A business will often outgrow shared web hosting and it will need its own managed dedicated hosting server. Unmanaged Dedicated hosting, is a type of hosting in which you rent your own server from a dedicated hosting company. This company will maintain a stock of servers and operate its own data center and network. The server is for your exclusive use only, meaning it does not share resources with other users or websites.

If you don’t have the in house technical experience, you could consider hiring a technical person to handle these tasks if you feel the self managed server is what your business needs. Check out the many freelancing sites where you could advertise for additional system administration work. Unless you have some technical experience with web servers you may struggle to perform your own server management and administrative tasks. However your host may be able to perform additional task at an additional hourly rate.

With Managed dedicated hosting however a hosting provider gives technical support and basic system helps. They should have technicians on site on a 24 hour basis in order to carry out reboots if neccessary. In some cases you still have complete technical control over your server, and the server is dedicated entirely to your own usage but additionally you will also have access to optional managed services such as technical upgrades, security patching, firewalls, and backup services

Managing your server and carrying out routine tasks such as setting up users and creating mail boxes much easier if you install a “control panel.” The most popular control panels are Cpanel (Web Host Manager) Plesk, Helm and H-Sphere. A server without a control panel is sometimes known as a “root server.” If this is a Linux server this will often require command line expertise. Dedicated hosting providers usually offer a choice of operating systems which are usually Windows 2003 and Linux (Centos, Ubuntu, Fedora etc).

There are a wide variety of dedicated server providers. Whether you decide to rent an unmanaged or a managed server, carry out thorough research before coming to a decision. Online review sites and forums are helpful to research the various hosting companies and find out what each offers, as are customer testimonials. If they claim 24/7/365 support, make sure they can actually provide it. As with most things in life, always go for quality of service rather than price, because with dedicated server hosting, you usually get what you pay for!