Don’t just turn it off and on again

Server management isn’t just about rebooting. Different sites need different servers. Good server management is about selecting the right kit for your website’s needs and maximising resources - both technical and financial

If you underresource your website with a server that isn’t up to the job, it will be slow or even return 404 errors to visitors. Of course, if you’re serious about managing your website, it’s better to choose a dedicated server with the appropriate storage space, RAM, processor power and the like – but you’ve got to be able to pay for it.
Once you’ve calculated the design and build costs of a website, you need to keep an eye on the ongoing maintenance and hosting costs. This should start with choosing the best value and most appropriate server for your needs.
Here, we review some dedicated servers from Amenworld.com, for which your trusted Web Designer magazine has negotiated a discount for readers.

AMEN DUO 2000 - FOR THE SMALL TO MEDIUM SIZED ECOMMERCE SITE
To support eCommerce websites, you really need to select servers with solid processors, sufficient RAM, great security and if you are adding new products to the site, enough storage space to allow your site to grow.
Good eCommerce sites will generally host a range of products linked to various databases. If the site is successful, it will receive a lot of visitors, almost all of whom will be querying the databases for products. Database queries and writing to databases are server resource-intensive processes, so you shouldn’t scrimp on the processor or the RAM. If it’s an auction website, it’s likely to deploy dynamic data, such as up-to-date statistics on a product which could be in a bidding war.
For the right balance of value for money, RAM, processor performance, storage space and security, your best bet is the Amen Duo 2000. It’s got 2GB of RAM and two 2 GHz AMD Opteron 1212s, so it’s not going to be under too much pressure should there be a lot of activity and applications running on the site at the same time. It’s got two 200 GB hard drives on the server configured in hard RAID 1. This means that the website’s data is mirrored, so your eCommerce site – or more accurately, your business – is protected against hard disk failure. There’s data backup, as well as recovery and restore services bundled in which you can use too. You can also just keep pumping the promotion of the site as there’s no monthly traffic quota either.

AMEN MEDIUM - FOR THE INDEPENDENT WEB DESIGNER THAT OFFERS HOSTING
Most websites on the internet are pretty simple things really. Just some pages of text and graphics. Nothing major. No multimedia, not loads of high-resolution images, not much dynamic content – so there’s no need for overkill on the server. But some things are imperative. A well-designed and coded site is a given, but minimising downtime, ensuring the site has room to grow and making sure the site can efficiently manage peaks in traffic are a must.
If you’re building and hosting a number of simple sites for customers and you want various domains pointing to your server, have a look at Amen Medium from Amenworld.com’s COMFORT range of dedicated servers. There’s 120GB of storage space there, so it’s plenty for simple websites and has that all-important room to grow. Solid processing power is provided by its Sempron 2800, and it will easily manage peaks in visitor numbers with its unlimited monthly traffic quota and 768MB of RAM.
An Amen Medium server comes with the Plesk 30 server administration system as standard, so you can host up to 30 domains via a graphical user interface. If your website hosting service really takes off and you need the site to manage more domains, no problem. You can quickly upgrade to manage up to 100 domains with Plesk 100. With four fixed IP addresses, you can even set up a primary and secondary name server to professionally manage and control the DNS lookup and mail records for all the sites you host.

AMEN DUO 4000 - FOR THE GAME SERVER
OK, now you’re getting serious. You’ve got a game you want to whack up onto your servers and you want people all over the world to play it. You can’t mess about here. Running a game server is a very intensive operation and needs all the resources the machine can provide. Your site’s users are some of the most excitable on the internet. They’re committed and competitive, their hearts race, they’re stressed out – and they love it. You don’t want to upset these people though. If the server runs slow or hangs for even a second, you’re going to seriously upset your gameplayers, because for them, an underresourced server can mean the difference between winning and losing.
Processor power and adequate RAM capacity are a must here. The Amen Duo 4000 is pretty beefy, so more than capable for a game server. It has two AMD Opteron 1214 processors which run at up to 2.2 GHz and a whopping 4GB of RAM, so your site’s users are in safe hands.
But what about managing the various game options and controls, the league tables and user profiles? And the forums and community tools game sites offer players to goad and rile each other? All that back-end database stuff doesn’t just need good processing power, but huge storage space also.
None of it’s a problem for the Amen Duo 4000. It comes with two 250GB hard drives, configured with RAID 1 for the site owner’s peace of mind, and 40GB of Amen Data Backup space.