Shall I colocate or lease a server?
Jun4
If you are on shared hosting plan or are hosting a site on VPS, you may need to upgrade in future as the traffic of your site increses. We have seen when do you need to consider Dedicated Server. However, there is one more service offered in this industry. It is known as “Co-location”.
When you have decided that you need a dedicated environment which would be non-shared, you look for either Dedicated Server Hosting or Colocation. It is really an important decision to be made. There are many comapnies offering Managed Dedicated Servers and Colocation. Let us see if you really need to colocate a server or leasing a dedicated server is the fine solution for your hosting needs.
To understand what actually colocation is, I would say it as: The service where customer’s resources or hardware are hosted in hosting provider’s data center. The hosting provider is only responsible for offering Power and Connectivity. If you are looking for colocation then you are responsible to provide hardware, hard drives, wires and all other resources required.
Colocating a server gets expensive when you pay for the resources, hardware and the hosting provider asks you for an amount that equals to the cost of dedicated server. Be notified that this charges are only for the power and connectivity that a hosting provider offers to you. Also, there you will be responsible for any kind of hardware failure. Thus, making the service more expensive. If you need more resources in future then upgrade also needs to be done by you. Hosting provider may also charge you an additional cost if you need high connectivity speed.
So far, I believe that leasing a Dedicated Server is only the solution for you. If so, when shall you opt for Colocation of a server? Yes, there is a time when you shall colocate a server rather than leasing a dedicated server. If you have more boxes or hard drives, you have multiple dedicated servers then you shall opt for Colocation Server.
Managed or Unmanaged Dedicated Server
Jun0
Now, when you have decided the server-side Operating System, there is one more thing that needs to be decided. There are both Managed and Unmanaged Servers available in the market.
There are many hosting providers that offer Unmanaged Dedicated Servers. So, what actually is Unmanaged Dedicated Server? Unmanaged Servers are all your responsibility. The hosting provider will only be responsible for the hardware, network and reboots that you may require. There might be restriction on number of reboots per day or month. You will to take care of all the software that you may install or even if server gets infected or compromised. However, if you want the provider to help you then they will charge you the administration fees.
Thus, if you are familiar with how dedicated servers work, you can simply opt for Unmanaged Dedicated Server. However, in case if you get stuck and you really need them to help you, the cost is so high that can’t be affordable. Hence, the best solution is to start with Managed Dedicated Server only.
So, how does it work?
We have briefly seen the way Managed Dedicated Server work in an article “Do I need a Dedicated Server?” in this blog. Just to be specific, if you consider Managed Dedicated Server, you are free of the unwanted headache that you might have with Unmanaged Dedicated Servers. This is because; everything related to the server is cared by the hosting provider. You are just responsible for the application that you may use. In short, Managed Dedicated Servers worth the cost.