Dedicated
Server Guide
A Change in Paradigm: Dedicated Server
I found it hard to believe, but suddenly
I was faced with a real problem. Well, I suppose most people would not
consider it a huge problem, quite the opposite, in fact. However, it was
stressing me out complete, interfering with my writing. I even had trouble
sleeping.
What was this horrendous problem? My
web site was becoming very popular. So popular, in fact, that I was getting
very worried about bandwidth charges.
You see, this was happening after September
11th, 2001, and I had been reading about some people who had created very
special and beautiful sites. These sites were so incredible that they
attracted lots and lots of visitors. So many visitors that they received
hundreds of gigabytes worth of traffic. The webmasters
suddenly found themselves charged hundreds or even thousands of dollars
for using bandwidth over their allocations.
I had purchased a contract with a shared
hosting service which allowed 27gb/month of traffic. This seemed like
more than enough at the time. However, I was noticing the bandwidth increasing
at an alarming rate - about 2gb/day. At that rate, I would exceed the
allotment by quite a bit. I had some time, but not much.
Okay, what to do? I looked around at
the various shared hosting options and didn't see much that was all that
attractive. There were some that offered "unlimited" bandwidth
- I didn't trust these at all. Most of the terms and conditions actually
did place a "reasonable" limit of some kind. I preferred a limit
that was know verses a limit that was unknown.
Actually, truth be known, I was getting
a little tired of the paid host option. I mean, it's far improved from
free hosts, but there is still much room for improvement. Some of the
things that were bothering me were:
Downtime - All of the shared hosting
servers that I'd checked out so far seemed to be down more often than
desired. I've been in the computer industry for over 23 years, and to
me a few hours of downtime in an entire year is about all that's acceptable.
It's not that hard to achieve these kinds of statistics - I've been doing
it myself for years.
Support - The level of support from
virtually all hosting companies I've used to date has been pathetic to
mediocre. My expectation is simple. My site is down, I want someone to
work on it quickly. I want to call someone, get an answer right away,
and get the problem resolved. Especially during normal business
hours. I have never received that level of support from any hosting company
yet.
Strange errors - I've noticed that
my web sites will run fine for a few days or weeks, then start having
strange delays. I know this because I monitor my sites with an automated
service. These delays are probably caused by things that other customers
are doing on the same server.
Lack of communication - Web host support
people seem to forget that we webmasters and businessmen depend upon our
web sites. I don't know about you, but if my site goes down for any length
of time I completely freak out. I want to know why it's down and what's
being done about it. And virtually always I get no answers. This is most
annoying when the downtime has been planned - these hosts have my email
address, why is it so hard to send an email and let me know what's going
on?
Log file issues - Log files are very
important to any true webmaster. They are useful for finding errors, gauging
traffic and determining the success of promotions and articles. Yet so
far all of the shared hosts gave me incredible grief about log files.
They seemed to want to initialize them at odd intervals (unpredictable),
didn't allow easy access, allowed too easy (unsecured) access and generally
made it difficult.
Okay, given all of that, it was time
to make a change. Not just a change to another host, but a change in paradigm.
I had tried free hosts (three of them)
before deciding they were not at all suitable for anything except a small
hobby web site. I moved up to paid shared hosts and for a while was happy.
I moved, then moved again, then again. The hosts were all fine for a while,
then starting having trouble.
Shared hosting was not doing what I
needed. The straw that broke the camels back was a question of bandwidth.
Internet Tips and Secrets was exceeding 50gb a month (almost four million
hits and three quarters of a million page views). Wow.
I could not find a shared host that
offered a package of a full gigabyte of disk and upwards of 50gb a month.
Not a single one after looking at over a hundred different packages.
I had a real problem. You see, go over
the monthly bandwidth charge and you get smacked with huge overcharges.
For the web host I had at the time, the charges were $6 per gigabyte.
This would make my hosting bill very large indeed.
Thus I began looking for a dedicated
hosting service. I quickly found a company and purchased a single month.
Here's what I got. A web server all
to myself. I could define as many as 250 different web sites on the server,
and I had complete control of the DNS. I had root access to the server
(meaning I was more or less god on the box) and could literally do anything
I wanted. I could install anything, do anything and control or not control
everything.
I had 9gb of disk space. Best of all,
the service provided a whooping 400gb of bandwidth usage per month. The
server was extremely fast for my needs. All for around $200/month plus
a setup fee.
The downside (there is always a downside,
isn't there)? The price was a little steep, but a predictable $200 a month
is far superior to a surprise $500 or even $100 hosting charge. They also
didn't provide any real autoresponders (but I solved that by purchasing
a package) or web based email. Their support is also very basic - they
have a 24 hour help desk which is friendly and competent, but they do
not appear to be technical
heavyweights.
Thus I have now, after a week of hard
work, begun a new adventure - a dedicated web server for the 16 sites
that my wife and I own. So far, the experience is far superior to the
shared hosting nightmares that I've been facing.
About the author:
Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets at http://www.internet-tips.net
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