Whether to use a data center or an on-site dedicated server is probably one of the most important management decisions a company can make. In the past, when a business first learned about web hosting, it was common to start off with a Linux server and then upgrade to a dedicated server to handle increased web traffic.
Today, however, businesses are discovering they don’t have to follow this old path. There might still be reasons to keep data in a dedicated server, but there are also good reasons for using data center hosting for management and storage of data. Find out more about these opportunities by visiting primedatacenters.com.
Why Data Center Hosting?
The storage and management of data has seen a lot of changes in the past few years. There was a time when hosting was all done internally. And, for the time, that made a lot of sense. After all, there’s not much a troublesome outsider can do to data when it is kept internally.
The downside to this thinking was that the management of data, especially when it was kept internally, was expensive and time consuming. There was also a lot of concern over security issues, which became even more important when hacking became more commonplace.
When data centers came on the scene in the 1940s, there were a lot of reasons for companies to use them, but it wasn’t until the dot.com bubble of 1997 to 2000 that outside data centers became popular when small companies found themselves needing computing power they didn’t have. The answer to that problem was outside data centers.
In-House Dedicated Servers
Customization is the primary reason for using a dedicated server. A dedicated server does have the advantage of being able to run complicated applications or handling a lot of traffic. In cases such as these, companies often find that the advantages of having dedicated servers is justified. There are exceptions, of course, such as when it is important to have a server configured to meet unique requirements.
For example, programmers and web developers often require dedicated server hardware to create custom web server environments to use a complex application support, such as installing alternative operating systems for a web server, performance enhancing utilities, and custom developer extensions for programming languages.
Disadvantages of Dedicated Servers
The primary disadvantage of a dedicated server is that, with an unmanaged approach system, administrators must be responsible for all aspects of web security, including the operating system and all of the installed extension frameworks. In most cases, this is simply not possible with the qualifications of personnel.
Dedicated servers in a managed stack software environment are required to continually update their systems by technicians that work in a data center using security patches, often creating access issues with unregistered employees that many managers would find unacceptable in their operations.
Leasing remote dedicated servers is often more expensive than buying the same equipment. The only advantage in these cases is the difficulty of replicating the speed of the fiber optic network resources in a top-notch data center. Data centers have come a long way since their inception. Just look at the improvements Walt Coulston has made to data centers over the years. They now run much more efficiently and can store more data than you could possibly imagine.
When comparing data center hosting and on-site dedicated servers, it can be easier to trust a data center for support, debugging, and technical assistance as they are called for. Not every data center can be counted on for every operation that is required for mission-critical support, but many are. When it comes down to making sure a system is working correctly, there are a lot of advantages to using a data center.