Technical skills required to manage a cheap dedicated server

As you may already know, renting a dedicated server for your online business has many advantages over a shared server hosting service, but it requires you to spend more money too: shared servers can be very expensive, depending on which web hosting company you do business with and what features you want your rented dedicated server to have.

If you want to decrease the costs associated to hiring a web service provider, you have a few options: you can choose the cheapest hardware (which you may regret later when your site starts getting more traffic), you can choose the cheapest hosting company you find (which can cause lots of headaches when you eventually realize that they don’t actually deliver all the services or features they have promised), or you can choose a good, reputable dedicated server provider and make this less expensive by dealing with your server’s management tasks yourself. Clearly, this last one is the best choice.

If you intend to get in charge of the administration and management of your own cheap dedicated server, there is a certain level of technical knowledge you must have in order to perform the necessary tasks without risking your website’s performance or the integrity of your data.

As complex or difficult this may sound, managing a discount dedicated server is not rocket science, and if you put a little effort in learning some fundamental technical server administration skills you can save a good amount of money.

There are basically two types of technical skills you must have if you want to manage your dedicated server yourself. These are software management skills, and network administration skills.

Software installation and configuration skills – Whether you have a website that uses a specific program or component to work correctly, or if you just want to be up-to-date with the newest security issues, you will have to know how to implement software patches, upgrades and regular updates, as well as have a certain knowledge of how to configure database servers to keep your data accessible at all times. Remember that if you decide to do your own server’s administration you will be responsible for all tasks from installing a scripting engine to update your antivirus software.

It is true that your web hosting company will provide you with a control panel or equivalent software for performing remote administrative tasks like creating hosting or email accounts, FTP accounts, administering disk quota and things like that, but if you want to be in total control of what you have purchased then you need to know how server software works. This way, you will not only be able to perform common tasks like the ones I just described above, but you will also have the ability to fine tune certain features that you cannot manage remotely (like processor and memory usage limits, for instance). Besides, you will have the possibility to substitute the administration software package provided by your web company with the one you like most.

Depending on your web site’s needs, you may consider learning advanced server configuration skills in order to manage uncommon, non-standard protocols, script installation and set up, advanced security, insecure port issues, and more.

Typical dedicated server software management tasks include:

Backup management – Protecting your company’s and your customers’ data is a very important thing because if something happens to that information there’s a big chance that you’ll need to spend a lot of money on data recovery services, and even if you do, no one guarantees that all that data will be actually recovered; if some problem of this kind arises, you’ll definitely lose customers. To avoid this, you must know how to perform manual and automatic scheduled backups, and make sure everything went ok by verifying those backups regularly.

Scripting and repetitive task automation – Having scripting and basic programming knowledge will allow you to tweak those portions of your website or server management control panel that don’t work the way you want. Everybody who runs an online business must at a certain point make modifications to improve existing features or add new ones. PHP, ASP or similar programming skills will make it possible for you not only to apply scripting upgrades and tweaks, but also to automatically perform some repetitive tasks (like regular mailing and others) that are essential to every online business.

Database maintenance – As the number of your users grows, your database will need tweaking and tuning. A robust database must not just store data, but it must allow you and your users to access to that data in an effective way. The truth is that no matter how good was the design of your database, it will need to be fine-tuned regularly to keep it running smoothly.  Typical tasks include review the heaviest queries run to mark them as candidates for an optimization or a new index creation, data space managements, log depuration, etc.

Basic systems management – Knowing how to install or remove applications remotely and how to apply security patches and regular antivirus and antispyware updates is essential to adequately manage a dedicated server. Ensuring your customer’s privacy and integrity is a major concern, and periodical security updates as well as regular antivirus scans will keep that data safe and secure.

Networking skills – You must have in mind that regardless of the web hosting plan you choose, your dedicated server is in fact a remote computer. If you are going to perform management tasks on your own server, then you must know how to remotely access and configure your hardware and software, and you must have certain knowledge of networking to perform tasks like traffic balancing, bandwidth administration and regular remote backups.

The most important dedicated server management networking tasks include:

Bandwidth analysis and administration – As the amount of visitors to your website (or sites hosted at your dedicated server) increases, the bandwidth usage will get higher. If your server hosts several sites, you musk know how to analyze logs and manage the available bandwidth, to adequately distribute your network’s resources among your customers, based on their sites’ needs.

Availability tests – If a website is unreachable, it is useless. Setting up automatic checkers that periodically test your website’s availability and the correct functioning of your dedicated server is essential to avoid potential problems that may prevent users’ access to your hosted websites.

In conclusion, if you want to have your online business running adequately you have two options: leaving your server’s administration in the hands of your hosting provider, or doing it yourself.

In some cases, the costs of learning the skills you need to manage your server are (in the long term) less than those associated with hiring your web hosting company to perform administration tasks, but of course the time you put into this will be much more.

Nobody knows your times better than you, so you are the only one who can decide which way to go. Just keep your business’ goals and needs in mind, and you will be just fine.

Devisser L. Hedegaard
Dedicated Server Advisor Contributor