Customizing Your Dedicated Server: A guide to selecting the right components for your web server

If you're serious about your website, you need to get serious about your hosting. Beyond shared hosting, there is a whole world of customizable dedicated servers available, ready to be sculpted to fit your business. The aim of this guide is to provide an overview of some of the more popular components available, to arm you when you buy your next dedicated server.

CPU

The new generation of Intel CPUs are here, and there are allot to choose from. If you're on a dedicated server right now, the best benchmark to know what kind of CPU you need, is to find out how your current CPU is performing. Your web host should be able to provide you with your CPU load. Typically any server that is above a CPU load of 75% is fit for an upgrade (although Linux machines can typically get away with a higher load before being upgraded). If you're shopping for your first server, your web host should be able to give you a rough idea of a suitable CPU for your site.

The list below shows commonly used CPUs and their relative benchmark (higher is better). As a rule of thumb, database-driven websites will require more CPU power. Out of the lot shown below, the Core i7 offers the best bang for the buck and is well-suited for a well trafficked, database-driven website.

Atom 330 (2 cores @ 1.60Ghz). Benchmark: 634

Core i3 530 (2 cores @ 2.93Ghz). Benchmark: 2709

Core i5 760 (4 cores @ 2.80Ghz). Benchmark: 4592

Core i7930 (4 cores @ 2.80Ghz with HT). Benchmark: 5828

Dual Quadcore Xeon 5620 (8 cores @ 2.40Ghz). Benchmark: 9494

Drives

Hard drive selection is often overlooked, simply because most website owners don't understand that there is more to hard drives than just space. While most dedicated hosts deploy SATA (serial attached ATA) drives, there are other drives (i.e. SAS and SSD) that can be used to provide better performance. If you're hosting a database driven application, SAS drives with a 15,000RPM rating are recommended. Otherwise, SATA drives should work just fine. Its always a great idea to ask your host if your hard drives will be brand new, who the manufacturer is and what the drive model is. Remember: not all hard drives are created equal.

Your server can have multiple hard drives and, in conjunction with RAID (redundant array of independent disks), can provide improved performance and redundancy. Although onboard RAID (RAID that uses the CPU to process the RAID calculations) is available, hardware RAID (which uses an additional hardware controller to handle those calculations) is always recommended. RAID1 (which mirrors two drives) will provide an instant backup to protect against hardware failure. RAID5 (which uses 3 or more drives) and RAID10 (which uses 4 or more drives) can provide redundancy as well as improved performance.

RAM

With the exception of the Intel Atom, most (good) hosting providers are including 4GB of DDR3 RAM with their servers nowadays. You will find some of the older servers (i.e. Core2Duo, Core2Quad, Xeon 54xx series) with 2GB of DDR2 RAM, but definitely take the time to find a provider that offers some of the newer gear available with the faster DDR3 RAM (which transfers data at twice the rate of DDR2). If you don't have an existing server of your own to benchmark your current RAM utilization against, don't dispair, you can always upgrade your RAM down the road.

Bandwidth

At a minimum, your dedicated server should come with 2000GB of transfer monthly. Many providers are now offering 4000GB or more by default. If you don't know how much bandwidth you're using on your current server or hosting account, you need to. Your hosting provider should always provide you with a way to check your bandwidth usage in detail and almost in real-time. One option to consider if your site gets bursts of visitors or uses rich media is to increase your port speed. Increasing your port speed from 10mbps (which is usually the default) to 100mbps can improve your website performance under heavy load (assuming the rest of the server can keep up!)

Keep in mind that even beyond the hardware show above, there are other options available, like clustering and load balancing, which use several servers (or more!) to support the same application. If you have a single server now, the afformentioned options should give you a very good understanding of what to look for and what options you may want to speak with your server provider about when choosing your next dedicated server.