What to look for in Dedicated Server Hosting

For complete control of the web server hosting your web site, you will need your own dedicated server hosting. You choose what runs on the server and how secure it is. The two main types of dedicated servers you will find upon looking is a server running either Linux or Windows as the operating system.

Linux Dedicated Servers

These servers come with the free Operating System Linux installed on them. The main configuration setup of software on a cheap linux dedicated server is to use Apache as the web server, in addition to PHP and mySQL. With these servers, root access will be given for control of aspects including domain and web site configuration and the conf file if running Apache web server. Since Linux is a free operating system, there is no overhead cost for licensing and this results in the Linux Dedicated Servers being a cheaper option.

Windows Dedicated Server Hosting

Windows servers are normally running a version of the Windows Server operating system. You will normally see the newest version of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 running on these servers. Unlike the Linux server, these are typically running IIS as the web server and SQL server for the database side. A Windows dedicated web server is able to run a WAMP (Windows, Apache, mySql, PHP) configuration. Windows servers do typically cost more because windows is not a free operating system, like the Linux OS is.

The reason to pick Linux or Windows for your dedicated server really will depend on the server owners needs. Different requirements will lead to different server selection. Those looking for a cheap dedicated server solution will want to purchase the cheaper Linux servers. Anyone running open source PHP applications will almost always want to select a Linux server as their first option. If you plan to develop using Microsoft .Net, you will need to select a Windows Server, and you will typically get SQL server database with it. In the end, the choice of what server you pick will be based on your own web site hosting requirements.

While you have chosen the operating system, you will then need to decide if you want to pick a managed or unmanaged dedicated server solutions. Managed indicates the provider will do OS patch upgrades and installations, while unmanaged means everything except the power on the server going down is your responsibility.