Though I am old in the use of virtual hosting, I don't have any experience in the dedicated server market.

I am wondering what the buyers of these products are using them for?

1. Reselling virtual hosting
2. Narow services like slave DNS, redundancy...

What else?

I guess some of them are just used for a single website, but how can I be reasonable to us use a whole server for one single site?

on a dedicated server that has muliple sites on it , if someone is playing around with a script or is pulling plenty of bandwidth it can crash the whole server and every site on there is down --


if you host your site on a dedicated by itself you have a less chance of this happening

most people get dedicated for database hosting , application hosting and reselling web space under your own and not a reseller account :)


hope this help , members please advice if i miss something

Originally posted by Noid

I guess some of them are just used for a single website, but how can I be reasonable to us use a whole server for one single site?

That is the primary reason. There are many reasons why users would want to house their site on a dedicated server, but the three biggest reasons are:

1. Traffic
2. Security
3. Control

Traffic: If your website is pushing more than 20-25 Gigs of data month, your host would probably love to move you to a dedicated server. Realistically with that much bandwidth usage, you are using an inordinate amount of a shared server's resources, and you can probably justify the cost.

Security: I, personally, do not like or trust people :D. There are too many things that go wrong on a shared server, somebody uploads a script with a security hole that allows an attcker to gain root access to the server, and the whole thing is taken off-line because of another user, someone writes a script with a memory leak that makes the server crash, or someone who has a little knowledge of unix and decides he or she is going to snoop around and see what everyone else is doing.

Control: If you want special Perl/Apache modules, want to install a program that requires root access, want to run Tomcat/Domino/AOL Web Server, etc, you need to have root access -- so you need a dedicated server.

I have a dedicated server, not because I am sucking up the bandwidth, but because of the reasons already mentioned:

- security,
- control,
- customization.

I consider my site to be more of a "web application" or "web service" and as such I have configured services (such as the email server) in a customized way that I would not be able to do on a shared server.

And, playing with your own server is fun - especially when you crash it after patching the kernel ;)

My primary reason for going dedicated is bandwidth. If not because of bandwidth, I'd prefer to stay on a shared hosting as long as possible.

I manage several web sites, two of them are quite popular sites. The first one is eating about 2-3 GB/day and the other one gets over 15,000 visits a day. I have been trying to split the loads by using several shared hosting accounts, but it's not efficient and costly.

However, after going dedicated, I've started to have a fuzzy feeling and regretted it why didn't I get the server earlier :)

I have a dedicated server, and it's mine - ALL MINE! hahahahahahahahahahah

Seriously, my main reason is control. My shared host wasn't willing to accomodate me on several of my requests (reasonable requests in my opinion - stuff like more recent software, etc). Also, don't forget about cron jobs, DNS (domains and subdomains), and the list goes on.

Short story... I was trying to download a LARGE file from a web site and it wouldn't go through to completion with my home connection. Seems the site wasn't stable enough. So - I used LYNX on my ded server, got the whole file in not time at all, and then downloaded from my ded server (which IS stable - very stable). NICE!

I could go on, but I won't bore you. Get a dedicated server.

I love my box!

Originally posted by Noid
I guess some of them are just used for a single website, but how can I be reasonable to us use a whole server for one single site?

While 99.9% of websites don't even use a gig of traffic a month and barely ever use processing time. There are some sites that actually use enough resources that they need their own box. Heck some need multiple boxes...

In my case I was sick of the shared server hosts. Dealing with support people that were morons or just plain mean I decided it was time to get my own box. Plus I started wanting to doing things that most shared server hosts just couldn't provide.

Luckly I had a friend that wanted to get a server too and since he was good at linux I let him admin it. :D

I think Noid's question wasn't "why you moved to a dedicated server?" but WHAT do you use your dedicated server for? We use it for hosting websites.

I would also like to see what other people use it for, people who have several servers, what exactly do you use them for? I know for leveling out large amounts of traffic, but for those who just manage several servers, what are they used for??

Alan