As your site grows, so do your IT needs. Most sites just start as a little seedling of an idea on a shared hosting plan visited by a few friends. Over time and with the proper care, your site will grow exponentially, quickly working it’s way to the largest shared hosting plan, then making the jump to a VPS, and working it’s way up through the VPS plans. Eventually you’ll need a dedicated server, which can be the most daunting jump to take. Here’s a brief overview, using Ubiquity Hosting Linux Dedicated Servers as an example.
You have four basic choices, a Celeron (Celeron D 325), a basic quad core server (single Xeon 3220), a high end quad core server (single Xeon 5520), and a beefy dual quad core server (dual Xeon 5520.) Making the jump from a VPS to a dedicated server may already exhaust the budget, and if it has, just snag a Celeron. But if there’s a little room in the budget, the best thing you can do is get to the Xeon 3220. It’s as powerful as eight of the entry level Celerons (plus double the memory!) and it’s only $40/month more. You’ll feel this upgrade more than any other.
The next thing to think about is RAM. RAM (Random Access Memory, often just called “memory”) is essentially the computer’s workspace. I like to tell customers to think of it as how much counter space you have while cooking. If you’re making a big, elaborate meal for a lot of guests, you’re going to need a lot of counter space to prepare that meal, right? If you’re making a big, elaborate website for a lot of guests, you’re going to need a lot of memory to serve those pages. One of the easiest ways to increase site performance is simply by increasing the memory. Expect to spend about $20 per gb per month on memory. If $70 isn’t in the budget for the processor upgrade, this is the next best place to spend some money for a performance gain.
In the past, if you’ve been on shared hosting or VPS’, you’ve likely been protected from hardware failure by a RAID solution. RAID (Redundant array of Independent Disks) is used to increase speed or performance in hard drive configurations. RAID0 increases performance while RAID1 provides redundancy. If you’re not making backups, you need RAID1 or you risk losing your data in a hard drive crash. You likely won’t need RAID0 until you’ve upgraded your dedicated server, as it tends to be something that doesn’t cause a bottleneck right away. If you’re making backups of your site and saving them to a backup service (we offer one) or to your local computer, you don’t necessarily need RAID unless you want the convenience. If you’re not making backups, you NEED RAID1.
Bandwidth – 6000gb is probably more than enough bandwidth. If you need more than that, you probably already know it and the upgrade to 12000gb is $70/month. If you need more than that, contact our sales team if you aren’t sure what you’re doing. We can be reached at sales (at) ubiquityhosting (dot) com.
If you have any questions about any aspect of ordering servers, don’t hesitate to let us know. It can be a daunting task the first time you do it, possibly even the first few times. We’re here to help, so don’t be shy! We can be reached at sales (at) ubiquityhosting (dot) com.