Dedicated/Colocation Hosting Options - Part 1

Dedicated and Colocation plans are very similar. The only difference is with a dedicated plan, the hosting company provides (rents) you with the server hardware. With a colocation plan, you provide the server. The only time I recommend colocation plans, over dedicated, is if you have physical access to the server. In a dedicated plan when a hardware item fails, the hosting company will replace it. For a colocation plan, you must send the part to the provider, or purchase the hardware from the provider and pay for the installation.

Server Operating System (OS)
UNIX, Linux and NT are the popular operating systems for web servers. If you are going to maintain the site yourself, I suggest you use an OS that you are comfortable with. If you have a site that where tight security is an issue, choose UNIX or Linux.

The choice between UNIX and Linux is a though one. My personal preference is Linux. Not because it receiving lots of publicity, but people are adding and developing for it every day.

If you plan to run any type of database (SQL, Access, Oracle, DB2), NT is the choice. Working with a database is far easier with NT and ASP than UNIX and Perl. This, however is just my personal opinion.

Server Hardware
Intel, Sun, Mac, Cobalt RaQ. So many choices. Sun is still the best hardware platform for reliability and speed, but the Pentium processor is catching up quickly. A Pentium based system is far cheaper than a Sun system, so for the average site Intel is a good decision. I do not recommend Macintosh servers, yet. (Please Mac people, don't spam my inbox with mail.)

You want to make sure your network card (NIC) is of high quality. This is your site's life connection to the world. 3Com makes great cards. Stick with a well know brand name.

The same is true for hard drives (HD). A drive with 7400 RPM or better is suggested for web servers. The higher the speed, the quicker it can access data. In most cases SCSI (Small Computer System Interface, most common in high-end servers and Macintosh Systems) hard drives outperform IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics, common in PCs) hard drive. For a web server, SCSI is the better choice.

For better performance, multiple hard drives can be configured for data integrity. This is called RAID, and not the bug spray. RAID stood for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, but now is known as Redundant Array of Independent Disks. Back when hard disks were expensive, some one came up with a way to utilize older, smaller disks to create one large virtual disk. Now that disk drives are inexpensive, RAID is used for data integrity and speed. There are several types of RAID.

RAID 1 or Mirroring. This involves two drives where one is the primary and the second is a complete mirror of the other. This increases fault tolerance, but you suffer in speed. The computer must write to both drives concurrently. When a RAID 1 is setup on an IDE controller, make sure that each drive is on a different controller. This will increase speed because the computer does not have to share the port.

RAID 3 and 5. Information is written across multiple drives with parity (An error detection technique that tests the integrity of digital data within the computer system). A failed drive can be hot swapped with a new one, and the RAID controller automatically rebuilds the lost data. This type of RAID increases performance because the drives can be read independently.

128MB of RAM memory is a must for any web server. Most web server software will cache, or store, web pages in RAM memory. RAM memory is much faster than a hard drive. The more memory you have, the more pages can be cached in memory. There are many flavors for memory. DRAM, DRAM and ECC. ECC (Error-Correcting Code memory) is the logical choice for servers. EEC memory tests for and corrects errors on the fly.