Choosing server hosting can be technically difficult for both the expert and beginner alike and so should not be rushed as there is a risk and you may live to regret your decision. There is a number of steps that you need to plan and write down to start with.
What is the Server for? If your reading this then you should know, but not everyone does. Is it webhosting and e-commerce, game servers, download mirror, disaster recovery? You need to think about what operating system as well as what the software and services the server is to run. You have to ensure your specification allows for expansion but not somthing that is going to be too large for too long or is going to become dwarfed too quickly.
Specification
We know the software and operating system, you can talk about the specification needed. At this point ignore money as that is irrelevant until you come to actually choosing a host to go with, your specification will vary depending on usage. But your main things to look at are the CPU’s and the number of physical CPU’s and the cores on each CPU, many providers now offer dual or quad cores as standard. RAM is possibly more important than CPU’s but try not to scrimp as the end user will not appreciate a sluggish server when what they are doing is the most important thing in the world. Storage space is set by what software your using and how much you data you need to store as you don’t want to fill it too quickly,backups have to be taken depending on what your doing and where are you going to store these. RAID is also a great way to increase redundancy or create more usable space easily you have 0, 1, 10 or 5 as the common options.
Bandwidth
Once you have worked out the hardware for your hosting servers you then need to think about the bandwidth. Normally this is shown as gigabytes, and is normally hard to work out how much you need. When you find your host such as Melbourne, they will be able to help with this, and choosing the right dedicated server hosting. Next we have to find a good host with our specification in mind. The best thing I have been told was to get a computer magazine and remove all the glossy server host ads and then see what’s left as normally the big companies have low prices but there customer services can be questioned greatly. Using a quick search for some hosting forums and putting a number of posts up requesting for some product offers from companies and getting some reviews from other users to base you decision upon and will then normally get the best value for money.
