Are you in the process of looking for Dedicated Server provider? If so, it’s worth doing your own small research despite of picking any first offer. We listed top 8 things to check before ordering server.
1. 24/7 Support
Almost every Data Centre offers 24/7 support. The questions is: How fast they reply? It’s highly recommended to contact them on live chat. It’s a first thing you can do by entering website. And do the check list with their live consultant. They are always welcome to explain every detail of their services and provide additional information. If not, you can hesitate in their support quality. Secondly, create a ticket/ send an email for technical support. Trace their response time. Anything below 15-20 min is good result. (Don’t forget to consider it takes extra time to receive and deliver an email.)
2. Managed or Unmanaged server
This one is pretty much straightforward. Double check if they offer managed or unmanaged servers. It still happens from time to time when clients get server and expects support will install their software and do other server administrator tasks, but Company simply do not offer this kind of service.
3. Backups
Backups must be your number one priority for business. It’s not worth it to put your business in risk for extra dollars. Don’t keep your backups on same server and don’t trust in RAID. It’s still not safe! Example: what happens If Data Centre will be damaged by fire or water. Big chance all servers will be destroyed. It’s highly recommended to keep backups in totally different data centre. Check if they can offer any third-party software with totally different server.
4. Customization Options
Bare-metal (dedicated servers) can be customized on your request. It means you can add RAM, get more hard disks, change GPU etc. (worth to know that CPU can not be upgraded or replaced. Most of the time you will need to migrate to new server). Double check if you can upgrade your server later. You never know when you might need more storage space or random-access memory (RAM).
5. Bandwidth / Traffic
This one is tricky. Some projects might require fast bandwidth as of course a ton of traffic. In order to avoid unexpected costs, ask about their traffic policy. And even they say it’s unlimited/unmetered, give them a question: Does it mean I can use 1Gbps and consume in/out traffic of 330TB in 1 month? Unmetered traffic is marketing terminology. Most of the time, there must be at least some fair usage policy.
6. SLA – Service Level Agreement
In some cases, this document might save your life (or money). You can check server deployment time, 24/7 support obligations and Data Centre uptime. We all know that data centre up time is always ~99.99%. It’s another marketing trick because it’s almost impossible to track it. Some maintenance problems, network issues might influence only a part of dedicated servers etc. It’s worth to know how they are prepared to compensate downtime and even this is an option to get something out of it as discounts, promotions, extra server time etc.
7. Location
It’s a long route between Europe and USA. You may reduce ping time by having your server close to home, office or main clients/visitors’ concentration. If low ping time is essential concern of your project, ask for speed test or IP to check ping.
8. RAID
Short reminder about RAID 1 – (mirrored disks) duplicates data across two disks in the array, providing full redundancy. Two disks each store exactly the same data, at the same time, and at all times. Data is not lost as long as one disk survives. It means that 2x 240GB SSD RAID1 is only 240GB of available storage space. It’s highly recommended for dedicated servers. Other RAID options: RAID 0, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10.
You can use RAID calculator here: http://www.raid-calculator.com/
If all of these suggestions sound a bit difficult and time-consuming, well, they may be. And I wouldn’t suggest to contact us. We will help you to find most suitable dedicated server for your business.
