How dedicated are you?

Getting a dedicated server is a very big step and it's the reason why most tech sites stay small. Dedicated servers cost way more than normal web hosting. Cost can run into thousands of dollars each month. Most tech sites simply can not afford this. However, unless, you're hosted by a network, you can never move to the "next level" until you get your own dedicated server. 

Before making a move to a dedicated server, make sure the money your site generates can pay for the server. The last thing you need is an alligator eating a hole in your wallet every month. It also pays to shop around and don't let the prices posted on the host's website be the final price. You can always work out a better deal, if not on price, then for more traffic or a more powerful server for the same price. Get some referrals too.

There are two way to get a dedicated server; you can build it yourself and "Co-locate" it or you can have your web host built one for you. Remember that building a web server is not the same as building a LAN box. You don't need a 64 meg GeForce video card in a web server! You do however need lots of RAM and a fast hard drive. At the very least get 128 Megs of RAM and a 7,200 RPM ATA/66 drive. 256 Megs of RAM and a SCSI hard drive would be better. The CPU should have lots of L2 cache so that rules out using a Celeron. As for video card, even a piece of junk from S3 will do (I knew S3 was good for something!). 

If you build your own server and co-located it at your web host, you will run into something known as a rack fee. A rack fee is a monthly expense to have your server mounted on the web host's rack. It can be as low as $250 to over $1,000 per month depending on the type of rack the server is on. Most web hosts will waive the rack fee if you rent a server from them instead of building it yourself and co-locating. You will have to decided if the monthly rent of the server they give you can offset the cost of the rack fee. In most cases it will as all web hosts preferred it if you get the web server from them so they price their rack fees very high to make you go that route.  

My own feeling is it's better to let the web host build the server for you. This way they look after it and take care of it if something goes wrong or a piece of hardware fails. If you supplied the server, you will have to go to the web host yourself and fix whatever is wrong. If the host where the server is co-located is out of town then you're looking at an expensive drive (expensive because your site is off the air while the server is down) or paying their techs up to $100 an hour to fix it for you. Ouch! 

So what does a dedicated server cost? A quick check at HostPro shows that you will pay about $750 per month for a P3-650 with 256 Meg of RAM and a 9 Gig SCSI drive. This will include 50 Gigs of traffic each month. Go over that and you'll run into additional bandwidth charges. As expensive as this is, I can honestly say you will never regret getting a dedicated server. Just make sure your site revenue can justify it. 

As your site expands and you start to hit the limits of your server, consider adding another server and a load balancer instead of upgrading the server. This is known as a cluster setup. Instead of having one big powerful server, you use two or more medium size servers and a load balancer to divide the traffic between the servers. 

All big tech sites are setup this way. SharkyExtreme has their site on three servers, Tom's Hardware has nine! The servers are all mirrors of each other. The load balancer receives the page request and then finds the server that is the least busy and send the request to that server. If one server were to go down or get rebooted, the load balancer will transfer the request to the other server(s). This will give you nearly 100% uptime as the chances of all nine servers (in Tom's case) going down at the same time is next to zero. Nothing kills traffic faster than a 404 page not found error. A cluster setup will help ensure you don't get that. Of course setting up a cluster is way way way expensive. Then again, when you get to the point where you will need a cluster setup, you won't have to worry about the cost. :)

For those who don't have the means (or are just too scare) to move to a dedicated server but still wish to make the move to the next level should look at being hosted by a network. More on that later. 

Next page: Getting hardware

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