As your business grows, so does the traffic to your website or online applications.
In some cases, cloud servers or shared hosting may no longer meet your demands, and using a dedicated server may be the perfect solution.
In this guide, we’ll show you what dedicated servers are, and give you the answers to the most asked questions on the internet about dedicated servers, which are:
- How much do dedicated servers cost?
- How do dedicated servers work?
- Which network model uses only truly dedicated servers?
- What are dedicated servers on Steam?
- What can you do with a dedicated server?
- What is the main concern of a dedicated server?
- What are the benefits of dedicated servers?
- Who needs dedicated servers?
- Are dedicated servers more secure?
- Does a small business need a dedicated server?
Shall we answer your questions?
What Are Dedicated Servers?
A dedicated server is a physical server that provides users with maximum performance and security. During its setup, a variety of options can be adjusted, including RAM, network features, security, hard drives, storage space, and processors.
In simple words, it’s a computer where your website data is stored.
Not only do you have control over your hardware, but also you have control over your software. You’re the boss of the server.
You can implement any operating systems, technologies, or frameworks you’d like, with no restrictions. This is perfect for people who want to customize their own server.
Also, since it’s a dedicated server, it’s only for you or your company/business, so there’s no one else hosting their website within. There’s no risk of sharing space with potentially harmful websites. It’s the perfect option for the owners of websites that receive A LOT of access daily.
- How much do dedicated servers cost?
This type of security costs more than a normal hosting service. Dedicated servers are for high performance and security websites, so, depending on how much speed, memory, security, and service you need, the price may cover a wide range.
The average dedicated server starts at around $100 per month, although plans at that price point aren’t likely to include a fully-managed hosting package.
But a dedicated server is not for everyone. We can take as an example the case of a newly created startup that still has more expenses than profits. Opting for exclusive hosting can greatly compromise the company’s budget. So, instead of going for a dedicated server right from the start, you can take advantage of other excellent options, like a Virtual Private Server (VPS).
On the other hand, if you own an eCommerce store, you know that credibility and security are essential because you need to store important customer information, such as credit cards for example.
In this case, you should consider a good service of a dedicated server, because you won’t share resources with other websites, so all the firewall and security scripts are for the exclusive use of your website, which reduces the chances of security breaches due to third-party applications.
- How Do Dedicated Servers Work?
Having a dedicated server it’s like living alone inside a super modern house, very well equipped, with all the latest generation utensils, and with plenty of space to do whatever you want. You have everything at your disposal and you can make any kind of change you want.
And, as its name suggests, this type of server is dedicated to the contracting organization, which means that the space is not shared with other companies, guaranteeing, undeniably, a much better performance, flexibility, and security.
- Which Network Model Uses Only Truly Dedicated Servers?
A client/server network utilizes truly dedicated servers, whereas peer-to-peer networks allow computers to operate in dual roles as servers and clients.
Basically, the moment it’s isolated within the same network, it’s a dedicated server with no other access outside of the one within the same network.
- What Are Dedicated Servers On Steam?
This is for the gamers who want to set up a game server using steam cmd. A dedicated server on Steam is a server that gives you control and root access to your server machine.
It’s a command-line version used to deploy and update the different dedicated servers that run PC games available on Steam.
For you to be able to do this, you need to install Steam and create a new account, because if you intend to host games, the account that you access to play the games won’t help you do this.
- What Can You Do With A Dedicated Server?
As we mentioned above, you can host game servers. Or, you can use a dedicated server or VPS to host websites.
You can do a lot of other things with a dedicated server – remember, it’s your own modern house, with all the latest generation utensils, and with plenty of space to do whatever you want. You can choose to host your own private data syncing service using free and open-source software, like Nextcloud.
Also, you can use your server as a firewall, have private analytics to understand your customer base and improve the effectiveness of your website, and many other useful things only a private server can offer.
- What Is The Main Concern Of A Dedicated Server?
Dedicated servers are better than other hosting options because of two main reasons: power and privacy.
The infrastructure is top-notch and gives you the power to scale your systems as you grow your business, it offers complex online services and solutions and manages your systems and data.
- What Are The Benefits Of Dedicated Servers?
It’s your own server, so you have the flexibility to adjust your RAM, network features, security, hard drives, memory spaces, processors, etc. You are the only person who has access to this “place”.
You have more security because your firewall can be better adapted, this way, you can avoid security vulnerabilities. Also, since they are physical servers, they need to be located in a high-security place and even more: you can add other security measures like biometric reading to be able to access, private security, etc.
You gain more speed. Dedicated servers are known for great bandwidth. If your website has a lot of access, you’re gonna need this. Without bandwidth, your website will slow down or even worse, crash.
You can checkout HostPapa Knowledge Base to learn why your website is slow.
Last but not least is the loading time. Everyone knows it’s frustrating when it takes a long time to enter a website or load a page.
Although there are several ways to improve your website’s performance and a bunch of tips to make your website faster, a dedicated server allows for high performance and stability to ensure websites and other business functions are operational nearly 100% of the time.
The providers must offer monitoring and backup services too, along with efficient support to ensure the service is up and running.
- Who Needs Dedicated Servers?
What type of website do you have? Do you have a heavily accessed news portal? with a lot of full HD images, videos and a bunch of other files?
Or do you just have a small blog, a website to put your portfolio or something smaller? If your case is the first option, you should look for a dedicated server.
But if the second option fits you, a web hosting service is enough for you or even a WordPress hosting service.
- Are Dedicated Servers More Secure?
Yes! As we cover through this article, dedicated servers have more security inside their hosting and are more physically safe too.
You’ll have a special firewall, can get daily updates, run checks and scans for any vulnerabilities, take backups, and every other action necessary for your server.
So, if you’re a person who wants an extremely secure hosting service, who wants to protect your “patrimony”, a dedicated server is the answer.
- Does A Small Business Need A Dedicated Server?
It depends. Are you already profiting from your business? If so, it makes sense to upgrade and increase the security of your business going forward to a dedicated server.
But if not, don’t do this right now. Shared hosting or even VPS hosting can cover your needs as long as you’re not profiting from your product.
It’s cheaper than a dedicated server and provides enough security for your business, plus several options, like managing multiple servers for various types of business.
This will save you money that you will only need to spend when your business takes off.
- How Should You Host A Dedicated Server?
Just choose the operating system OS: CentOS, Fedora, Ubuntu or maybe Windows OS. If you choose Linux, we recommend you do a clean minimal installation of the OS.
Depending on the system or service you choose, you have to select the number of CPU cores you need, choose your storage solution and add ram to your server. After that, you should install Apache or Nginx Web server, and decide if you want to migrate an existing server.
You should do this only if you have the knowledge or the right instructions.
- How Much Ram Do You Need For Dedicated Server?
You should go with 16GB, although the majority of dedicated hosting services offer 8GB initially.
But you can upgrade to 32GB of RAM or even more if your business has become gigantic. You can go over 128GB or even 256GB.
- Does Ram Affect Dedicated Server’s Speed?
Short answer: yes, it does. Operations using RAM run in a very quick way, more RAM reduces the number of times the server needs to access the hard drive, this can speed up your server considerably.
- Does A Dedicated Server Need A GPU?
GPUs are not needed. The servers will function perfectly without one. GPUs can help in many cases, especially if you want to play some good games or edit videos, but not in this one.
- How Do I Optimize A Dedicated Server?
One of the reasons people choose dedicated servers is the possibility of doing whatever they want inside the server. In this case, optimize things.
With this flexibility, you can adjust priority settings. This will allow you to control the order in which your server carries out specific tasks and for how long.
The majority of the servers run a normal priority by default and you can change this setting to improve the performance of your server, and, consequently, the websites.
Also, you can turn security into a top priority, preventing any type of issues, such as DDoS attacks.
Final Thoughts
As we could see in this article, going for a dedicated server requires you to analyze some things and question yourself:
What type of website do you have? What type of business do you want to have? How much access does it have? This will be my life’s work?
If you still think it’s not time to have a dedicated server yet, no worries. You can go little by little with a web host, a shared hosting or if you feel you need something a little “bigger”, a VPS.
Remember, those services provide excellent quality, security and options as well, along with amazing support, especially if you choose HostPapa hosting service.
What are you going to choose? Dedicate some time and let us know in the comments!
