It is important to keep your eye on your resources when you have a dedicated hosting plan so that you know when and if something is about to or has gotten out of hand.  Here I hope to give you a few handy tips when it comes to monitoring your site resources and statistics in Plesk.

First thing you need to do is login to your Plesk control panel, and click on Limits.  As you can see Limits displays the resource limits allocated to your account.  It lists such details as:

• Maximum Number of Subdomains
• Disk Space
• Bandwidth
• Maximum Amount of Traffic
• Maximum Number of Web Users
• and more…

Now click on Up Level at the top of the Limits window for your domain, and click on Report.  The Report will show you all account resource limits & usage, as well as users and a full list of all available scripts, utilities and resources.

FTP Stats will show you a history of FTP activity on your site - both in upload as well as download. 

Traffic History will display information on traffic usage by Months and Years on your dedicated hosting account.  To view the detailed traffic statistics used by various services at the domain, click on the Traffic button.  The page will open displaying the traffic usage table.  You can send a copy of the report to an e-mail address you specify too at the bottom of the Report screen.  You can also set up a schedule for automatic delivery of the reports. 

The last detail about monitoring dedicated resources inside of Plesk is the Web Statistics Preferences screen.  From here you can set some of the preferences that will dictate the display of refers in your stats.

Now you should be a little more handy when it comes to stats and resources inside of your Plesk control panel via your dedicated web hosting account.

Many webmasters who utilize dedicated server hosting use it for media servers or, more exactly, for streaming video servers. It might be helpful for those of you in the market to run the next YouTube.com to be aware of what you’ll need to accomplish this.

Firstly, you may be wondering what the heck streaming servers or streaming video is! A streaming video server is just a dedicated web server setup to stream videos on demand. Your dedicated server needs to be configured to stream media effectively, by offering a compressed file version that can be easily viewed and listened to by your customers, fans, or regular surfers at the same time that it’s being delivered and processed on the server.

Methods of Streaming Media

You can use a true streaming method, which means your video is almost constantly streamed exactly while it’s being downloaded. Think of YouTube.com for this example. In true media streaming, the dedicated server and streaming video software does all the work, which produces a great end result for the user but which can also be very costly for management! Oftentimes, adding streaming media software to an already existing dedicated server is the most affordable option.

The other option is downloading, which we’re all pretty familiar with. This is far cheaper because the entire video file is downloaded and saved as a temporary file on the computer. However, this method is not suitable for a YouTube.com type dedicated server.

There is a plethora of free streaming media software available on the internet for your perusal and use.

Why Stream Media Live?

If you are running any of the following server types on your dedicated server, your visitors will appreciate live streaming of video or audio for their convenience:

* A YouTube.com clone
* An adult website (make sure you choose an adult web host)
* A video-sharing website
* A podcasting server
* Silverlight media server

What kind of dedicated server do I need?

Go with something BIG because you will need it! I would recommend the following features:

* Dual or Quad Core Xeon Processor
* at least 2 x 1024 MB RAM
* at least 2 x 500 GB SATA Hard Drives
* Raid 4 or 5
* at least 3,000GB bandwidth

Please take a look at our dedicated hosting coupons for the best dedicated server deals you can find, which are sure to knock down the primarily steep price for you!

You want to be the next Facebook or MySpace, you had better have a deep pocket.  Now putting aside the fact that you would need a lot of users, social praise and traffic to make this all work - according to one web site resource these are the current stats for Facebook on the hosting side of things:

30,000 databases & 1,800 db servers

1200 dedicated servers

805 caching servers

Now with any dedicated hosting provider out there you could get a good start if nothing else.  Many of the social network clone scripts will run on a VPS or dedicated hosting plan too.  This is just to give you a little insight on what you may be getting yourself into.

Some might say you wouldn’t need a dedicated web hosting company to do your standard forum hosting, and they might be right.  Under some circumstances and depending on the scripts you are using to make your digital world go around, dedicated hosting might not be a bad way to go. 

Web sites that are overly popular could probably do with the power and performance a dedicated machine could deliver.  Look at limits like disk space and bandwidth, sure.   Don’t forget though about things such as CPU power and RAM.  The more of that you have the smoother your forums will run.

Some server side scripts to run your forums or message boards can be demanding too.  One of the most demanding is vBulletin.  Now you might be able to get away with running it on a shared machine but you would be much better off on a dedicated one.  I can be a big server hog at times, so be sure to feed your hog with the server resources it needs to survive.

It is the thing that any hosting guru dreads and something you too might need to become concerned with.  When it comes to load limits, we know a server can only take so much.  What are some of the major causes of server overloads?  Let us take a look and find out.

Too Much Traffic - This is almost a problem you would love to have.  When you have too much real traffic coming into a single web site, the server can start having problems delivering data back to those who are asking for it.  Those looking for a way to survive the Digg effect are often considered to be in the same category.

DDoS Attacks - These are attacks by hundreds or millions of machines all at one place to one place trying to take it down.  Multiple compromised PCs flood the bandwidth and resources of the targeted system bringing it to its knees.

Computer Worms or Viruses - Worms and viruses can also cause harm to and hosting server.  This, much like a DDoS attack is usually aimed at hitting a server as hard as you can with just visits from millions of infected computers around the world.

Now for things like web robots, Internet or network slowdowns there isn’t much you can do to stop them but they too can harm you as well.  These are definitely things you should bring up with your dedicated server host today to make sure they are ready to handle any and all challenges.  Finding a good dedicated server host can save you a lot of heart ache down the road.

Virtual Private Servers have become a great resource for semi-dedicated web hosting and for webmasters who have simply outgrown the shared web hosting market but for whatever reason cannot afford or are not ready to upgrade to dedicated server hosting.

So what is a Virtual Private Server (VPS)?

VPS web hosting is simply a dedicated server that is split into smaller shared web hosting sections. It differs from a shared server in that in shared hosting, you could be sharing the server with upwards of 500 different webmasters, which means that you get 1/500th of the server’s CPU. This is normally divided into less than 1% of the CPU and if you go over, your account is likely suspended from the web host until you fix the cause of the usage or upgrade to a plan that can support that kind of environment.

For virtual private server hosting, you are normally guaranteed a set portion of the server’s RAM and in some cases, you can go over this amount if the others sharing your server space don’t use their portion. The best VPS hosting providers will only put 25 people or less on your VPS web hosting plan with you – this gives you added freedoms to install applications and run more resource-intensive scripts which could have been potentially dangerous in a completely-shared environment.

VPS web hosting plans are normally much cheaper than dedicated web hosting plans. You can plan to pay anywhere between $40-80/month for a basic virtual private server web hosting plan.

**UPDATE: Lunarpages Web Hosting is offering a HUGE discount on their Windows VPS Web Hosting Plan. Normally priced at $69.95/month, they have lowered the price to $39.95/month, a complete bargain in this industry. This is a limited time promotion and no coupon code is necessary.**

The best place to host your YouTube-like projects and web sites would be a VPS or even better a dedicated hosting server.  Now some might ask, what separates these types of scripts (such as PHPmotion) from other scripts out there that don’t seem to be much different. 

The differences is the amount of work the server must do to process these videos from .avi, .wmv, .mov and more to .flv files.  The FLV format is the format used for most if not all Flash video players.  Often with shared hosting environments you are not given access to enough server resources (like CPU and RAM usage) to be able to convert these videos as quickly as you need to.

Here are a few more things that you would find much easier to get installed on a dedicated server:

• LAME MP3 Encoder
• Libogg + Libvorbis
• Mencoder
• Mplayer

If you plan on becoming popular (and who doesn’t these days) you will want to be able to support as many users as you can and with this type of script, shared hosting just does not cut the cake. 

So the next time you decide you want your web site or planned project needs a little more power behind it, a dedicated hosting plan might be the better way to go in the long run.

You’re thinking of ordering a brand new, shiny dedicated server. You’ve got your domain name, you’ve chosen a reliable dedicated hosting provider like Lunarpages, and you’ve found the best dedicated hosting coupon available. So…now what?

Have you decided what kind of dedicated server you are going to be running? Look over these fun options to find the best solution for your dedicated server hosting plan!

Media Server Hosting

This is becoming a very popular choice for dedicated server hosting, as media websites like YouTube.com or social network sites like MySpace.com utilize media in incredible ways. With media server hosting, you are running a website primarily to serve streaming or live media content to your audience. You can store music and video files to stream on the web using Flash Media, Windows Media, or even Microsoft Silverlight, the hottest technology for media server hosting.

Make sure you choose a dedicated web hosting provider who allows media server hosting and can offer competitive amounts of storage space and data transfer bandwidth. This way, you’ll never have to worry.

Game Server Hosting

Do you like multiplayer games? Need to host your game for players around the world to be able to join in? You can create a whole world and community on your dedicated server by running it as a game server. Depending on the popularity of your game or games, you may need to cluster or join many servers together to create a network of interlocked dedicated servers. These servers provide the massive amounts of bandwidth necessary to have game players from all over the world connecting to your website! Game server hosting is extremely popular and you can make a ton of money through advertising and player upgrades.

Social Network Server Hosting

If you like MySpace or Facebook, you can create a website of your own to match them or even make a better site. Imagine creating something as popular as Myspace…right on your own server!! This means you have control over membership payments, you can deploy advertisements and sell ad space, and you can collect the revenue from partnering with other companies, etc.

Hosting a social networking website means an incredibly heavy load on your web server, so make sure you choose a reliable dedicated hosting provider who can handle the CPU resources, bandwidth, storage space, and even features necessary for these massive web hosting accounts. You should choose a dedicated server hosting company who can allow you to grow as your website does and who won’t limit you to ordering 10 servers if and when you need them.

Other Dedicated Hosting Options

Chat server hosting, forum server hosting, blog web hosting, personal web hosting, and even adult web hosting are all options for your dedicated server. Remember, you can also run your dedicated server as a web or database server as well, so if your aim is just a simple, clean, dedicated server hosting solution for your business or ecommerce website, you can’t go wrong.

If your website is sitting on a shared web hosting plan where you are sharing server resources with up to 500 other customers, your website’s popularity plays a very important part in the server’s resources and CPU usage requirements. Most shared web hosting providers cannot support a website that makes it to the front page of Digg, so especially if your website is going to be constantly on Digg and a popular or trendy choice for surfers, you’re going to need to look into a reliable dedicated host who can survive the Digg Effect.

Firstly, what is the Digg Effect?

The Digg Effect is a phenomena that occurs when an article on your website is “dugg” on Digg.com and grows to such popularity that it makes the front page of Digg. While most articles don’t remain long on the front page, it can increase your website’s traffic by 50,000 unique hits/day at least.

Secondly, why is the Digg Effect bad?

If you’re on a shared server, I’m sure you can imagine why it’s bad! Those 50,000 visitors eat up your shared hosting bandwidth in seconds and put a strain on your website and thus the server, bogging it down for the rest of the users.

So what can you do to survive the Digg Effect?

Get a Dedicated Server. Dedicated servers will not go down just because your website has a sudden surge of traffic or bandwidth use. In fact, your dedicated hosting provider can likely recommend the best plan if you think your website is going to be Dugg. Having dedicated server hosting will also prevent you from overshooting your resources – your CPU will not be bothered by the Digg Effect.

When upgrading to a dedicated server, chances are a lot of the time you are moving because you need more than what shared hosting can provide.  The most asked for feature when it comes to dedicated hosting is server resources.  When talking about such a vague phrase - it can be a ‘bit confusing.  Most of the time when you hear the phrase "server resources" used - the person in question is talking about RAM and CPU you have available to you.

Here is one of our past articles that does a good job in describing what RAM means to dedicated hosting.

What is Server RAM?

Having a large amount of RAM is important to any web hosting server but especially to any Dedicated Server Hosting plan.  RAM (or Random Access Memory) is basically computer data storage that allows a user to access any “memory” on the server.  The more RAM, the faster your server is going to run and the quicker your website will load.  [read more!]

Now with CPU, this is the processing power that the server has to push out the "work" you need the server to perform.  Some often used processors are:

• Intel Celeron
• Intel Pentium 4
• Dual Intel Xeon

Sometimes if you need a high performance dedicated hosting server, you might even look at more powerful processors such as the Dual Core Intel 5130 Xeon.  Now that is a powerful processor.