Posts Tagged ‘rackspace’

Benefits of Dedicated Game Servers

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

If you are a person or business that is running a website aimed at gamers or that hosts Role-playing or other online games then upgrading to a dedicated server is something that you should consider. With the ever growing popularity of online gaming many game forums, blogs, and chat sites find themselves receiving a large amount of steady traffic each and every month. When using a shared hosting plan this overload of visitors could lead to slow loading time, busy server errors, and in some situations a temporary shut down of your website until you pay for additional bandwidth. Rather than deal with any of these inconveniences consider investing in a dedicated gamer server.

Some people are unwilling to look into dedicated game servers because of the cost traditionally associated with them. In the past years dedicated servers have required buyers to pay expensive equipment and maintenance fees. Plus a dedicated server should always be watched to avoid outages and other problems that can come from a large amount of steady visitors. Even if you are able to afford and monitor a dedicated server owners of these servers have also needed to have extensive knowledge to fix problems with the servers. Now there is an alternative.

Many shared hosting companies will offer clients a chance to rent their own, dedicated, server. These companies will still charge a monthly fee that is a bit higher than standard hosting but this fee will cover the cost of equipment and they will be the ones to monitor and fix any problem you might have. Most companies that offer dedicated servers and hosting of any kind will recommend the services to any client that hosts a high traffic website. If your current host does not actively advertise dedicated hosting then consider contacting them privately with your needs and budgets. They might be able to point you in the right direction. In the event that your hosting company does not offer any type of dedicated game servers then contact your website designer. Professional website designers will often have a list of hosting companies that they have worked with in the past and are glad to recommend good companies to existing or past clients.

If you are starting a gaming site for the first time and have no experience with hosting companies or design companies contact the owners and of some of your favorite existing sites. In many cases the owners of the site or the site designer will be happy to make recommendations and help you get started.

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How to Benefit From a Dedicated Server

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

Dedicated servers are something that many website owners here discussed often in chat rooms and on website support forums. While many new website owners will sign up for a shared hosting plan business owners that are affordable and maintained by a web hosting company other owners have invested in dedicated servers. A dedicated server is a server that is used by only one company for their website or websites. In the past owning a dedicated server was extremely expensive and required a lot of maintenance and technology knowledge.

These days having a dedicated server is much easier and a bit more affordable than it was a few years ago. Web hosting companies that previously offered only shared servers have now made dedicated servers available to their customers. This allows users to sign up for a hosting account the same way that they always have only now they will not be sharing a server with other account holders. The price for this service is more expensive than a shared hosting plan but still much more affordable than purchasing and managing private equipment. In addition to being more affordable investing in a dedicated server that is maintained by a third party is much more convenient. Neither you nor your staff has to worry about constantly monitoring your new server for downtime or errors. The web hosting company will perform the exact same support and troubleshooting services as they always have.

There are many benefits to having a dedicated server but the primary benefit in most website owners’ eyes is that they no longer have to fear downtime being caused by another website owner’s site. Many website owners do not realize that when sharing a server their site is in the hands of many other website owners who may not be very knowledgeable or responsible. Poorly designed sites with bad coding and other problems have led to entire servers crashing. Even if a sites coding does not disrupt the server, the sites traffic can sometimes lead to problems.

Many shared hosting plans limit the bandwidth being used by each account that is using the server in question. The web hosting company will either charge heavy fees for overuse or temporarily limit access to a site if it has exceeded a certain bandwidth amount. Unfortunately there are always times when a web hosting company does not notice an overage until it has already caused a server failure. This sometimes happens when a website uploads new content or starts a new traffic campaign that leads to a sudden burst of traffic. When a server is down your company will be penalized as traffic and potential customers are lost when they reach a site that is not active.

To avoid downtime and errors that are caused by shared hosting it is best to invest in a dedicated server. Dedicated servers are perfect for website owners that simply cannot afford to be down often and for website owners that expect a lot of traffic daily. Having a dedicated server will not only cut down on downtime, it will also make your website load faster and work more efficiently for your visitors.

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What Are Dedicated Game Servers?

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

Have you heard your gamer friends discussing dedicated game servers? Most serious games have considered investing in game servers at point or another. Dedicated game servers are servers like traditional web hosting servers that are used only for gaming. Dedicated game servers can be set up to play one particular game or several different games. Unlike playing a game on a PC or gaming console where you need to log into the game and make sure that the game continually downloads upgrades and other information from the main server a game that is runs on dedicated game servers is always on and is always fully updated and ready to play.

So needs to have dedicated game servers? Usually casual game players don’t bother with the expense and the hassle of having dedicated game servers. Dedicated game servers are most often used by professional gamers or other high level gamers that play on a near constant basis and need to be able to play with no interruptions from a slow internet connection or a clogged server.

A dedicated game server needs to be entirely managed by the person using it, meaning all the data that is normally programmed in by the web hosting servers needs to be programmed and maintained by the user. So keeping a dedicated game server running is not something that a casual gamer would have the knowledge to do very easily. Having specialized game servers can be very expensive also. Most of the time just one dedicated server for gaming costs several hundred dollars. But for a serious gamer the advantages of having an entire secure server dedicated to gaming outweigh the cost and the hassles of maintenance.

Another reason that dedicated severs are popular is because they offer a lot of additional security that isn’t available using a regular server. Because of the extra security some businesses also use dedicated servers but they use dedicated servers to protect company data, client records and company or client financial information. If your company has access to a lot of sensitive client information then buying a dedicated server is probably a good idea to make sure that the financial or personal data of your clients is fully protected.

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Don’t Forget About Small Business Web Hosting For Your Website

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

When it’s time for you to set up your company website there are several components that you need to have before your website will be ready to go and will be accessible to the general public. The first thing that you need to do is purchase a domain name. You might want to purchase the domain names for all the variations of your company name as well. Often you can get good deals when you purchase more than one domain name and if you own all the variations of your business name you won’t have to worry about another company with a similar name putting up a website that might confuse your customers.

After you have your domain name you have to purchase small business web hosting for your website. Small business web hosting is usually available from the company that you use to purchase a domain name but you should look around and compare the prices of small business web hosting at several companies before picking one. Often you can get small business web hosting more cheaply from another company.

There are other factors that you need to consider when picking small business web hosting beside price though. You also need to look at other things like the amount of bandwith and storage space that comes with the small business web hosting. Many companies will offer different plans that have different amounts of bandwidth and storage space for different monthly fees. If you don’t know how much storage space and bandwidth you will need you should ask your web site design company what they would recommend that you get. They can tell you what you need in terms of storage space and bandwidth.

If you have a website that will be taking up lots of storage space and needs a lot of bandwidth or if you are going to be having more than one website you might want to consider not getting a small business web hosting plan and buying your own server instead. But getting your own server is not something that many small businesses need to invest in, especially if you are just putting up a website for the first time.

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