Hi,

For the past year and a half, my site has been running on a number of different shared, virtual hosting accounts. Lately, we have been switching servers often, since our bandwidth seems to surpass our alotted bandwidth every time.

I'm thinking about switching to a dedicated host now. I'm scared though, because I'm not too sure exactly what goes on when it comes to dedicated hosting.

What differences are there when it comes to virtual and dedicated hosting? Mainly, I'm wondering if it's just as simple. Will I be able to connect to my server, upload my files, and then view them on the web, as simple as that?

If problems do come up, do the maintenance guys work on it? I've read around that us, the renters of the dedicated server would have to maintain the server. But how would we maintain it, if we're not there physically?

I got my eyes on signing up with nocster.com, as I have read many praises on them throughout this forum. Besides that, I would really like more information on what problems I will be facing from transferring from shared hosting, to dedicated hosting. Thanks for any help.

maintenance of the server is done by the data center you lease the server from as far as the physical machine, ie hard drives, power supplies etc. But as far as software you are the responsable for that. If you lose your FTP server, bind stops, apache stops etc you have to use your root command and SSH in and fix it. You configure the server. And believe me this is where you are going to have most of your problems. Some data centers have managed solutions they take care of all of it for you like a vitrual host would but expect to pay lots more for it, like $300.00 a month upwards.

So no having a dedicated is not like having a vitrual account, you have the ability to screw it up and you are the one that has to fix it when you do.

The NOCSTER product line is fully managed.

Sean R.
BurstNET

Sounds like you want a managed server. A fully managed server from BurstNET or NOCSTER is like having a huge reseller account.

An unmanaged server is where you are responsible for the software and configuration, and your provider is responsible for the hardware.

I recommend Nocster :)