By Daniel D Dwase

One of the primary reasons that an organization chooses to host a dedicated server is for speed, as normally the need for a dedicated server arises mainly because the current solution is too slow.

As a result, finding a fast dedicated server is a priority for many businesses, and it's also a complicated issue that is more than just bandwidth and processor speed.

It's a range of issues which can make the decision a great deal more complicated than you'd think, but it's something that’s important in order to ensure that your server is both quick, reliable and most of all – affordable.

Today, the market is literally flooded with hosting providers across the world, and it can be difficult to separate the good from the bad.

In a world where nearly everyone is a reseller, one of the first things that you should be on the lookout for is a hosting provider that actually owns their own facility, because this generally means that company is an expert in hosting provision.

There are many hosting providers out there advertising that they own their own facility, but the reality is that all they really own is a rack of servers which are leased.

This means that when it comes to dealing with issues, it's a three way process which can be time consuming and costly to your business. As a result, if you want to find a fast server you should always start with a fast hosting provider.

It's also important to remember that overcapacity is an issue for many hosting providers who try to cram too many servers into their datacenter.

This results in a variety of issues ranging from latency to unplanned outages and also generally bad customer support which can result in unexpected downtimes and unhappy customers!

Before you start sourcing a fast dedicated server for your business, it's important to assess first whether or not a traditional server will do.

For the most part, normal dedicated servers can quite happily fill the roles of hosting, file storage and even VoIP, so perhaps all you need is a faster dedicated server in the sense of a provider which can deliver higher quality bandwidth and assure the best reliability for your business.

It's a sad fact that the hosting industry is currently flooded with low quality hosts. For the most part, 40% of users that rent dedicated servers are not getting the performance they paid for, and this is why it's important to look around and find a quality host so that you can be assured that overcapacity will not affect your business, and most importantly your server will have the redundancy it needs to perform well.

When looking for a fast dedicated server, scalability is an important issue to consider, as it allows for your server topology to grow as and when necessary.

As a result, if you require additional servers for the tasks of load balancing or perhaps a dedicated media server, it's often wise to find a provider that has additional features for servers within the same network.

Finding a good hosting provider is of the utmost importance, and you may very well need to conduct an international search.

Often this means looking for US based hosting providers, as the routing in the United States is some of the best in the world. When you are looking for any fast server provider, it’s important that they are just as professional as any other business partner you may have dealt with.

Don't be shy to pick up the phone and call them! This may be an online relationship, but it could very well be an expensive one if they don’t turn out to be reliable. This company should be professional, experienced and above all they must be responsive.

A hosting provider should be able to help guide you towards your requirements so that you know exactly what you need.

However, just like any business service it’s important to look around with due diligence. One of the best places to start is by speaking to business partners about recommendations and working from there.

Ultimately when it comes to finding a fast dedicated server, you can be expected to pay more for things such as access to enterprise grade storage area networks, failover redundancy as well as on-site monitoring and support to ensure that in the case of an outage, your hosting provider can fix the problem before your customers know about it.

After having sourced a suitable host, then the task of finding a provider is over and it's simply a case of finding the right tool for the job.

Typically this is like ordering any other computer and it is just a case of choosing the components which are required and then waiting for your server to go live in anything from a few hours to a few days.

Typically when choosing a fast dedicated server, it's important to ensure that there is fast uplink i.e. 1000 Mb/s, or even to consider multiple uplinks so that your server can deliver to thousands of concurrent users.

Often, businesses like multiple servers which can help in the process of load balancing and redundancy, so it’s important to consider that two servers may actually be better than one.

Take this into account when finalizing the deal, and also ensure that if you do decide to choose just one server, that it can be upgraded without disruption.

A dedicated server needs special handling. It's a constant case of monitoring load and everything from throughput to disk activity to ensure that it is doing its job properly.

This lets you know as soon as possible if you need to upgrade. After security updates, this is one of the most important aspects of server management, as not paying attention to server load could result in unplanned outages.

You don't need to be an expert when it comes to finding a fast dedicated server, but being psychic would sometimes help. It's a case of looking at requirements and then looking at projected server loads to work out what the worst case scenario is, and then planning for it.

If you've done that planning well, your server should handle anything from 100 users up to 100,000.

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