What would be the best way to hunt down a problem with your web site?  Before you upgrade, you may want to do some investigating.  For example, let us say you were getting DDoS attacks daily, and performance of your web sites seem to be going down hill.  Is an upgrade to a dedicated setup best?

It could be, but do your homework first.

I would recommend to determine what is excessively hitting CPU and memory of your server first to be able then to fight against the cause. If your server has cPanel, you would check CPU/Memory/MySQL usage stats in WHM. Running the “top” command in shell could also help you in figuring out which processes are the most CPU and memory consuming.

Once you have done some investigation into the cause of the issue, you will be more prepared to tackle it with your new dedicated web hosting plan.

Does a Dedicated Server package have a WAP feature/server?

Just about any dedicated hosting setup will allow WAP. You’ll just need to setup Mime types and DirctoryIndex settings in web server configuration. The following guide mentions settings for both Windows and Linux servers to be setup for WAP:

http://www.developershome.com/wap/wapServerSetup/tutorial.asp?page=setupIntro

This is perfect (WAP that is) for small testing purposes.

Learning how to use your dedicated server’s monitoring services can be very useful.

Here is how you would monitor your dedicated server using Web Host Manger (WHM).  The first thing you need to do is login to your WHM account, then find and click on the link for Server Status.  On the Server Status screen you should see two options.  One to go to Service Status and the other to go to Server Information.  For now, let us check out Service Status.

Server Status

You can check to see that everything is running properly on your server.  If there is a problem, the green balls will turn to red.  All of the services are listed on the left side of the page while all of the statuses are listed on the right side of the page.

Server Information

Now lets go back, and then click into our Server Information page.  Here, you are able to see the vital information of your particular server such as:

• Processor
• Speed
• Type
• Cache
• Memory
• …and more!

Check on Bandwidth

To see how much bandwidth you are using, login to Web Host Manager (WHM) and then click on the Account Information link.  From there you can click on the link for View Bandwidth Usage.  This will show you bandwidth usage per account as a total.  You can toggle back and forth between months as well.

Check on Disk Space Usage

Now let us check on disk space usage.  To see how much bandwidth you are using, login to Web Host Manager (WHM) and then click on the Account Functions link.  From the Account Functions page, click on Quota Modification.  Again, you will see it broken down per account as well as a total with all of your account listed down the page.

If you have a dedicated server or are looking into purchasing one for an affordable price, you will likely need to consider how you are going to monitor that server. You have two main choices:

1. Purchase a Managed Hosting Option – these can be fairly affordable and will let your host monitor your server for you. The only downside is that you have to pay a monthly fee and you don’t have access to these monitoring tools.
2. Self-Manage Your Server – Download a server monitoring tool and self-manage the server by checking every so often for server errors, etc.

Here are some of the recommended server monitoring tools for your dedicated web server:

1. Nagios – The most popular server monitoring tool that is even used in the web hosting industry for web hosting clients on dedicated and shared servers alike. Nagios offers amazing tools that are literally unsurpassed in the industry, such as: monitoring of network services (like email, PING, etc), host resources (CPU, disk usage, logs, etc), environmental factors; simple plugin designs; contact notifications via email, pager, or user-defined methods; scheduled downtime to suppress notifications; and more! This is the most highly recommended solution available on the market to help you see what your web host sees.
2. SiteUptime – Choose from 3 different levels of server management: the free account offers more than enough for basic users, while the $5 or $10 per month option offers more features. The free level allows you to monitor in 30 and 60 minute intervals for one site and receive email notifications, monthly reports, online stats, and more.
3. Host-Alert – Check your server’s uptime and errors in increments of 5, 10, or 30 minute intervals, and have these error notifications sent via email, SMS text messaging, or both. Each notification is only sent once, so there’s no need to worry if something goes down about your inbox getting spammed. Plus you can check the status on unlimited databases, pages, and websites.