Tag Archives: shared
A Guide to Managed Dedicated Server Hosting and Its Benefits (Page 1 of 2)
Managed dedicated server hosting is when a third party company hosts your website for you via a dedicated server. That means no other sites are hosted on the same server and it also means the outside company take care of all server costs and maintenance. This is one of the best and most secure ways you can have a website hosted. Hosting is a vital part of having a website, without hosting the site won’t be online in fact. There are different choices available as to how your site is hosted, with benefits and a disadvantages of each. This article explains in more detail what managed dedicated server hosting is and the benefits of it.
Having a dedicated server is crucial if you run an online business, have websites that take payment information or have a website that is of vital importance to your business. On a dedicated server no one but you hosts a website on it. If a server is shared then multiple websites are hosted on the same server and multiple people have access to it. Not only can this make loading times quite slow but your own site could be affected by some other webmaster accessing the server and making alterations to their site. Viruses are even a risk as they can spread to other sites on a shared server. If you are a serious business or have multiple sites then shared server hosting should be avoided at all costs, unless finances are extremely tight. The benefits of having a shared server are financial – it is extremely cheap to host your site this way.
A dedicated server is not as cheap to have, but the security benefits outweigh the higher cost. By choosing managed dedicated server hosting as well as providing the server on which the websites are run, the company providing the service will also take care of maintenance tasks and ensure the server is working well and there are no technical problems through constant monitoring. Having a website go down due to network problems or some other technical hitch can be very problematic, especially if your business depends on the site. It is simply not worth taking any risks and managed dedicated server hosting eliminates those risks.
It is possible to look after your own servers. This of course carries costs and an additional task list. Having a server is more involved than simply owning the hardware, you need a data centre in which it sits. You can rent space in a nearby data centre instead of purchasing the equipment and installing a data centre of your own. This is known as colocation. You would be responsible for all maintenance, monitoring and general technical support.
You may not have considered setting up your own data centre but were instead thinking of a server rack or server cupboard. In an open plan office space, a server rack can be quite noisy and distracting. A server cupboard means the server is out of the way but may not meet the needs of an efficient system. Cooling in a data centre is a major factor, as is a clean power supply. Over heated servers and mains power spikes can severely impact your website and the average office space is not necessarily designed for these benefits. In an office, the internet access equipment, the routers, may also be on standard mains supply and so these too are at risk.
Why Choose Dedicated Managed Server Hosting (Page 1 of 2)
There are a lot of reasons why someone would choose dedicated managed server hosting. If you have a website then you will have had to decide upon some hosting at some point. If you are new to the online world and it was your first website then the chances are high that you chose shared hosting. This may have been very cheap due to the fierce competition out there between companies offering shared hosting, but is it really the best option? If the site is important to you or your business then shared hosting just might not go far enough in terms of security. This article provides the benefits of instead using dedicated managed server hosting.
Benefit 1 High Security There is no doubt that the high security levels of dedicated managed server hosting are a big reason why many people choose this type of hosting. When no one else has access to your server the chances of your sites being hacked or being exposed to malware or viruses is greatly reduced. A virus can completely destroy a website and even your computer so taking the risk is just not worth it. Additionally your site could easily be affected in some other way when someone else changes something related to their own site. If you dont want to be at risk of any of these disastrous occurrences then it is much better to avoid shared hosting and choose a dedicated managed server hosting package instead.
A system kept in an office and not a data centre, is not always secure. Security is not just limited to passwords, but also to who has access to the hardware and can shut it down. An old story tells of a server that shut down on certain nights. After fruitless checks into logs it was decided that someone would sit and watch it. That is when they discovered the server was unplugged by the cleaner so that the floor could be polished. In computer speak this was known as a buffer problem.
Benefit 2 Faster Loading Times When a server is shared, the bandwidth is also shared between all the sites hosted there. This means that loading times can be very slow and cumbersome. A site hosted on a dedicated server has no bandwidth to share and therefore the uploading is much quicker. Visitors to a website are not very likely to hang around and wait for the site to load. You only get one chance generally with visitors too and if they cant load the site or have to wait longer than a couple of seconds they are very likely to click away to your competition.
Benefit 3 Lower Long Term Costs Although the costs of having a dedicated manager server hosting package are slightly more than using shared hosting for example the benefit of the additional security they provide make up for it. If you chose a different route such as colocation, then you would have to pay for a lot more. Colocation for example would mean you had to buy the server hardware itself and you would need the resources to make checks on the server and make sure the network was monitored. If there is a technical glitch that takes your site offline then you could lose valuable click throughs, income and turn away valuable customers that are unlikely to return. To avoid this risk, having a managed server is a better solution. All the network monitoring and technical maintenance is the responsibility of the company you are using. This saves a lot of time and money in the long term.
Beware! You Are Taking Identity Theft Security Risks On Your Pc
Malware identity theft is a problem for a lot of people in this world who use their computer. Maybe 90% of computer users have regular internet access. Their are also many jobs where it is a necessity. There are a myriad of causes that begin to slow down your computer or even cause it to begin spouting error messages at you, failing to open things you normally use and in some cases causing complete software/hardware failures.
In general accessing the internet is one of the most consistent causes as spyware/adware and malware sneaks onto your improperly protected pc. Another main culprit for your pc slowing down or having problems is the windows registry (a library of shared files for running multiple applications at the same time). The final main culprit is bad software such as free-wares. Most (but not all) freeware programs are free for a reason. It is not necessarily because they are poor programs.
I have used some outstanding freeware in the past, but they almost all contain some form of spyware/adware or even worse malware such as viruses. When you download freeware – even well known programs, you are taking a huge gamble. The problems may not even occur whilst you are using the program (aside from pop-up ad’s), but when you try to uninstall the software, it will often take out some important shared files from the registry because it has been designed poorly just to get the malware onto your pc.
A very common way you can tell if you have a potential malware on your pc is to look for that program in the windows control panel section. Go to add/remove programs – if the program isn’t there it is most likely malware. There are cases where it not, but it usually is. The last thing the program creator wants is for you to be able to easily uninstall their malware! Under these circumstances you will have to go into your program files, find the right folder and use the uninstaller supplied. Even with this method you cannot be sure that the uninstaller has removed everything, nor can you be sure that it hasn’t damaged important files.
MALWARE HELP.
The problem with malware is that it is extremely sophisticated and can “piggy-back” onto your computer just while you are viewing a web page that contains it. You must never underestimate how serious of a threat malware can be to your security, one of these programs could easily be logging you credit details or log-ins as you type them into websites. Identity theft and fraud are on a massive increase through the use of the internet. The biggest problem you’ll find when you do realise that you must have better protection against these attacks is; choosing the right programs to protect your privacy. There are many “fake” or “less than adequate” programs out there and it is very easy to get ripped off.