Infrastructure Architectures – II
February 20th, 2010
The next step up is to lease a dedicated server. Dedicated servers provide:
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Greater uptime – no shared resources
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Full root access.
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Complete scalability.
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Greater level of security.
- Ability to run custom applications/software.
Depending upon the provider, a wide array of configurations are offered, again varying among the processor, RAM, hard drive size and bandwidth.
Some configurations offer dual CPUs and RAID configured hard drives for greater redundancy.
Current prices for the sample configurations below range from $79/month up to $550 per month.
| Processor | 1.2 GHz PIII | 2.4+ GHz PIV | E5200 2.5 GHz | E5200 2.5 GHz | E7200 2.53 GHz | Xeon X3320 2.5Ghz | Xeon X3320 2.5Ghz |
| Hard Drive | 750 GB IDE | 120 GB SATA | 320 GB SATA | (2) 320 GB Hard Drives (RAID1) | (2) 500 GB Hard Drives (RAID1) | 73 GB SCSI | (2) 73 GB SCSI (RAID1) |
| Bandwidth | 320 GBs | 320 GBs | 1000 GBs | 1000 GBs | 1200 GBs | 1200 GBs | 1500 GBs |
Sample Dual CPU and RAID configurations are below:
| Processor | (2) 2.0 GHz QC Xeons | (2) 2.0 GHz QC Xeons | (2) 2.33 GHz QC Xeons | (2) 2.33 GHz QC Xeons |
| RAM | 2 GB | 4 GB | 6 GB | 8 GB |
| Hard Drive | (2) 73 GB SSCI (RAID1) | (2) 146 GB SSCI (RAID1) | (4) 73 GB SCSI (RAID5) | (4) 146 GB SCSI (RAID5) |
| Bandwidth | 1500 GBs | 2000 GBs | 2500 GBs | 3000 GBs |
While these configurations begin to provide greater performance, reliability and security, there are still several concerns:
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There remains a single point of failure in the server itself
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You can achieve improved performance by separating the database from the web/application server
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You do not control the firewall, so therefore you do not have complete control over site security
In my next post I’ll talk about some Enterprise class solutions currently offered by hosting providers.