What is a Dedicated Server? Benefits and Why You Need It for Your Business
It is in the name — a dedicated server is dedicated to one client: an individual, a company, or an organization. The essential characteristic of a dedicated server is that it is exclusive and cannot be shared with any other client. It comes with more criteria and advantages — let us go through them in detail.
What does a dedicated server do?
A dedicated server is also called a bare metal server. There is a slight difference between the two, but to avoid confusion, anything mentioned on this page refers to bare metal and dedicated servers.
Dedicated hosting means that your solution (website, application, etc.) has everything to itself. Many small businesses can start with shared servers. However, as your business grows, you may find yourself in a situation where you need to increase the allocated bandwidth to accommodate all the user requests. The same applies when you need more storage for your growing data — it might be time to upgrade to a dedicated server.
When do you need a dedicated server?
A dedicated server offers high performance, dedicated resources, flexibility, customization possibilities, and other advantages. Certain businesses benefit the most from relying on a dedicated server — here are the main reasons you may need a dedicated server.
1. When you need to handle large amounts of traffic
It can be the case for you, or you might be anticipating a traffic influx. In any situation, you will benefit from having a dedicated server. The performance of your solution depends on its capacity to handle simultaneous user requests.
Potentially, your solution should be able to handle 30x times its usual traffic in case content goes viral or to prepare for events with a more significant influx of visitors (e.g., Black Friday on e-commerce websites). If this is your scenario, a dedicated server can fix all the potential future problems of peak traffic.
Unless you are running a personal blog with no monetization goal or a small website where there is no need to future-proof, you may want to consider dedicated hosting as an option.
2. When you work with highly sensitive data and confidential information
If your business deals with confidential information and you have to maintain the privacy of customers’ data, shared hosting is not an option for you. With the higher risk of information breach
For example, a dedicated server is crucial if you run an e-commerce website that requires SSL or FTP to process payment information.
Renting a dedicated server also provides high-level physical protection because a data center has significantly better security than a server room.
3. When you need a unique IP address
You also share the IP address with your server neighbors with shared hosting. If one of your neighbors is identified as a spammer, it can impact your website’s rating. Your SEO and SERP ratings will sink because of your website’s connection with suspicious sources. Even worse, search engines can entirely remove you from their search results.
A dedicated server reduces the risks of IP blacklisting.
4. When you need complete control over the server
A dedicated server gives you one unbeatable advantage — total control of how you use the server. You can opt for the server software of your choice. For example, you can choose any server software alternative instead of Apache.
5. When you work with database servers
Database servers must assess data quickly and handle large amounts of data simultaneously. Most often, databases work with business-critical operations, which is why security is one of the top concerns. Dedicated servers offer both high processing speed, large local storage and security.
6. When you need to handle multiple websites
A robust, high-end dedicated server can support thousands of websites with moderate traffic.
What are the advantages of a dedicated server?
1. High performance and quick response time
Dedicated servers are winners in speed, performance, and response. Any software will run faster on a dedicated server than with shared hosting.
The page loading time directly impacts your SEO, engagement metrics, and bounce rates. This is because search engines take into account the ‘time to first byte’ (TTFB) — the time a server takes to respond. As a result, fast websites will rank higher on Google.
You can optimize all these criteria by relying on dedicated hosting.
2. Enhanced data security
When you are the only one using the server, you are not at risk of sharing it with a potentially dangerous individual or organization. Companies handling sensitive data like finances or healthcare opt for dedicated servers.
Dedicated hosting significantly reduces the risk of data breaches. You have absolute control over the functioning of the dedicated server. Choosing dedicated hosting allows you to install any firewall or anti-virus.
3. Flexibility and customization
A dedicated server allows you to select hardware specifications to your use cases, such as RAM or disk space. Dedicated hosting also enables you to customize the software based on your needs. For example, you can install any application, tool, or widget you need.
Having all the server resources to yourself enables you to add new features without slowing down the speed of your solution. Customization also allows you to stand out among your competitors by creating a unique layout and flawless user experience.
The customization doesn’t stop at the server setup phase. As your website grows, you can keep adding new software, components and capabilities, aligning your server with your business’ needs. Your dedicated server is your Swiss army knife every step of the way.
4. More storage space
Dedicated hosting plans offer a large storage capacity. You can choose the configuration that suits your needs with the custom storage option.
5. 24/7 customer support
The best dedicated server providers offer 24/7 customer support. You enjoy the peace of mind while they make sure the infrastructure is up and running. You need the problem fixed in seconds if something happens to your server.
What are the challenges of a dedicated server?
The main challenge of a dedicated server is the relatively high cost compared to shared hosting options. New websites with low traffic risk wasting money on a dedicated server and might want to choose shared hosting instead.
A dedicated server requires more tech knowledge and experience for a client to operate server administration and management. It is less of an issue with the right hosting provider who can offer you a user-friendly console to pilot your server.
What is the difference between Cloud, shared, dedicated, and virtual private servers?
Cloud, dedicated server, VPS, and shared hosting are the most common infrastructure hosting options. The main difference is that only the dedicated server is a single-tenant hosting environment. It results in several differences — here is a quick overview of the differences between the main hosting types.
The differences in this table should be viewed not as an advantage or a disadvantage but as a criterion for choosing the best hosting option for your website. These differences are also relative compared to each other, e.g., the price of shared hosting is ‘low’ as opposed to the other hosting options.
How do you set up a dedicated server?
The amount of time it takes to set up a dedicated server depends on the customization level, and it can be from a few minutes to a few days.
Generally, to set up a server, you need to perform the following steps:
- Choose a server range. When you order a dedicated server from a hosting provider, you analyze your needs and decide how much CPU, RAM, and storage you need.
- Choose a management level. If you get a fully-managed offer, your hosting provider will take care of the initial server setup. With a self-managed server plan, you must take care of the server setup.
- Choose an OS.
- Consider any possible add-ons. You can also choose them later as you scale up.
With the right provider, setting up a dedicated server is simple, while all your requirements are considered.
Where can I get dedicated hosting?
Many hosting companies offer a full spectrum of dedicated hosting plans. Scaleway Dedibox dedicated server offer covers all the advantages of dedicated hosting and beyond.
With Dedibox:
- Choose from a wide range of servers operating systems
- Offer your clients the best user experience with maximum performance in production
- Get the largest storage volumes for all your data
- Get 24/7/365 support from an on-site professional
- Pilot your services from a simple graphic interface and a REST API.
Check out the complete Dedibox offer and see how you can adjust it to your website’s needs — the considerable convenience of the offer is that it comes with great flexibility and scalability.
Scaleway also offers the Elastic Metal dedicated server hosting option, which combines a dedicated server’s reliability with flexible billing and cloud integration.
Dedicated servers can handle the needs of almost any solution and offer you extra security, control, and performance.
