When
do you decide to upgrade your hosting service from a shared host
to a dedicated host? There are a variety of factors that go into the decision,
more than simply cost.
How critical is your web site or sites? How big are they, and more importantly,
how much programming goes into them? You can't simply look at what you pay each
month for hosting and base a decision on that.
Is your web
site on a shared host, and are you getting complaints of slow performance?
Shared hosts are just that: your web site shares the server it's on with
a number of other sites, anywhere from a few dozen to over 250, depending on the
hosting company and the service. This keeps costs down, but also imposes limits
that you wouldn't otherwise have. If you're unsatisfied with the performance of
your shared host, this could be the reason. Because there are those other
web sites on the same machine, there will be that many more requests hitting it
that the web server has to deal with. That slows down the performance of the web
site. If you have a server-side interactive site (lots of CGI, ASP,
or JSP programming, for example), that will draw even further on the
resources of the machine the site is on, and of course, so will the programming
of all the other sites on that same machine.
Basically,
if your shared server is having performance problems, you need to think
about a dedicated server. Remember, the average web surfer only waits
10 seconds for a page to load before getting impatient and moving on. The
last thing you want is to lose sales because of a poorly-performing web site.
This is especially important if you have a database-driven site (or a site
that uses lots of server-side programming), or if you have a very popular
site that requires lots of bandwidth. A shared host may be inexpensive,
but if it doesn't serve your needs, it'll be more a liability than a sales tool.
A dedicated server provides you with your own web server. Yours
will be the only site(s) living on a dedicated server, so all the resources
of that computer will be yours. All of the CPU is yours to use, as is the
disk space. All the network traffic for that machine is yours, so you have a higher
allowance of bandwidth than on a shared host. Depending on the plan you
have, your company may even get root access to the machine, meaning that you have
complete control over it. Alternately, you can have your service provider be the
root administrator, and let them worry about patches, software updates,
and the like.
For information on Primus managed dedicated hosting, see www.primushost.com/products/dedicated.html
The
Primus Network in a Flash
Primus owns and operates an extensive global network of owned and leased
transmission facilities, including over 300 IP points-of-presence (POPs), ownership
interests in over 23 undersea fiber optic cable systems, 21 international gateway
and domestic switches, a satellite earth station and a variety of operation relationships
that allow the company to deliver traffic worldwide. To graphically show the extent
of the network, we've created a flash diagram highlighting the global connections
that help our customers meet their voice and data needs. Click
here to see the Flash network map.
