Daily Archives2022 February 08

Dedicated servers can be quite the investment, so how do you know when it’s time to upgrade? 

At Cloud Servers Australia, we’ve helped thousands of Australian businesses migrate to more efficient, enabling, and powerful dedicated servers. 

There’s a lot to know about dedicated servers, and it can be quite overwhelming especially for business owners who don’t have the luxury of spending hours, days and weeks researching whether a dedicated server is right for their business. 

To help you save time, we’ve put together everything you need to know to decide when it’s time to upgrade to a dedicated hosting plan.

By the end, you’ll have a clearer picture of whether or not a dedicated server hosting is right for you, and where you can go from there.

What is a dedicated server?

With dedicated hosting servers, you have your very own server for your business. Along with this, you get to choose the amount of resources you want – such as bandwidth, RAM, CPU, hard drive space, etc. 

You have all the freedom, no sharing resources, and it means that you have the highest amount of control over your server using Dedicated web hosting service.

How is dedicated hosting different from other hosting options?

There are three main types of servers or hosting plans: dedicated, VPS (virtual private server), and shared hosting. 

For a quick snapshot, here is how dedicated hosting is different from the other hosting options:

• Shared hosting plan – one physical server is shared among many businesses/websites. Its resources are also shared. This means if one user eats up a lot of resources, there isn’t much left for yours, resulting in slow and low performance. 
• VPS – one server is partitioned among many businesses/websites. You have your own ‘slice’ of a server, with a set amount of resources. 
• Dedicated server – one server is all yours. This means you have a lot more flexibility in choosing the amount of resources you want for your server. This just depends on your business’ needs and budget.  

Generally, businesses (from mid-sized and beyond) use either VPS or dedicated servers.

If you’re curious about the differences between the VPS and Dedicated Servers in particular, check out our other blog article which unpacks everything you need to know, ‘Differences between VPS vs Dedicated Servers’

Questions To Ask When Deciding Whether You Need a Dedicated Server For Your Business

To get a general idea of what the main considerations are when choosing a dedicated server for a business – or what you may potentially be discussing with your IT server provider – we’ve summarised some of the key questions and considerations below. 

Is my business growing to at least a mid to large-sized business? 

A good starting point when it comes to deciding whether a dedicated server is right for your business is to look at how fast your business is growing and the size of the business. 

Generally speaking, dedicated servers are more used in larger sized businesses and corporations, due to the higher degree of flexibility when it comes to choosing resources and their quantities. 

VPS is also another highly used server hosting plan for many medium to even large companies as well, however there is a ceiling or limit as to how much resources you can actually have for your business. 

Is my computer running slow when accessing files, collaborating online, or lags in general?

If you find yourself waiting more than a few seconds to even a couple of minutes to access company files, uploading documents online, collaborating with your team, or just anytime you’re using your computer online, it may be time to upgrade your business to a dedicated server. 

Slow performance – especially when uploading, accessing or managing documents in the cloud – can indicate that your current server simply doesn’t have the resources it needs to retrieve the right files to your employees in a short amount of time. 

Although some VPS hosting plans can help certain businesses speed up their IT network and systems, dedicated servers can provide even more flexibility and freedom when it comes to choosing resources – for even faster, more reliable, and seamless performance day in and day out. 

Does my website have spikes in traffic?

Without the right server, spikes in traffic can cause websites or applications to run extremely slow, or shut down entirely – meaning bad user experience and unhappy customers. 

You could experience spikes in traffic due to running limited time only promotional campaigns, or simply have users who only visit at certain times of the day. 

Whatever the reason for your traffic spikes may be, a dedicated server equipped with all the necessary resources may be your best solution to ensure consistent performance all year round – regardless of any jumps in traffic. It’s a good benchmark to have enough resources for traffic spikes of up to 3 times your usual amount – particularly if you operate in the e-commerce industry and have promotions or sales for a limited time. 

With dedicated servers, you’ll be able to equip your website with the resources it needs to handle all types of spikes and demands in traffic. That means no lost revenue, lower bounce rates, and happier customers. 

Does my business use demanding custom applications?

For many large eCommerce or corporate businesses, the use of custom applications are common. 

These custom applications are often those that are more demanding or require more resources to run at their best. 

In such cases, having a dedicated server would ensure smooth performance all year round, since your business will have all the resources it needs right from the very beginning. 

Is my business running out of storage space?

If you can’t seem to upload files such as images or videos onto your business server due to insufficient storage space, and your planning to continue growing your business, upgrading to a dedicated server would be your next best step to take. 

Whether it’s company documents or files needed to be uploaded to the business website (such as high resolution images, videos, graphics etc.), if you don’t have enough storage space on your server, you’ll end up with a poor performing server and inefficiencies to say the least – even on advanced VPS plans, you’ll find that there is a limit to how much storage space you can have allocated for your business. 

That’s why if your goal is to continue expanding and growing your business – and need more storage space – dedicated servers may be your ideal solution. 

The Importance of Speaking to an IT Professional For Your Server Needs

Making the final decision of upgrading your business server or hosting plan is best made with the expert advice and recommendations from an IT professional – simply due to the complex nature of servers with its many considerations to look out for. 

Deciding on whether a dedicated server is right for your business is an extremely important decision, and one that you shouldn’t have to do alone. 

For any questions or concerns around choosing the right server for your business needs, come and have a chat with one of our highly experienced and trusted IT professionals at Cloud Servers Australia today. 

We’ll make sure you’ll receive the most accurate, tailored, and useful information to help you decide on whether you should upgrade your business to a dedicated hosting plan. 

Choose Managed Dedicated Servers for an all-in-one solution for business growth & productivity

Dedicated servers can be an extremely rewarding and worthy investment for your business, however it takes skilled IT experts to manage and run dedicated servers properly.

This is why more business owners choose managed dedicated server solutions. Having our experienced team managing your dedicated servers for you means all your server updates, maintenance, and security needs are taken care of. You get to experience little to no downtime, prompt help, and smooth business performance at all times.

However, bear in mind, not all managed dedicated server hosting providers are made equal. 

If you run a business in Australia, your top choice in dedicated hosting is right here at Cloud Servers Australia. Our data centres are based 100% onshore in Australia & New Zealand. Our team is also locally based in Melbourne, but we’re available to travel and meet with you face to face wherever you are in Australia or New Zealand. 

Our IT experts have helped thousands of Australian business owners seamlessly transition into tailored dedicated servers for the best business outcomes.

Find out how we can help your business achieve even higher levels of success – all with a quick chat. Give us a call on 1300 074 267 or send us a message and we’ll get back to you right away.

Server virtualisation has been around for decades. What was once a novel idea now is a highly popularised means of boosting efficiency in the modern workforce – from small or mid-sized businesses to international companies alike.

Server virtualisation made its grounding initially in the mid-1960s when IBM introduced what was known as ‘time-sharing’. Time-sharing involved running multiple virtual machines (VM) on a single server – with its hardware resources shared throughout. This paved the way for newer forms of virtualised servers to take hold; A few decades later in the early 2000s, VMWare created a virtualised server to run Windows Operating Systems and Linux side by side on the same server.

Fast forward to today, server virtualisation has grown immensely both in popularity and functionality – and for good reason.

As experts in cloud technology and virtualised servers, our team here at Cloud Servers Australia wanted to share a few of the key points and benefits of server virtualisation – helping you understand how it can benefit and bolster your business’ workflow and processes.

Find out below more about what server virtualisation involves and its wide array of useful benefits your business can take advantage of!  

What is Server Virtualisation?

Server virtualisation involves creating a software-based or ‘virtual’ version of a physical server.  This means the physical server’s resources can be shared virtually and even spread across multiple virtual machines (VM).

What is a Virtual Machine (VM)?

Take virtual machines as ‘virtual’ representations of physical computer systems. Each virtual machine has its own operating system and applications. A virtualised physical server can host multiple virtual machines – each with different operating systems and software running, giving you flexibility to  buy one server and run many different operating systems.

Virtual machines are virtualised using software, these servers become known as a ‘hypervisor’.

What is a Hypervisor?

A hypervisor is a critical aspect of server virtualisation. A hypervisor is essentially a thin layer of software that allows different VMs (with various operating systems) to run on the same physical server and share resources online. Hypervisors are what allows a physical server’s resources be shared amongst other virtual machines.

Benefits of Server Virtualisation

The benefits and advantages of using virtualised servers extend far and wide. Here are just a few of the top benefits of server virtualisation below:

Reduced IT Expenses & Cost Savings

Server virtualisation allows a single server to be used more efficiently. Rather than having one server for one application, it can be used to satisfy a range of uses. Therefore, there’s less need to buy multiple physical servers – fewer physical servers allow you to cut down on hardware costs, cooling costs, money spent on hardware resources and more.

Boosted Efficiency & Productivity

Faster servers will inevitably enhance work productivity and efficiency. Employees and users will enjoy less downtime or idle time, and be able to quickly access and use their operating system or applications with ease. Server consolidation can also be done to allow all your applications to be used on a single server (if possible) rather than sprawled across multiple servers that are not needed.

Seamless DevOps Testing & Backups

Virtual servers are great for developers as they can be easily created, deployed, and taken down where needed. This is especially useful for creating development environments where testing may be required for a short amount of time. You can also easily duplicate environments for backups without any consequence in downtime or operations. For instance, if there is new software that you’d like to use, you can create a development environment to run the test with the software to check for smooth performance, then transfer it across when done.

Fast Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery

If you ever encounter a situation where a server may have been corrupted and needs to be restored,  virtualised give you the flexibility to quickly restore your virtual machine to either the same or another hypervisor.  This ensures that you experience little to no downtime even when disaster strikes.

Less Physical Space Needed

Often to run multiple operating systems in a non-virtualised environment, you would need many physical servers.  However, in doing this the cost becomes exorbitant. Running one physical server with virtualised software will give you far more efficiency and the flexibility to scale and grow when needed.

Flexible Resources – Downgrading & Upscaling

Virtualised servers offer flexibility in down/upgrading resources. You can scale up or adjust resources such as CPU, storage, memory, and more depending on your business’ needs. Plus, this means you’re only needing to invest in the resources you absolutely need – no more and no less.

Isolation & Enhanced Security

Virtualised servers – whether in cloud computing or virtual private servers (VPS) – are partitioned and isolated in ways so that in the event of a cybersecurity breach on a certain virtual machine, it can be immediately isolated and won’t spread across to the rest of the network. Virtual servers also give you more flexibility to increase to a higher level of security and reliability.

Run Multiple OS Systems & Applications

From Windows OS to Mac, Linux and more, virtual servers allow multiple Operating Systems and applications to run under the same server(s). This means you and your employees can enjoy the best of a wide variety of OSes without limitation.

Green Friendly Benefits

Virtual servers help reduce energy costs by not having multiple, large and unnecessary amounts of physical servers onsite to manage. This not only cuts down on costs for your company but also reduces your data centre footprint.

Easier Management

Virtual servers allow a centralised point where all applications, server hardware, network resources, storage resources, can all be reviewed and managed efficiently. This simplifies the process and can save time and money all at once.

Virtualise Servers for Limitless Business Growth & Success

With the right cloud hosting provider, you can enjoy all the benefits of virtualised servers for your company. From virtual private servers (VPS) to dedicated and cloud computing technology, we can help virtualise your server for peak productivity, performance, and efficiency.

Cloud Servers Australia is a leading hosting provider in Australia & New Zealand, with reliable local onshore data centres. Just a few of our many proud partners include CISCO, Equinix, cPanel, Microsoft Azure, and more.

Find out how we can help your business thrive with our virtualised servers today! Call 1300 074 267 or Contact Us online.

For many business owners, finding the best server hosting solution can be an overwhelming and confusing experience. 

Our team at Cloud Servers Australia has set up and tailored servers for hundreds of businesses in Australia, and know exactly how to translate technical jargon into a language that can be easily understood. 

That’s why, to help you figure out what server solution you may need for your business, we’ve put together a condensed overview comparing two of the most popular types of servers – virtual private server (VPS) and dedicated servers. 

Let’s jump right in. 

VPS – What is a Virtual Private Server?

VPS stands for virtual private server (VPS can also be referred to as ‘private cloud’). With VPS there is one large physical server that’s partitioned into several ‘virtual’ servers. Each ‘virtual’ server can have its own space for resources. 

VPS is like living in a luxury apartment in a building – you have your own space, you’re responsible for maintaining and repairing everything within your space, but ultimately you’re sharing the same building. Things like entry/exits, elevators, etc. are all shared with other residents in your building.

How does VPS work?

With a VPS, you have a separate virtualised environment for your own use, with a set amount of resources such as memory, disk space, bandwidth, CPU and more. These VP’s are usually in a shared environment. 

Benefits and advantages of VPS hosting include:

• Performance – You have a set amount of allocated resources, and can upgrade/downgrade as you wish to ensure smooth and efficient performance
• Security – When servers are partitioned, a layer of software is installed to make sure your resources are completely separated and unaffected by other users. 
• Control – You can have more control over any customisations needed for your hosting environment (depending on your security requirements).
• Cheaper than dedicated hosting – VPS is best for businesses who don’t need the full-fledged offerings of dedicated hosting but need something more tailored than entry-level shared hosting servers.
• Scalability – VPS hosting can be adjusted and scaled as your business grows. 

Suitable for:

• Mid-large sized growing businesses in all types of industries
• Lower budget than dedicated server requirements 

Dedicated

As the name suggests, dedicated hosting involves having your own physical server solely allocated for your needs – with the amont of resources you are after. 

Dedicated servers are held in data centres that generally share network access with each other, but in terms of hardware, no physical dedicated server is shared amongst more than one client. 

Dedicated servers are often the most expensive option out of the server options, yet they provide a high degree of flexibility and customisation according to your resource needs.

Having a dedicated server is like owning your own house – you can furnish it however you like, park in your driveway, and change your living spaces to suit your taste. But you’re still fully responsible for repairing and maintenance, as well as installing security systems to keep unwanted intruders out. 

Benefits and advantages of dedicated hosting include:

• Fastest performance – With all the resources you need, you can experience peak levels of high speed performance.
• Optimal security – Dedicated hosting provides the highest level of security that won’t be affected by other server users or activities.
• Full access & controls – You have full control over the customisation of your dedicated server including access, resources, security and more.
• Optional tailored support – Dedicated servers can be quite an investment, but it also often comes with tailored and 24/7 support to make sure your needs and performance goals are being met. 

Suitable for:

• Large ecommerce sites – especially those that experience spikes in traffic (from limited time campaign promotions etc.) 
• Public sector where security is a high priority (e.g. government level)
• Use of custom applications – including custom CRM systems, customer portals, Android/iPhone apps, and more.
• Web developers

Cloud Server Hosting

‘Cloud servers’ is often mistakenly used as a general term but there are key differences between cloud servers and other hosting types. 

The main difference between cloud hosting and other types of servers is that cloud servers are virtualised environments spread across multiple physical servers – i.e. multiple servers within a data centre to act as one unit. 

Difference between Cloud vs VPS

Cloud and VPS hosting often get confused. The main difference between the two is that VPS servers involve one physical server partitioned virtually into several environments. Cloud on the other hand, involves multiple servers and multiple virtual environments. 

Benefits and advantages of Cloud Hosting:

• Scalability – You can easily and flexibly customise the amount of resources you need to scale up your business or website performance.
• Reliable performance – Even if one server goes down, there are other servers that can be used instead, which ensures you experience smooth performance at all times.
• Pay only for what you need – You can select and pay for only the resources that you need.

 Suitable for:

Cloud hosting is suitable for business who have a little more technical knowledge around how servers work and what their requirements may be. Cloud hosting can be used for most types and sizes of businesses but we highly recommend getting professional IT advice when choosing a tailored cloud hosting plan for your needs.

Key Differences Between VPS vs Dedicated Servers vs Cloud

For a quick summary on the key differences between VPS and Dedicated hosting, see below:

VPS vs Dedicated Server Differences Comparison

The Importance of Onshore Data Centres

Regardless of whether you choose a VPS or dedicated server, we highly recommend choosing data centres that are located on-shore and not overseas. 

This assures you with an enhanced level of security as well as faster access to your server (physical proximity and location plays a large part in the speed of your servers). 

In addition, having an onshore data centre ensures your data is managed according to the data sovereignty recommendations within the country. This means that your business’ data is stored, managed, and protected according to laws and regulations within the country. 

Cloud Servers Australia hosts servers on 100% Australian & New Zealand based data centres – to learn more about our data centres or anything else, feel free to get in touch and we’ll be more than happy to answer your questions.

Managed or Unmanaged Hosting? 

Managing your hosting on your own can be quite challenging, time consuming, and costly if you don’t have the technical knowledge and expertise to do so. This is why more and more business owners are opting for managed hosting services. 

Having a managed hosting service means that on top of having your servers and operating systems installed or set up, you’ll also have a professional IT support team handling your server needs such as server management, speed, security, updates, and more. With unmanaged hosting, you simply just get your servers and operating systems (basic level set up), and then the rest is up to you.

Here are the biggest advantages in having managed hosting services:

1. Managed hosting services free up your time as a business owner  or executive to focus on more important activities.
2. Many of the important management procedures such as security updates, backups, CDNs and others are all taken care of by IT specialists.
3. A managed plan means you have fewer maintenance tasks to worry about.
4. When something goes wrong, you’ll always have a dedicated support team to help your business get up and running in no time. 
5. Save countless hours and resources from trying to resolve server problems yourself (and instead, have fast and effective solutions provided by your managed hosting service provider).

Need a trusted IT expert’s opinion?

Choosing the right hosting solution for your business needs is absolutely critical to your business’ success. 

At Cloud Servers Australia, we have a team of highly experienced and helpful IT specialists who will be more than happy to discuss what your hosting needs are and what the best solutions will be according to what you’re looking for. 

Cloud Servers Australia is a 100% Australian owned business that centres around providing an excellent customer experience as its core value. We have since become a premium supplier of cloud hosting, virtual servers, dedicated servers, high speed website hosting, co-location, internet services and wholesale services. 

If you’d like to have a chat about your hosting options, then give us a call on 1300 074 267 or send us a message and we’ll be right with you.