What to Look for in a Dedicated Server

In this latest piece we talk about what to look for in a dedicated server. Since everyone is different I will break it down into categories of people/organizations and you can simply find what category you fall into and make your own decisions. For starters though there are two classes of dedicated servers, those that are managed and those that are unmanaged. If you have no idea what this pertains to please read the Managed Vs Unmanaged Dedicated Server Article. Smarter Dedicated Servers provides unmanaged servers for the cost conscious buyer. We do however provide hourly consulting rate for issues you may have managing your own servers. Without further ado here are the classes of people who seek dedicated servers and what plans we advise they go with.

Micro Business \ Experimenter

There is a class of people out there who have very basic needs for their dedicated server but need a fine level of control over the operating system because either their software requires it or they wish to know more about managing a server. Typically if the software requirements are not extreme our Starter Plan is perfect for these types of users. Although the CPU speed is not the best and resources are fairly limited you have direct control of the operating system without having to worry about the "Chatty Neighbor Problem" which causes so many slowdowns and instabilities in Virtual Servers.

Small Business \ Freelance Consultants

For this class of customer we highly suggest getting the Core Plan because it offers ample resources needed to run most web applications. Our Core Plan provides enough CPU processing power and RAM to be able to host multiple sites, most content management systems, and a very wide range of web software packages. We believe this server should suite more than 90% of users seeking a dedicated server solution. This plan is also easily convertible into our High Plan if at a later stage the organization grows and needs additional resources. Through the use of our hot swap drives we can move your active server from Core to High in less than 15 minutes.

Medium Sized Business \ High Intensity User \ Content Providers

For a small minority of our users they require more RAM to handle higher site traffic or very large files that are transferred on a regular basis. Our High Plan provides both more RAM and more Hard Drive space to meet these requirements. Although this plan has the same CPU power as the Core plan, with web applications RAM is often times more critical since many concurrent users are attempting to seek and store information on the server at once. If you are unsure as to whether you require a high plan server or a core plan server, we suggest going with core and upgrading if needed at a later time. As stated above upgrades from core to high are a very simple process.

Maximum Availability Users

Users that absolutely require their websites to be up should purchase 2 or more of our server plans to ensure total reliability. Short of our entire data center being knocked out, this would ensure your web applications are up at all time. We have customized software in place to be able to instantly transfer traffic from a failed server to a running server without causing any interruption to service. With our low pricing Smarter Servers is a perfect choice for multiple servers.