Hosted Site V Dedicated Server

[smithster]

Hi all,

I was wondering what the difference is between a hosted site and a dedicated server in terms of website performance etc.

I realise there is a cost difference but can you still host your websites on your dedicated server, if so are there any benefits to this, and does anyone use such an option.

Thanks

Nick

[Scott-CopyandDesign]

Hi all,

I was wondering what the difference is between a hosted site and a dedicated server in terms of website performance etc.

I realise there is a cost difference but can you still host your websites on your dedicated server, if so are there any benefits to this, and does anyone use such an option.

Thanks

Nick

Hosted (shared):
You have a small share of disk space and bandwidth on one server shared by many others. So it's usually slower, less CPU power, cant run your own software or root programs (virtual servers for example). More then enough for a small/average sized website with an average amount of visitors.

Dedicated:
You have one entire server to yourself. All the CPU, RAM and bandwidth available. It's a lot faster, can handle a lot more simultaneous visitors/users.

You can host a site and pretty much anything on a dedicated server, within reason. The only reason you would ever need to host a website on a dedicated server is when it's a very large website with many visitors, so it needs the extra processing power and bandwidth of an entire server.

[Astaroth]

With shared hosting it is very much the luck of the draw. You may find your site sharing a server with sites that basically receive no traffic and therefore for most users needs you will basically have all the processing power of the server to yourself.

With dedicated you need to look into the terms and conditions in much more detail, whos responsibility is it to do backups? Fix it if it falls over? monitor it to make sure it doesnt fall over? etc

[radioman]

There is also a middle ground VPS (Virtual Private Server).

This is where one server (usually quite a high performance machine) is divided between 4 or more users who each have a guaranteed space on the hard drive, allocated ram and effectively their own operating system. You can reboot your own virtual machine and it's completely secure from the other users (in fact you wouldn't even know it's only a portion of a machine).

You can do a lot of things that you can do an a full server, but the costs are lower. There are a few drawbacks, but it's quite a good way to host a few websites of your own and it's just like having your own server.

There are some reasonable deals around and we are currently paying £30/month for a Windows Server 2003 machine, we can host (technically) unlimited sites and install our own software on it.

Like all these things though, you need to read the small print. With VPS look for a low number of shared users and guaranteed resources (not burst resources, these aren't necessarily available when you need them).

Dale

[IainW]

A dedicated server can also be beneficial if you have a large database which customers have to search through. Shared hosting would not perform the search as responsively.

You may not have a lot of visitors but need a fast response for your customers so that they aren't hanging around waiting for the results.

You have to weigh up whether this performance is worth paying for (example - if a customer can't wait for her results from a search then we could lose a booking, 1 booking is the cost of a years dedicated hosting)

Also i don't want my site crashing cos of someone else's website taking up all of the servers resources so i like my site sitting on my own dedicated.

[Cornish Steve]

You can do a lot of things that you can do an a full server, but the costs are lower. There are a few drawbacks
What are those drawbacks?

[radioman]

Steve

The drawbacks are mainly that you need to do some investigative work to find out how many share your server etc. Most hosts will tell you, but not advertise the fact.

You also need to look at traffic limitations, number of assigned IP addresses, Operating system and additional programs that may (or may not) be standard or additional. e.g. you don't always get a/v software, backups etc.

With shared hosting, it's in the interest of the provider to ensure that your site is available and protected. With a VOS (or your own server) you have to take more responsibility for such things.

On the whole I'm very happy with our VPS - I log onto it via windows remote desktop and it's just like logging onto another PC. Ours also has the Plesk control panel, which makes administering web hosting quite easy. We could even resell if we wanted, but that's not our game.

HTH.

Dale