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Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Is a Managed Or Unmanaged Dedicated Server Right For You?

By James Zimmerman

Web hosting is probably one of the most important aspects of any website. Today, there are a lot of companies offering affordable web hosting services that maybe appropriate for your business. You can classify this web hosting products into two - Managed dedicated servers and unmanaged dedicated servers. In order to understand the products under web hosting, you may need to look in to understand what dedicated servers are. This can help you in determining if your business needs a managed or unmanaged dedicated server.

Dedicated servers are physical servers where you actually store data. It functions like a normal computer having a processor, memory and hard drive. You might confuse it with shared hosting. Actually this is another kind of Low cost web hosting solutions. Shared hosting is mainly for small websites that may actually afford to share hosting resource. Dedicated servers as the name implies are servers that is only for the use of one owner. In short, nothing is shared. This is for those companies that require large websites. These servers have more function than the normal budget web hosting accounts. What is good about it is that you are not in the mercy of others and you don't have to worry of the loading time because it is much faster. If you are a large company, then having a dedicated server is a good idea.

Dedicated servers are not meant for everyone. Of course if it is just a personal site, you would not need an expensive dedicated server. You will just need a discount web hosting account to meet your needs. For big businesses that may need large space to accommodate scripts, huge number of visitors, bulletin boards and even games, you may need to consider having your own dedicated servers. Other applications like installing programming software and customizing operating system may need to have a dedicated server

There are two kinds of dedicated servers - managed and unmanaged. It is not that hard to differentiate the two. The main point of it lies in your hosting company but there are some basic things you need to know about this two. Unmanaged dedicated servers are cheaper. Your hosting service provider will install everything and leave the rest you. There is a big chance that you may encounter trouble and no one would be there to assist you. If you encounter problem like reconfiguration, they would not take time to fix it. The web hosting company would not do anything and it would not even upgrade your software. The only time that they would come in is when there is a failure in the hardware or the data center needs to be rebooted. You sometimes need to pay fees no matter how minimal support that you need.

On the other hand managed dedicated servers are opposite. The hosting company will perform admin function like upgrades and installation of features. In case trouble happens they are just a call away. When choosing managed dedicated servers providers you need to consider three important factors. First are the reputation and the support that the company have. Make sure that their terms are fair. Check out the testimonials of their clients. Look into the specifications that they offer like memory, size of hard drive and bandwidth that can be customized for your needs. Lastly see if the price is normal and competitive.

Before actually deciding which one is the best for your business, make sure to evaluate first you needs. Your business may need security and support when it comes to managing the server. If you don't have IT personnel and you are not that technical enough, then a managed dedicated server can work for you. Make sure that before signing any contract, you read first the policies that they have when it comes to managed or unmanaged solutions so that you can be sure that you made the right choice.


Mr. Zimmerman loves to save money especially when he writes about low cost web hosting at his blog. His website contains cheap hosting reviews along with customer submitted reviews.

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