When should a company consider getting private servers for webapps as opposed to hosted solution? What are the criteria?

You should move to a dedicated server when it becomes too expensive to host on a shared server. The only variable cost that folks forget to add in is support. With a shared server, your host takes care of pretty well everything.

If there's a problem, you write a trouble ticket and wait for it to be solved. In a dedicated scenario, you're usually left to fend for yourself unless it's a problem that either affects other customers or is beyond your control. A lot of companies will say "we offer full support to dedicated customers", but think about that for a second... if you set everything up, do you really want some hack in there messing around with your junk?

Nah, you'll likely take the time to fix it yourself or pay an admin you trust to do it for you. Right now (before you switch), keep a close eye on your processing and storage space. These are what really cost money in shared hosting scenarios and will give you a good idea of what you need.

Storage space is easy to see - just check how close you are to your limit. Processing is a bit more erroneous but the best way to check is by creating a small PHP script that will write out mySQL execution times and match processing levels with traffic. Bandwidth consumption is also important on a shared server because it is usually shared among all of the shared server clients.

If you're being billed per GB, figure out how much it would cost you to be billed on the 95th percentile. If the 95th is less, switch to dedicated. Don't forget that there is a middle step.

Virtual Dedicated Servers offered by larger shared hosting companies work well in some scenarios. By using virtualization, each account on a single physical server is allocated a set amount of RAM, Processing, Storage and Bandwidth. You're (usually) given root access.

The beauty part of this scenario is that its very easy to scale. So if you're hosting (for example) an image shack clone that needs a ton of storage but not a ton of processing, virtualization would work well.

Well the company first should weigh in the costs, as well as possible added cost to an in house one, such as tech support. Also security is a very important issue. The questions to ask: what is the cost to have a server service what is the cost of having on on site can the company handle tech support is the company going to be able to make the system as secure or more thena provider.

Can the company handle having the server up at all times it is need; black outs, high traffic, temp control and so forth. Also do you have a locatoin to place the server/ hope that gives some help. ~Joey V.

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