Here at Bodhost we are often asked questions about our dedicated hosting services such as what the benefits of a dedicated server are and the comparisons that can be drawn with other hosting products offered by Bod. Here we have compiled a selection of questions that we hope will aid customer old and new with the decision making process and whether or not a dedicated server is going to be the most appropriate hosting plan for their needs.
How does the term “fully managed” apply to a dedicated server?
When viewing our range of dedicated hosting plans, you will discover all of our dedicated servers are classed as fully managed. Fully managed basically means that you can contact Bodhost’s 24×7 support team if you have any enquiry surrounding your dedicated server. Examples of when you may need to contact our support team include
- If there is a particular application that you would like installed on your dedicated server but feel that you lack the skills to perform a professional installation, our support team can step in and carry out this task on your behalf
- When facing an issue with your dedicated server – no matter how small – you should contact the Bod support team the moment that you discover an issue so that it can be rectified promptly to reduce any potential impact on your business operations or the performance of your dedicated server.
What is server mirroring and how can it benefit me?
Server mirroring is the process of using another server that is identical to your primary dedicated server alongside this server so that if your primary server crashes, there is another server available to pick up the slack and deal with requests until service is restored to the primary server. This is a high performance solution that can offer 100% guaranteed uptime when implemented properly.
The server mirroring scheme deployed by Bodhost ensures that you are able to carry on working with the secondary server because the contents of the primary server will be kept in constant synchronization at all times; any files modified on the secondary server whilst the primary server is down will be used to overwrite the original files on the primary server once service is restored.
A server mirroring solution from Bodhost can be seen as a great way of avoiding hardware failure, as it is highly unlikely that both servers are going to fail.
What is server load balancing?
A load balanced cluster requires several different servers of a similar specification, one of which will need to act as a central database server. The job of spreading the load is one that is taken care of by a core master server. The web servers in the load balanced cluster work together so that demand can be spread across each server to introduce a new level of scalability and performance that isn’t possible with other dedicated server configurations. Load balancing can be taken further with the option to introduce other levels of redundancy if necessary, such as with the use of a secondary database server for backup as well as additional web servers to improve performance.
A load balanced dedicated server configuration from Bodhost can offer you the following:
- A cluster of servers ensures that there are the resources available to deal with all requests, even in a high-demand situation
- Redundancy has been considered at every level with the option to have a secondary backup database server to deal with requests if your primary database server fails as even if your web application is available, it won’t be usable if it is unable to access the content and information that it requires.
What operating systems are available with Bodhost dedicated servers?
Bodhost offers customer a choice between Windows and Linux so that you can purchase dedicated servers to meet the needs of the different operational areas within your business. For business requiring Windows for their dedicated server, we offer the latest version of Windows Server 2008 so that you are able to make the most of what Microsoft has to offer in the area of servers. Our Linux server hosting customers will be able to choose from a selection of the most popular Linux distributions; if the distribution that you wish to use isn’t listed on our website, please contact our 24×7 support team as we should be able to sort something out for you.
If I purchase a dedicated server from Bodhost, where will my server be hosted?
All dedicated server hosting solutions from Bodhost are hosted in our state of the art US data center. Our data center infrastructure includes the following components:
- There are multiple power lines into the data center to ensure that if the primary source of power fails, there are backups available; furthermore, we also run a high-end Mitsubishi UPS system to provide an additional source of backup power
- With staff available 24×7 and the data floor protected with bio metric access, only authorized individuals will have access to our hardware
- As a Tier 3 data center, we are able to offer a network uptime guarantee of 99.98%.