Cloud Servers: Upgrading from Shared to Cloud, Dedicated or Colocation

Upgrading Hosting from Shared to Cloud Server, Dedicated Server or Co-Location

As business needs grow, your IT infrastructure needs to change as well. There are several levels of web hosting for businesses of various sizes. In order to allow your firm room to grow, you must know the key points at which you need to upgrade your hosting plan. Here we take a look at what those key points are and how to recognize them.

Contents 1 Need for a smooth upgrade path 2 When to Upgrade from Shared to Cloud Server 2.1 Advantages of Cloud Server Hosting Hosting 3 When to Upgrade from Cloud Server to Dedicated Hosting 4 Upgrading from a Managed Dedicated Server to Colocation 5 Upgrading via GigeNET

Need for a smooth upgrade path

It's very important to avoid disruptions in the workings of your business. Your IT infrastructure is one of the most critical pillars of your operations. As your business grows, you need to ensure that your IT systems grow along with it. But there are pivotal moments where a major change is necessitated. Such as moving from a shared server to a Cloud Server, and then to a full fledged dedicated server.

Think of it as moving from one office to another. You can imagine the chaos if such a transition is not handled properly. Lost business and lost productivity on a major scale can ensue if you don't plan your growth strategy well in advance. The same principle applies to ugrading IT infrastructure. Unless you plan ahead for how you're going to cope with a transition plan, you're setting yourself up for chaos and lost business. In the next few sections, we will try and explain when you need to transition from one critical stage to another so that you can see it coming and can prepare accordingly.

When to Upgrade from Shared to Cloud Server

Shared hosting is fine for very small businesses with not much traffic. However, as your business grows more complex and your site begins to receive more and more visitors, you're going to run into problems with shared hosting.

For example, IT needs might dictate that you need to run a special script on the server to perform some specialized function. Because shared hosting is a standardized form of hosting where everyone gets more or less the same configuration options, you can't install your own software that isn't available as part of the shared hosting package.

In addition, shared hosting becomes problematic if even one of the 400-600 sites on the server misbehaves. Since everyone shares the same resources, there's no guarantee that some other site will not monopolize the resources for everyone. As a business grows, it becomes more and more intolerant of disruptions in service.

The solution to these (and more) problems is an upgrade from shared hosting - namely Cloud Server hosting. This type of hosting avoids the typical problems of shared hosting and is more secure.

Advantages of Cloud Server Hosting

A Cloud Server unlike a shared hosting service ensures that you have a Cloud Server all to yourself. Using virtualization software such as Xen or Hyper-V, a server can be split into many servers - each of which is completely isolated from all the others. Also, unlike shared hosting, there are only a handful of Cloud Servers on any given machine.

The advantages of such a system are manifold. In the first place, resources are dedicated. Meaning that even if another Cloud Server on the same physical machine uses up all its available resources, your server will not be affected in the least. You have a guaranteed amount of resources and you're completely isolated from other misbehaving accounts. This has significant security implications as well. Your data cannot ever be breached by another account even though it may reside on the same server. The Cloud Servers are separated at the OS level and this prevents such interference.

Other advantages are that you have complete control over which software is installed on your system. It's just like having your own server all to yourself. Got a special script you need to run or schedule? No problem!

A Cloud Server also gets its own dedicated IP address. This isn't surprising since in all respects the Cloud Server is a separate server. There are many benefits of having a dedicated IP - not the least of which is that you're unaffected by spamming behavior by the other clients on the server. In shared hosting, all the customers sharing a particular IP can get a bad reputation if even one sends out too many marketing emails (for example). With a dedicated IP you can also enable anonymous FTP downloads as well as use SSL certificates for allowing credit card purchases.

Cloud Server offerings also include backup services by the hosting provider on a regular basis. Continuous Data Protection (CDP) allows you to have advanced backup capability that protects your server from all sorts of errors including those that took place a while ago. This is because CDP allows you to restore your server to any point in the past. It's particularly useful for data intensive web sites such as banking where data security and integrity is vital.

When to Upgrade from Cloud Server to Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting is the next step up from Cloud Server hosting. While Cloud Server hosting does an admirable job of simulating a full fledged dedicated server, there are some limitations due to the fact that you're sharing the server with 7-10 other accounts.

For example while it's possible to reboot a Cloud Server, it's not really rebooting in the traditional sense. This makes sense since one account can't restart a server which others are depending on. Cloud Server accounts also limit the hardware that you can use since others are affected by your choices. With dedicated hosting, you can specify the storage architecture and hardware that is suitable for you.

With a dedicated server you can use KVM over IP to remotely manage even the most basic of server operations which will all be under your exclusive control. A dedicated server by definition also has more space, CPU power and memory than a Cloud Server account since you're not sharing the system with anyone else.

Finally, you can have many static IP addresses with a dedicated server. This is useful if you have a lot of high end web applications running which improves the performance of your web sites.

Upgarding from a Managed Dedicated Server to Colocation

A dedicated server, though it offers the very best performance for your business needs, isn't the most optimal solution over a long period of time. This is because even though you have the use of the server for yourself, you do not own it. The server is leased to you and for this, you pay a monthly fee that accumulates over a large time period.

Owning your own server is no joke however. Apart from the initial cost, you need state of the art housing facilities to maintain the server at optimum efficiency along with sophisticated safety features and security apparatus. Colocation is a solution to this problem. While you can buy your own server, it's more cost effective to let GigeNET maintain them for you in our state of the art colocation facilities.

The issue of Colocation vs Dedicated Server is a business call that each company will have to take individually. Over the long term, Colocation saves you costs and has unlimited flexibility since it's your hardware and you can do what you like with it. On the other hand, colocation requires you to manage all your software upgrades by yourself as opposed to a managed dedicated server which has all the security upgrades installed automatically.

Upgrading via GigeNETT

If you're moving from shared hosting to Cloud Server hosting, GigeNET's new Gigenetcloud service will take care of all your Cloud Server needs. With eight different plans to choose from, you can select the Cloud Server system that's right for you. The pricing of the plans ranges from $54 per month to $208 per month for high end systems.

One of the best features is console access to all your Cloud Server systems. This allows you to efficiently manage your Cloud Server from a remote location just as if it were a dedicated server. In fact, with the difference between Cloud Server and Dedicated server systems diminishing, you can be sure that Cloud Server systems will play a large role in the IT infrastructure of your organization.

Of course, should you need to upgrade your Cloud Server to a full fledged dedicated server, GigeNET has those as well. You can choose from a wide range of customizable dedicated servers and upgrade or downgrade the resources as you wish.

If you have your own server, GigeNET can provide you with a complete set of facilities for server housing which will enable you to rest easy as your precious investment will be in safe hands.

With GigeNET, flexibility is the name of the game along with speedy delivery and reliability. A perfect companion for your business needs.