header pictures for dedicated hosting services

Fast Dedicated Servers - Dual Xeon Server Configurations

Currently a dual Xeon server is one of the best fast dedicated server hosting solutions when it comes to processing power ability. There are greater multi-processor solutions in entrprise level fast dedicated servers; However they are very cost prohibitive so for the purpose of the average high end server budget a dual Xeon server is ideal for websites that require a lot of processing horsepower.

Should You Buy a Dual Xeon Server or rent it? Because of the high costs associated with purchasing dual Xeon servers it may be more beneficial for you to rent it from a web hosting company that offers high end dedicated hosting services. Pros of renting a dual Xeon Server

Free up 70 percent of Dual Xeon server purchase price. By renting the server you can free up some of your budget for other expenses, since a typical dual Xeon server can run you around $4,073 retail Specs:

PowerEdge 1950
Dual Quad Core Intel® Xeon® E5405, 2x6MB Cache, 2.0GHz, 1333MHz FSB (total 8 Cores at 2GHz ea.)
No Operating System
8GB 667MHz (4x2GB), Dual Ranked DIMMs
Two Primary Hard Drive 146GB 15K RPM Serial-Attach SCSI 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive
RAID 1
Redundant Power Supply with Y-Cord
Dual Embedded Broadcom® NetXtreme II 5708 Gigabit Ethernet NIC

Pros for Fast Dedicated Servers

While some fast dedicated servers sporting Dual Quad Core Xeons can rent for as little as $250 per month (or $300 Per month with 8GB RAM) including the Colocation space, redundant Power, and 1.5TB of bandwidth. In contrast colocating your dual Xeon server can run you between $59 AND $130 depending on the server height (1U, 2U, or 4U). And those colocation plans tend to start out with a minimal data transfer plan such as 500 GB (.5 of a Terabyte).

Flexibility to upgrade or downgrade your server hardware

Dual Xeon servers are very powerful and fast and while it is always good business sense to use a server the exceeds your current load capacity requirements by about 50 percent, you might have figured that you would be receiving a certain amount of web traffic while in the real world you are getting only a small fraction of the traffic you were hoping to get. If you are renting a dual Xeon server then you can easily downgrade your equipment without having to pay any heavy lease penalties or even selling your own hardware at a fraction of the cost, since it is now a used server. Because many dedicated hosting services offer month-to-month server rentals you can simple switch to a more affordable server that will still meet your lower server loads.

No Need to carry Expensive Dual Xeon Server Parts

When you own a server it is your responsibility to carry your own supply of spares. So typically you will need to carry a spare Xeon CPU, Spare [server memory] and hard drives, along with a spare power supply. Then if you do have a hardware failure you have to have a service agreement with your colocation service or you have to have your own technician drive out to your dual Xeon server and replace the hardware that failed. Now if you rented your dual Xeon server most dedicated hosting services have a hardware replacement guarantee where they will replace the hardware within a few hours and at their own cost. So if you are running important services on your server you will have to consider the cost of stocking spare equipment.

Managed Dual Xeon Servers

Because a Xeon server that is rented from a dedicated server provider will come configured by them they will offer software support for the server. While if you bought your own dual Xeon server and paid for the colocation option most of the system administrators will not touch your server since it is not one of their standard installs, so you will have an added expense of having to pay someone to be on call if you ever have a software or maintenance issue. Speaking from experience it is not all that easy to get a system administrator that you trust to look after your colocated server. We used to pay someone $300 a month to wear a pager 24/7 and then an additional $100 per hour for actual work performed and that was a good rate because we knew him. Having the 24/7 live technical support of a dedicated hosting company can offset the monthly server rental fee so keep that in mind.

Next Page... The Cons of renting a server.

Looking for our FreeBSD Forums? We have moved them off our main page,just follow the link to our FreeBSD Forums page.

Custom Search

Please note:
(1) FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
(2) WEBSERVER CONSUMER GUIDE is in no way affiliated with The FreeBSD Foundation