For a dedicated server, a user has to manage and take care of that server. A person purchasing managed dedicated server hands overall technical and support issues to the provider. A user can either choose a managed server and hosting company handle all the details, maintenance, and updates. A user can manage the server by himself.

Few things are there which has to be considered into buying a dedicated server:-

Fully Managed Hosting:

It means the server is managed by hosting company for a user. Server management has following services:-

  1. Server monitoring
  2. Server security covers virus scanning, software firewall configuration, and spam filtering.
  3. Database Management
  4. Storage Management

Data Center Facilities:

While buying a dedicated server, it is of main concern that what facilities are being provided. Some of the important features to check among data center services are:-

  1. Power Redundancy
  2. On-site Security
  3. Cooling systems
  4. Redundant bandwidth

Remote Reboot Capability:

Remote reboot provides the capability to restart a server from a remote location without the need to call the hosting company. IPMI (Intelligence Platform Management Interface) is a service to do remote power management for user’s servers.

Content Delivery Network:

It is an efficient and fast delivery of content over a website. A CDN allows a website to replicate over multiple different locations like Asia and Europe. If somebody from Japan access any website, a CDN server from Asia will deliver the request and if somebody from Spain access any website, a CDN server from Europe will deliver the request.

Technical Support:

Most of the companies’ offer 24/7/365 technical support via phone or live chat. Technical support number must be readily available if any sudden server crash/failure or any technical disaster occurs. There should also be some tutorials and guides available for users to troubleshoot some errors themselves.

Few basic protection tips:

Any users who are using dedicated server hosting soon find some responsibilities on host provider. Some protections are:-

Passwords: On switching to a dedicated server, a password change is necessary. A user has to change the password immediately. A user has to remember following:-

  • Make password more cryptic. A user has to choose some collection of letters, symbols, and numbers.
  • A user can also use a random password generator as it does not recommend using passwords which consist of dictionary words.

Better Security: The web server security depends on an ability to identify interruptions during internet access of its ports. To prevent from unauthorized access, a firewall provides control over incoming traffic. A virus can easily infect the server which can be catastrophically impossible to cure. Every server is always vulnerable to sudden illicit attacks so it is better to prevent them by applying security measures. For e.g. Firewall security, Antivirus etc.

Keep Current Software: Most software manufacturers monitor new security loopholes and introduce updates to deal with security liabilities.

Update OS with latest patches: User has to make sure that OS is running with latest installed security updates. This will help in minimizing the risk of a dedicated server. Most Linux distributions keep informed their users of new updates.

Backup: At some point, there may be some data loss. So, a user has to perform regular backups with databases, configuration files, dynamic files and logs, resident customer files.

Conclusion:

Most users are comfortable in handling their operations in dedicated server management. Some services such as OS update, software update, managed backups should be included in managed dedicated server plan. There is a necessity of security precautions that should never decrease the importance of running a dedicated server.