Reasons to go With Dedicated Hosting
It can be difficult to choose between virtual private server (VPS) and dedicated server hosting. Both of these hosting solutions provide for dedicated hardware resources so that another customer’s problems don’t cause problems for others. However, the right solution depends on the amount of hardware resources needed for a website. In many cases, a website may be growing so fast that it’s better to skip the VPS solution and go straight to dedicated hosting.
With dedicated hosting, the entire server is leased to a single customer. This is unlike the VPS solution where only a portion of the CPU and memory is dedicated to a single customer. The question is how much in terms of CPU and memory is going to be needed in order to run a website. For example, a growing database can require a lot of RAM in order to run optimally. In particular, the database needs to reside in RAM completely. If the RAM is insufficient, the database may begin swapping to virtual memory, which will often cause to website performance to slow significantly. Having enough CPU is another concern as well, especially when there are spikes in website usage. Unfortunately, website use is not consistent throughout the day. That’s why it’s important to have enough hardware resources to cover the spikes in usage and not cause any website performance degradation.
Another important consideration is the size of a website with respect to the size of data. Although memory is a very important part of sizing data, hard drive storage is another important consideration. Running out of disk space can be problematic. In a VPS solution, disk space is shared and very limited. With dedicated hosting, it is still possible to run out of space and run into problems. First of all, any quick storage added will probably be slower. Also, there is a maximum number of disks that can be inserted into a system. That is something to consider when choosing which server make and model to pick. Finally, it can take some time to procure the disk necessary to get more free space. For all of these reasons, it is important to have a generous amount of disk space.
Overall, it is better to go with dedicated hosting for a fast growing website. The limitations included with the more economical VPS solution may be outgrown very quickly. It would be better to stick with a solution that can scale upwards as website use increases over the coming weeks and months.
