How to Choose a Dedicated Server for High Traffic Websites

Businesses supporting high-traffic websites require top-tier performance to handle visitors effectively. Shared hosting solutions often provide insufficient resources and stability to meet these needs. Dedicated servers offer organizations a powerful solution to obtain the resources and network bandwidth necessary to support high-traffic sites.

This article discusses the types of organizations that require high-traffic websites, the benefits of using dedicated servers, and how to choose the right dedicated server for your business.

What Businesses Support High Traffic Websites?

Companies across industries need customer-facing websites that can handle high traffic. These organizations depend on managing heavy, sustained online customer demand. The following are examples of companies that require a high-traffic website.

• E-commerce: E-commerce businesses and online stores must support continuous customer browsing and transactions, including fast and secure payment processing. Their websites require consistent uptime, fast page loads, and high database throughput.
• Media and Streaming: Media and digital content companies, such as streaming services and news organizations, require superior network performance to handle large volumes of concurrent users and withstand traffic spikes driven by viral content or breaking news.
• FinTech: Financial services companies such as payment processors, crypto exchanges, and online banking platforms must support real-time transactions and reliable data availability. These organizations require minimal latency, excellent fault tolerance, and strong security measures to protect customer data.
• SaaS Providers: Software-as-a-service providers such as CRM, business applications, or analytics platforms require high availability, continuous monitoring, and support for user sessions around the clock. They will lose customers to rivals if they cannot deliver optimal performance.
• Healthcare: Healthcare organizations must address the needs of large patient populations, including appointment scheduling and telemedicine delivery. Their websites must include uptime guarantees and strong security to meet regulatory and compliance guidelines.
• Social Platforms: Social media companies and online communities support high-traffic sites for user engagement and content creation. These sites need real-time updates and fast read/write operations to maintain user satisfaction.
• Gaming: Interactive entertainment companies support gaming servers and multiplayer games with high-traffic websites. They must deliver smooth, real-time interaction with low latency to provide a satisfactory user experience.

What is Dedicated Server Hosting?

Dedicated server hosting is a type of infrastructure hosting in which the customer has exclusive use of a physical server. This model is a stark contrast to shared cloud hosting, where multiple tenants use the same physical hardware. Companies supporting high-traffic applications and websites can more effectively meet their needs with a dedicated hosting provider.

Benefits of dedicated servers

Companies can achieve the following benefits from a dedicated server setup.

• Exclusive resources: Customers have exclusive access to CPU, RAM, and storage, eliminating potential contention with other tenants and reducing the risk of performance degradation. Dedicated resource usage is essential for maintaining consistent performance for businesses supporting mission-critical, high-traffic, or resource-intensive applications.
• Predictable performance: The complete control of dedicated hardware resources ensures consistent response times and high performance for data-heavy applications. Customers can configure server settings to deliver fast, sustained, and reliable performance with low latency and high IOPS for I/O-intensive workloads and database management.
• Improved security: Dedicated servers are an excellent choice for customers who prioritize security. Their environment is isolated on a physical server that other tenants cannot impact. Teams can improve data protection by exercising full control over firewall configuration and access policies. Companies in regulated industries can implement and enforce compliance controls and use intrusion detection systems to protect their systems and data resources.
• Administrative control: Organizations have complete control over the operating system, software stack, and server configuration with a dedicated hosting solution. The flexibility afforded by a dedicated server lets teams implement custom architectures and support legacy applications.
• Customizable hardware: Dedicated servers allow teams to configure hardware resources, such as CPU, RAM, or storage, to fine-tune performance for specific applications. Companies can opt for servers featuring high-performance CPUs or high-bandwidth networking to support faster data access.
• Regulatory compliance: Dedicated servers streamline compliance with regulations such as HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and GDPR. Companies can configure the operating system and other components to meet compliance standards. In many cases, a single-tenant infrastructure is a compliance requirement that businesses can meet with dedicated hosting.
• Stable costs: Dedicated server providers typically offer fixed and transparent pricing that supports predictable budgeting. Companies won’t be surprised by varying usage charges, making dedicated servers a practical choice for workloads requiring heavy resource utilization.
• Management flexibility: Most hosting providers offer customers the choice between fully self-managed servers and vendor-managed services. Companies can choose the server management model that best fits their internal IT capabilities.

How to Select a Dedicated Server Provider for High Traffic Websites

Organizations should employ a methodical approach to selecting the right dedicated server provider for high-traffic websites, including the following steps.

Evaluate the workload

Various workloads may require different resources, such as CPU, RAM, and storage, to achieve optimal performance. The first step in selecting a dedicated server solution is to understand the workload the server will support. Decision-makers need to consider issues such as:

• Traffic Volume: Average and peak traffic volume, including the number of concurrent users.
• Content Type: Database usage and dynamic versus static content delivery.
• Tech Stack: The application stacks they will be supporting.
• Security Needs: The need to support secure TLS workloads.
• Storage: Data storage patterns and requirements.
• Geography: Traffic distribution over geographical regions.

Choose the correct server hardware

Companies must choose the right dedicated server hardware to support their specific high-traffic environment and the operating system they wish to run. Organizations should consider how different hardware configurations affect their site’s performance, depending on the types of workloads running on the platform.

• Teams should favor high-performance CPUs to support multi-threading and advanced, complex applications.
• Memory is crucial for high-traffic websites to support caching and site responsiveness. Companies should look for at least 64 GB when supporting a high-traffic site.
• Companies must ensure the storage subsystem can sustain throughput during traffic spikes, using hardware such as NVMe SSDs. Businesses should avoid providers that offer only legacy HDD storage.
• High-traffic websites rely heavily on network performance, bandwidth, and throughput to meet user expectations. Decision-makers should insist on high-capacity network uplinks that support high-speed data transfer and bandwidth usage plans that align with business requirements.

Assess the provider’s services

Businesses must examine the range of services offered by a prospective dedicated hosting provider. A reliable hosting provider will offer services designed to protect and optimize the existing environment while also supporting future growth.

• High-traffic websites must be easily scalable without service disruptions. The provider should offer load balancing support to ensure reliable performance. Customers should be able to scale vertically with CPU or RAM upgrades or horizontally by adding servers to the environment.
• Providers should offer uptime guarantees and redundant server configurations for enhanced resilience. Customers should insist on 99.99% uptime SLAs and receive SLA credits for downtime. Businesses should look for dedicated hosting providers operating Tier 3 data centers with built-in power and cooling redundancy.
• Companies should examine the data protection measures the provider implements, including encryption, firewall controls, DDoS protection, and intrusion detection and response solutions. Businesses handling regulated data should work with providers that explicitly support their compliance requirements.
• Some organizations may require managed services to optimize their dedicated server solutions. Companies must realistically evaluate their in-house technical capabilities when deciding whether to contract for unmanaged servers or engage managed services from their provider. Businesses with limited IT teams may benefit from managed services, and must ensure that a candidate provider offers them.
• Backup and disaster recovery are essential services that a dedicated hosting provider should offer. Companies supporting high-traffic environments require robust resiliency. The provider should offer encrypted and automated backups with fast restore capabilities. They should have well-documented, tested disaster recovery plans and adhere to SLA-defined RPOs and RTOs. Geo-redundant backups and storage add another layer of resilience and should be considered when selecting a provider.
• Teams should be able to perform resource monitoring via a user-friendly interface or control panel that provides real-time usage and performance data. Companies should have logs available for review and be able to set alert thresholds for resources such as CPU or memory. Providers that offer proactive monitoring reduce the risk of bottlenecks or outages.
• Quality customer support is vital for companies with high-traffic websites. These businesses cannot afford unexpected or lengthy outages and must have access to 24/7 technical support from the provider.

Cost considerations

Businesses should understand the costs of the dedicated server hosting plan they choose, including:

• Monthly hosting costs;
• Overage fees for excessive bandwidth usage;
• Backup and disaster recovery costs;
• Scaling costs for vertical and horizontal scaling;
• The costs of additional managed services.

Conclusion

Businesses can address the needs of high-traffic websites with dedicated hosting from the right dedicated server provider. Companies must find the right hardware and hosting environment to support their unique business needs and objectives. The wrong choice can minimize the potential benefits of dedicated servers and make it difficult to maintain an efficient, high-traffic site.

Atlantic.Net offers its customers a range of dedicated server options, featuring high-performance servers running Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC processors. Our dedicated servers are hosted in geographically distributed data centers, enabling customers to house their high-traffic websites with minimal latency. Atlantic.Net’s 100% Network Uptime SLA and 24/7/365 customer support make it the perfect platform for companies with high-traffic environments.

Contact Atlantic.Net’s team of experts and learn how your business can thrive with the right dedicated server provider.