How to choose a server for website hosting?

How to choose a server for website hosting?

The Internet is a means not only for communication and entertainment, but also for earning money and doing business. Any company, regardless of the direction and scale of activity, strives to acquire its own website, which helps to expand the customer base, increase the number of orders, and profitability.

Of course, not every website will interest the buyer. It is important that it is constantly available, all pages open quickly. Performance is determined not only by the skill of the programmers, the correctness of the settings and development, but also by the reliability of the website hosting. How to decide on a server for hosting in order to eliminate problems with speed, availability without excessive financial investments? What criteria are the most significant and essential when choosing?

Necessity

According to research, a visitor is not ready to wait if a site loads longer than 3-4 seconds. It is highly likely that a potential buyer will simply close it and go to another company whose platform does not make you waste your time. Thus, hosting must provide good performance, otherwise there will be problems with traffic, conversion, promotion and other factors that determine the overall commercial success of the enterprise.

Also, hosting must provide security so that commercial information about the company, personal data provided by users during registration, are not available to third parties. An additional security criterion is resistance to network attacks, DDoS and the like.

Server Classification

Website hosting is represented by several classes that determine technical specifications, cost of use, service features and other significant indicators. The main types need to be examined in detail - this will simplify the selection, eliminate the risk of error.

Virtual (shared)

The price of virtual hosting is minimal, difficulties in the process of management, configuration, maintenance are excluded. In fact, this is a shared server on which many online sites operate. This feature is a significant disadvantage, if one of the sites is subject to a network attack, problems arise on neighboring ones, they begin to work slower, crash, up to complete unavailability. For responsible commercial sites, storing personal and especially commercial data, it is better not to use such a format, there are too many risk factors.

VPS and VDS

The most balanced solutions in terms of cost, reliability, performance and available additional functions. Suitable for most sites, with the exception of particularly large portals with huge traffic, for which special requirements are imposed on reliability and stability. As in the previous case, the physical server with hardware capacity is shared, however, the provider undertakes that the performance cannot fall below a certain level, which solves potential problems with performance.

The advantages of VPS and VDS are as follows:

• Minimal costs. You do not have to spend money on purchasing your own server equipment, it is enough to choose a tariff plan with suitable conditions.
• Freedom of management and administration. The user decides which software and operating system to install.
• The ability to create backup copies and restore points manually or even automatically.

The main rule when using such hosting is the right choice of provider. You should trust only proven companies with a good reputation. This will eliminate various troubles, such as loss of information, vulnerabilities to hacker, network attacks, decreased performance, difficulties in interacting with hotline specialists and technical support.

Dedicated

The user has all the hardware resources, hosting capacity at his disposal, and does not have to share it with other clients. The option is more expensive than the previous one, however, the price is compensated by performance, reliability, and security.

The advantages are as follows:

• Maximum performance that meets the requirements of the largest sites, online stores with tens of thousands of items, regional news portals.
• The ability to use the entire bandwidth of the communication channel, which eliminates access speed restrictions.
• Complete freedom of management, ease of installation of the necessary software and OS.
• Wide security capabilities, resistance to network attacks, blocking of unwanted IP addresses.
• Simplified modernization, if necessary, as the scale of the business grows, you can increase the hardware performance.
• Comprehensive technical support from the provider, prompt resolution of emerging problems.

The main disadvantage is dependence on the provider. In order to avoid trouble, you should take a responsible approach to choosing an organization, pay attention to reviews left by customers, reputation, responsibility.

Cloud

Cloud hosting sites are formed by several servers, which increases reliability. If one of the servers fails, the load is automatically redistributed to others. This scheme can be compared with the previous one, but it is somewhat cheaper with a comparable level of performance. The solution is suitable even for fairly large sites, the average daily traffic of which is 10 thousand users.

Own server

This approach will require significant investments, you need to take a responsible approach to the design, think over the configuration that meets the needs of the site, purchase active and passive devices, hire a specialist whose area of ​​responsibility will be equipment maintenance.

The advantages of the solution are identical to a dedicated server, but all devices are owned, which ensures complete independence from the provider. This is an extremely important point when interacting with confidential, commercial and other data, the fall into third hands of which must be excluded 100%.

Hardware specifications

You need to choose a server not only by type, but also by technical parameters. The most important criterion is the processor, it is the one that processes user requests, ensures the speed of calculations, software and operating system operation. The performance of the site is half determined by the processor. The main characteristics of the CPU are as follows:

• Number of cores and clock frequency. Everything is as simple as possible here: the more physical cores the processor has, the higher their operating frequency - the faster the computing operations are performed. It is better to choose a module with a reserve of 25-30 percent to exclude its constant operation under maximum load, and also to lay the foundation for further modernization.
• Manufacturer. For servers, it is better to choose specialized processors, for example, Intel offers a specialized Xeon line, and AMD - EPYC.
• Generation. With an unlimited budget, you can choose the latest generation devices, and to save money, choose previous ones, but not the oldest ones, 2 or 3 years old.

It should be taken into account that large sites often lack the performance of one CPU, even the newest one. In this case, you need to use a 2-processor architecture.

RAM

In terms of volume, the recommendations are as follows:

• 8-16 gigabytes - small sites;
• 16-32 - medium;
• 64 and more - large platforms, including databases. The maximum volume will also be required if a modern CMS is used to manage the site, it has a gaming, streaming focus, and tens of thousands of clients visit it every day.

If necessary, the initial amount of RAM can be easily increased by adding several strips. It should be taken into account that for performance you need not only the volume, but also the standard, frequency. DDR2 and DDR3 are standards that have become a thing of the past, the most balanced in price and speed is DDR4, if possible, you should install DDR5. For maximum protection against computing errors, it is recommended to use RAM with ECC technology support.

Disk space

The required volume is determined by the structure, scale of the site, all the files that ensure its operability are stored on the disks. Of course, a large video hosting will require much more space than a simple one-page site or business card.

Another important point is the type of disk storage. If the emphasis is on volume, it is better to install classic magnetic drives, HDD, access speeds - solid-state drives, SSD. The fastest disks are required for databases such as MySQL. The best solution in this case is SSD that supports NVMe technology. It is permissible to install not only disks of the same class, but also to combine them.

Connection speed

For small sites, one gigabit per second will be enough, for large ones, especially gaming or online cinemas, the use of which involves the use of data in real time - ten.

Additional features

Other criteria for choosing a hosting are as follows:

• Support for PHP, MySQL and other technologies that ensure compatibility with various CMS, including the most popular ones, Joomla and WordPress.
• Support for SMTP, IMAP protocols. This is necessary if the server will be used to interact with e-mail. Additional protocol functions will also be useful, such as filtering, automatic blocking of spam mailings, advertising letters.
• Backup support. Any experienced developer will say that backups are a must. They allow you to quickly restore all data, return the site to working order in the event of a critical failure. Backup can be done manually, but it is better if the process is automated.
• SSL support. This is a data encryption technology that ensures access security. The information is transmitted in an encrypted form, so even its interception will be useless, the hacker will not be able to decrypt it. The function is critically important for online stores, banking sites and other sites where you have to interact with bank card details, personal, passport information.
• Uptime. The period of continuous availability of the hosting. Even the most responsible providers are not insured against failures, so a 100% indicator is unattainable. The minimum recommended value is 99%, but the most responsible projects require 99.95.

What else should you consider?

It is important to choose the location of the server. The closer it is to the target audience, the better. This increases the overall access speed, allowing the site pages to open faster. Also, for the most comfortable and efficient use, you should consider:

• Provider reputation. It is wiser to trust even small projects to responsible organizations that have a good reputation in the market, whose status is confirmed by positive user reviews. Such companies invest in the development of infrastructure, are ready to guarantee the operability of equipment, the preservation of confidentiality of information, its inaccessibility to third parties.
• Quality of technical support. The best option is a 24-hour telephone line, which allows you to resolve all issues on the first call, restore the hosting functionality.
• Tariff plans. The site should bring profit to the owner, so excessive hosting costs are unacceptable. You cannot strive for maximum savings, as the reduced cost often hides poor quality of services.
• The ability to issue additional IP addresses. For some projects, this is an extremely important point.
• Ease of upgrade. If the client assumes that the business will develop rapidly, which will require improving the site, uploading new files to it, expanding the list of functions available to the user, it is worth choosing a hosting that can be quickly upgraded.

Summing up

The server determines the functionality, speed of the site, ease of use by the client, so the selection must be approached with full responsibility. Taking into account the scale of the Internet platform, its focus, commercial or informational, the planned number of visitors per day - all this will help in making the right decision!

Author of the article:

Editor-in-Chief

Danaev Almaz