec is and the bandwidth to go with it, you now need to find a host. One of the best piecies of advice I was given is to get a computing magazine and find all the nice glossy adds for server hosting and then see who you have left and it won’t be many, but these smaller companys will normally always give But from a time and money point of you is you can search from some hosting forums and ask for reviews and many can allow you to request a price from other companies on the forums and then from that you can boil down which to go with and so will normally make a much better choice.
RSS FEED
