Picking the Right Server Type for your Business

Starting a business involves planning many things like deciding on the company scope, creating the business plan, choosing a company name and domain, designing a website, selecting a hosting solution, etc. These are all crucial elements that will help you recognize your business goals. Below is a quick guide to the different types of servers which will help you choose the most beneficial one for your company. This way, you can ensure that you do not lose customers due to slow responsiveness and sluggish performance.

Different Types of Servers and Their Features

Hosting servers are divided into main categories – dedicated and virtualized. The basic difference between the two is that dedicated servers are physical machines whereas virtualized servers are software programs that are designed to run on a physical machine. There are four subtypes in these two categories – dedicated servers, virtual private servers, virtual cloud servers, and bare metal cloud servers.

Dedicated servers will have a RAM unit, a processor, and a hard drive, just like a usual computer CPU. These physical machines will also have an operating system installed to manage your hosting needs. They are also known as bare metal servers. Dedicated servers are usually differentiated based on their configuration and performance.

Virtual private servers or VPS are software constructs, which are created to run on dedicated servers. This means that a single dedicated server can run multiple virtual servers as well. It can be made possible by using a hypervisor, which helps users to emulate virtual resources for the required job like RAM, memory space, and network. Generally, VPS comes with a default operating system, software programs, and apps.

Virtual cloud servers are designed to offer the same functions, features, and capabilities that a traditional server provides. However, they are built and hosted on a cloud computing platform, and deliver their service through the same medium. This means that the server will deliver the required services, be it default or on-demand computing services, over the internet.

Bare metal cloud servers refer to the combination of dedicated servers with virtual cloud servers. They are essentially physical machines with fixed RAM, processor unit, hard drive, and network, but come with cloud-like functionalities as well, such as scalability and flexibility. This hybrid model gives you the best of both worlds. However, the flexibility and scalability of bare metal cloud servers are very different from what you can expect from a virtual cloud server.

Bare metal cloud servers do not have any hypervisor, which means that you cannot host multiple virtual servers on the physical machines. The operating system is installed directly on the servers, but no manual action is required to manage them. The hosting provider will offer you server controllers to organize, deliver, and manage the server from the outside. Some providers even allow automatic hardware changes on bare metal cloud servers.

Choosing from the Different Types of Servers

Dedicated servers are widely used in scenarios where the workloads are predictable. They are also recommended for data-intensive workloads and for tasks that will not change that often to need immediate scalability. If your business needs high bandwidth and more resources than what you normally get in a shared hosting plan, then a dedicated server will be the right choice for ensuring superior site performance.

Dedicated servers are also great for managing highly sensitive data or for getting an advanced level of security. That is because no one else will be sharing the resources of the server that you are using. This also means that you can expect a far better performance from dedicated servers than what a virtualized solution could promise.

VPS solutions, however, will be the right choice if you are looking for more scalability and flexibility. They can manage highly variable workloads easily, while also serving small websites, blogs, and static sites in the best way possible. Most businesses choose VPS when their site outgrows the space and basic resources offered by shared hosting. It also benefits those who have multiple high-traffic websites but do not require much processing power to manage those.

Cloud servers are known for their hyper-scalability, which makes them ideal for IoT solutions and big data analytics. Moving such operations and applications to the cloud helps you to keep the costs in check while getting all the resources required to manage the apps and services efficiently. Besides, cloud servers also offer constant backup, which can be an added benefit for developers and businesses that handle frequently changing data.

Bare metal cloud servers combine the performance and flexibility of dedicated servers and virtualized solutions. They offer better security features and a higher level of scalability, which suit all kinds of usage scenarios like data-intensive workloads and high-transaction workloads. Bare metal cloud servers also offer a robust solution to the intensive storage needs of businesses, such as for managing big data applications, IoT solutions, data analytics, machine learning models, AI, etc.

The auto-scaling feature of bare metal cloud servers further makes them suitable for high-traffic websites and those that get seasonal spikes in traffic, such as e-commerce websites. Moreover, the hybrid server type can also be customized as per your usage requirements to accommodate any preferred software, operating system, or application. You can even set your own security protocols in bare metal cloud servers for data access and not have to rely on a third-party service for that either.

Choosing from the different types of hosting servers can be difficult if you do not determine your needs first. Therefore, analyze your requirements and then choose the right server based on your budget, security and scalability needs, and customization options.