February 1, 2009 at 15:12Select dedicated server. Underwater rocks.
Good afternoon, Habralyudi! Today I decided to talk about how to choose my first dedicated server.
The question of choosing a server location is not as simple as it seems. I will try to cover all the "pitfalls" that a beginner will encounter in this difficult matter. The article does not claim to be a comprehensive topic.
What is dedicated (hereinafter referred to as “dedik”)? This is the server that you rent from a data center. The key difference from shared hosting (shared) and virtual servers (VDS \ VPS) is that for the rental period - this is your server. You can do whatever you want with it - change the OS, set of software, place other clients on it under shared \ VPS conditions ...
You should switch to dedicated if:
In order to choose the right server you need to know a few things:
Many webmasters like to measure the load of "hits per day" or "unique per day." This is a spherical horse in a vacuum. For each hit, there may be a bookmark page weighing 10kb, or maybe a complex script with a dozen database queries. Your "hits and unique" will not say anything to the host.
The load on iron is measured in the consumption of RAM, disk space, I \ O and CPU time.
The load on the Internet channel is measured in megabits per second.
As for the country of location - in general, you need to choose a data center (data center) in the country from which the majority of visitors will be. Exceptions (such as differences in the laws of different countries) are beyond the scope of this article. That is, if 80% of your visitors are from Russia and the CIS, it is foolish to host a server in Australia.
From the data center, the organization of the highest uptime of your server is required.
This concept includes:
Be sure to ask if the DC has its own diesel generator and a sufficient number of UPSs.
Channels - the principle “there is never too much” applies here. I would not trust a DC that has 1 uplink, even a reliable one. Anything can happen, sometimes even very respected ISPs “fall”.
A plus to the data center is its connectivity with traffic exchange points (MSK-IX, etc.), because such traffic is often not charged / charged at a more preferential rate for ISP users included in these points.
Also in favor of DC is the presence of several independent trunk channels. When a DC is “tied” to one telecom operator - this is bad.
A prerequisite is technical support. Ideally, around the clock. Be sure to clarify this question, read in the contract "maximum response time TP", often there is ridiculous content, ala "72 hours".
Remote power control services and the ability to connect KVMOIP (keyboard-video-mouse over IP) are highly desirable. The first will give you the ability to enable / disable / restart your server without pulling those. support, the second - the ability to independently configure the BIOS, install the operating system and restore the server even in the most severe failures (“the OS does not load”, “the network has disappeared”, etc.). As a rule, KVM is provided for a fee, but charging an RPC fee is bad form.
Check with the DC about the possibility of concluding an SLA, if you are interested.
An important aspect is the ability to scale the infrastructure as your project grows. If the DC channels are loaded at 95%, and there are 3 places left in the racks - maybe it’s worth looking for another one?
Well, the advice is personally from me - never contact resellers, sub-resellers, sub-sub-sub-resellers. It is very difficult to find the ends of such a chain if one morning your server stops responding, along with the phone of such a “sub-sub-sub”. Work directly with the DC, or, if it does not have a dedicated service, with first-level hosters. Check with the host for the availability of a license for telematic communication services and delivered CSS.
When choosing the hardware for your project, consider the following things:
1) All things being equal, a brandname server is preferable to a self-assembled server (yes, it happens).
2) Often, when using shared \ VDS, the hoster does not include in your consumption the resources necessary to ensure the operation of the server itself and your site, such as DNS, Mail, FTP, firewall.
3) Never rent a server that is enough for you "end to end". The load can increase dramatically, for example, when closing a competitor, but moving to another server is far from five minutes. Take it "for growth", it is better to overpay $ 15 per month for the extra 512MB of memory than frantically search for a new server when your site starts to "bend".
4) Consider the possibility that your server could be attacked. Leave a reserve on resources.
Almost all operators charge a server installation fee - in the amount of 1 monthly payment. But there are promotions and special offers of “burning” servers when there is no installation fee.
Traffic:
0) No limit exists,% username%. If you are promised "unlimited" traffic, then they either clamp the bandwidth, or with really large volumes they will "ask" out of DC. In any case, I saw no exceptions.
1) Clearly calculate how much traffic your server consumes. Often, it’s much more profitable to “pre-pay” traffic for a month than to buy it after a limit is reached.
2) If you do not want to pay after the fact, you have two ways:
I hope I described all the possible questions that a beginner may have. I deliberately did not delve into the “jungle” - I bypassed the issues of SLA, server reselling, etc. This is not the purpose of this article
The question of choosing a server location is not as simple as it seems. I will try to cover all the "pitfalls" that a beginner will encounter in this difficult matter. The article does not claim to be a comprehensive topic.
Do you need it?
What is dedicated (hereinafter referred to as “dedik”)? This is the server that you rent from a data center. The key difference from shared hosting (shared) and virtual servers (VDS \ VPS) is that for the rental period - this is your server. You can do whatever you want with it - change the OS, set of software, place other clients on it under shared \ VPS conditions ...
You should switch to dedicated if:
- You do not have enough shared hosting \ server resources.
- You have a large project, and you can’t host it on regular hosters.
- You want to resell server resources (become a hoster).
- Are you afraid for the safety of your information or for its secrecy.
What do you need to know?
In order to choose the right server you need to know a few things:
- Necessary iron, based on the load of your project.
- Traffic consumption.
- Country of location.
Many webmasters like to measure the load of "hits per day" or "unique per day." This is a spherical horse in a vacuum. For each hit, there may be a bookmark page weighing 10kb, or maybe a complex script with a dozen database queries. Your "hits and unique" will not say anything to the host.
The load on iron is measured in the consumption of RAM, disk space, I \ O and CPU time.
The load on the Internet channel is measured in megabits per second.
As for the country of location - in general, you need to choose a data center (data center) in the country from which the majority of visitors will be. Exceptions (such as differences in the laws of different countries) are beyond the scope of this article. That is, if 80% of your visitors are from Russia and the CIS, it is foolish to host a server in Australia.
Choose a data center.
From the data center, the organization of the highest uptime of your server is required.
This concept includes:
- Power supply.
- Conditioning.
- Network access channels.
- The quality of the server itself (more on this in the section on choosing a configuration).
Be sure to ask if the DC has its own diesel generator and a sufficient number of UPSs.
Channels - the principle “there is never too much” applies here. I would not trust a DC that has 1 uplink, even a reliable one. Anything can happen, sometimes even very respected ISPs “fall”.
A plus to the data center is its connectivity with traffic exchange points (MSK-IX, etc.), because such traffic is often not charged / charged at a more preferential rate for ISP users included in these points.
Also in favor of DC is the presence of several independent trunk channels. When a DC is “tied” to one telecom operator - this is bad.
A prerequisite is technical support. Ideally, around the clock. Be sure to clarify this question, read in the contract "maximum response time TP", often there is ridiculous content, ala "72 hours".
Remote power control services and the ability to connect KVMOIP (keyboard-video-mouse over IP) are highly desirable. The first will give you the ability to enable / disable / restart your server without pulling those. support, the second - the ability to independently configure the BIOS, install the operating system and restore the server even in the most severe failures (“the OS does not load”, “the network has disappeared”, etc.). As a rule, KVM is provided for a fee, but charging an RPC fee is bad form.
Check with the DC about the possibility of concluding an SLA, if you are interested.
An important aspect is the ability to scale the infrastructure as your project grows. If the DC channels are loaded at 95%, and there are 3 places left in the racks - maybe it’s worth looking for another one?
Well, the advice is personally from me - never contact resellers, sub-resellers, sub-sub-sub-resellers. It is very difficult to find the ends of such a chain if one morning your server stops responding, along with the phone of such a “sub-sub-sub”. Work directly with the DC, or, if it does not have a dedicated service, with first-level hosters. Check with the host for the availability of a license for telematic communication services and delivered CSS.
The choice of the "iron" part and traffic.
When choosing the hardware for your project, consider the following things:
1) All things being equal, a brandname server is preferable to a self-assembled server (yes, it happens).
2) Often, when using shared \ VDS, the hoster does not include in your consumption the resources necessary to ensure the operation of the server itself and your site, such as DNS, Mail, FTP, firewall.
3) Never rent a server that is enough for you "end to end". The load can increase dramatically, for example, when closing a competitor, but moving to another server is far from five minutes. Take it "for growth", it is better to overpay $ 15 per month for the extra 512MB of memory than frantically search for a new server when your site starts to "bend".
4) Consider the possibility that your server could be attacked. Leave a reserve on resources.
Almost all operators charge a server installation fee - in the amount of 1 monthly payment. But there are promotions and special offers of “burning” servers when there is no installation fee.
Traffic:
0) No limit exists,% username%. If you are promised "unlimited" traffic, then they either clamp the bandwidth, or with really large volumes they will "ask" out of DC. In any case, I saw no exceptions.
1) Clearly calculate how much traffic your server consumes. Often, it’s much more profitable to “pre-pay” traffic for a month than to buy it after a limit is reached.
2) If you do not want to pay after the fact, you have two ways:
- "Conditionally unlimited" traffic. T.N. "Traffic ratios." You will be required to comply with the ratio of Russian to foreign and incoming to outgoing. Calculate whether you fit into these ratios - cost overruns are usually expensive.
- "Shared" - providing a certain bandwidth to several servers. Why this is dangerous, I think, is understandable so.
- “Buying a band” is the most expensive, but the most “good” option - you pay for bandwidth, and do not pay for traffic. A 100MBps band can cost up to 100,000 rubles, and not every data center is ready to provide large bands.
I hope I described all the possible questions that a beginner may have. I deliberately did not delve into the “jungle” - I bypassed the issues of SLA, server reselling, etc. This is not the purpose of this article