Rent vs Buy Dedicated Servers- Many people who use shared web hosting and are moving up to dedicated hosting hardly consider the option of buying a dedicated server. In some cases it may make more sense than renting a dedicated server through a web host.

More Possibilities Than Meet the Eye

The first thing to know when you're deciding about renting vs. buying dedicated servers is that it's not really a simple either-or decision. Here are the possibilities:

• Rent a Managed Dedicated Server- If you have experience with virtual private servers or virtual dedicated servers, this choice is very similar in the management functions for the machine. The key differences are in the fact that you receive off-site access to the server, that fact that you have the server entirely to yourself, and the range of choices about the server's system software, CPU (how many processors and whether they're single, dual, or quad), the amount of bandwidth, the amount of memory, and the upgrades available.

• Rent a Semi-Managed Dedicated Server- This is similar to renting a managed dedicated server, except that you take responsibility for some of the server management, the exact amount and description depending on the hosting package.

• Rent an Unmanaged Dedicated Server- In this type of plan, you take care of every aspect of the server except it's physical security and upkeep. This means that updates, upgrades, patches, rebooting, and configuring are all in your hands.

• Buy and House Your Own Dedicated Server- This is the path to the most control, but has the most responsibility. You need to take care of all aspects of the server, from temperature control to backups to redundant power sourcing to configuring and programming. If this is what you need, then this is the way to go.

• Buy Your Own Dedicated Server and Use a Colocation Service to House It- If the previous option is more than you want to take on, you can have your own server housed at a colocation center where its physical integrity and security and data security are under the control of a skilled on-site team.

Even though buying gives you more control, but also more responsibility and renting takes certain problems off your hands, but may be restrictive in some circumstances, this is not enough information to make a clear choice in some cases. It doesn't help that people have different approaches to making a decision about renting vs. buying. Here is a collection of some of the ways that people have made this key decision:

• Owning and housing your own server implies owning a lot more as well, such as switches, routers, an air-conditioned room to house the server, an IT team, etc. Figure out what you need and what webhosts are offering and then just do the math and see whether owning or renting gives you a better deal.

• Consider where you are in the process: if you are well-established and can borrow the money for servers at a realistic interest rate, you're in a better spot to buy than if you are a start-up.

• If you need control that hosting can't give you, such as specialized hardware or a very high level of security for extremely sensitive data, then buying may make more sense, even if the cost is higher.

• Imagine a worst case scenario; the server fails, your data is lost, your housing area catches fire. Is your back-up plan as good as (if not better than) the webhosts?

• Consider your long-term goals. If you need a dedicated server for a particular project, you may be better off renting. If you need it for the long term, then buying is more of a consideration.

• How many servers do you need? At some point, it becomes more cost effective to buy and house them yourself, rather than pay hefty rental fees.

• Consider how much time you would expect to spend in contact with the host, including when something goes wrong. Rather than spending that time on the phone/emailing/etc., is it worth having the server local and just fixing it?

• Consider how long it will be before your hardware is outdated and whether the host who is renting to it will replace it as quickly as you would as well as how much it would cost you to make replacements at the rate you think is reasonable.

Related Article: Dedicated Hosting Bandwidth >>