Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Dedicated Server : Benefits of Dedicated Servers?

[W1H-Lee]

I have been doing some hosting for my community website for about 3 years and have kept it fairly simple.

I currently use a reseller account from unitehosting.co.uk so that I can host multiple domains etc......

I am very happy with this so far and of course it makes life extremely easy for me to manage.

I am growing all the time and I can see myself within the next year or so getting to the point where hosting all these sites is going to cost me as much as a dedicated server does.

My question to all of you is quite simply how much more difficult is it to run from a dedicated server than just using reseller accounts.

Now I am not stupid and appreciate that it requires more technical ability on my part and the setup becomes much more hands on as the server in effect becomes your responsibility in every way.

I suppose as well what I would like to know is what are the main benefits/pitfalls of a dedicated server?

Any help would be appreciated, your help will allow me to decide whether or not to start taking much more pro-active interest in dedicated servers now rather than waiting until I actually need one further down the line.

Can you recomend a company that provides good reliable dedicated servers so I can at least have a look at them, I have seen many all over the internet but not sure who is good or bad.

Dedicated servers will probably change by the time I need one but
gaining the knowledge now will help me more later.

Thanks to all who reply.

[Angel78]

Perhaps you should try some of those semi-managed servers (servermatrix.com) beacuse they are not to expensive = from 25-500$, depending on the level of "managed-service" , also be sure to take a look at RackShack's Managed servers ( available from mid summer).

[W1H-Lee]

Have been looking around this site and it seems RackShack seem to be very popular.

Just as a general observation I concentrated on 2 packages, $99 celeron 1.3ghz 512mb ram 40gb drive and $109 celeron 1.7ghz 512mb ram 40gb drive.

Apart from the obvious price difference is there any significant difference in performance from 1.3ghz and 1.7ghz when running a box like that as a server or is it just basically the difference you would expect using the boxes as for example a desktop pc?

[pmabraham]

Greetings:

If you have the volume to benefit from economies of scale, then a dedicated can work very well.

Several of our resellers are in the process of graduating to dedicated servers; in the end, they can have better margins.

Take care.

[eddy2099]

With a dedicated server, you are not sharing resources with anyone else and as such as offer the fastest and not overloaded server. You could also host any program on the machine without fear that it will affect anyone else. You could set up the machine as you like it. You be sure that other's mistakes such as installing rogue scripts does not affect you.

However, all this comes with a price and that include you having to manage the server on your own. But if you do master the 'black arts' it is indeed worth the while. I've move to a dedicated and never gone back.