Windows Dedicated Server

Dedicated server hosting is normally available with two different operating systems: a Linux distribution or Microsoft Windows Server 2003. Windows Server is Microsoft’s latest server operating system, and is designed to allow server administrators to host all sorts of services as it includes services for internal functions such as a print server and DNS server, right up to services that can be used for external functions such as the IIS web server and Windows Media Server. Windows Server 2003 can be used for many things, making it the perfect server operating system to be deployed in mass across an entire server farm is appropriate. Windows dedicated server hosting provides you with a physical server with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or 2008 installed on it, which you can then customize or configure to work the way that you want it to.

Windows dedicated server hosting allow you to have your own Microsoft Windows server hosted in an environment which allows it to be accessed from the internet, allowing you to host your websites and other services related to your websites on your own server. Microsoft Windows Server allows you to use your server for many different tasks; for example, you could use it as a media server by installing the Windows Media Server application or as a web server using the IIS web server that is included with any installation of Microsoft Windows Server. You will also be provided with advance tools to help you manage other Windows servers that are on the same network, allowing you to carry out one task with ease instead of having to login to each server individually to carry out the necessary task.

A Windows dedicated server provides a powerful platform for the hosting of classic ASP and ASP.NET web pages and scripts which utilize a Microsoft SQL Server database backend. Since ASP and Microsoft SQL Server are both Microsoft products, the IIS web server is the only web server that is capable of running ASP scripts and web pages, in the same way that Microsoft SQL Server will only work on Microsoft Windows operating systems. Classic ASP is now an old scripting language that was created by Microsoft back in the mid-1990s, but was recently succeeded by the much newer Microsoft ASP.NET 3.5 framework that is much more feature packed, but still allows the interaction with Microsoft SQL Server and Access databases. There have been many different versions of Microsoft SQL Server, the current one being 2005 with 2008 due to be released soon.

Windows dedicated servers are also able to host other server side combinations, such as the PHP scripting engine along with the MySQL database server. Although both run better within a Linux web hosting environment, they have both been adapted for use on Microsoft Windows servers as well. The latest versions are available for all versions of Windows that you can install Apache or IIS on.

Windows dedicated servers are perfect for business who require reliable web hosting, since the server that you are hosted on is yours only meaning that you don’t have to share it with anyone else. Since you aren’t sharing your server resources, you will find that your Windows dedicated server will run faster than a VPS Hosting server of similar specification. Most notably you will find that tasks are carried out quicker, since the CPU of the server isn’t being split between several virtual servers; the same can be said for connection speed, since your server will be the only one using your network port. Your server will also be more easily expandable in terms of resources, since you can give a dedicated server a far higher amount of resources than a VPS hosting server.

In conclusion, Windows dedicated server hosting is going to be of more use for business users who need to ensure a reliable hosting platform, and at the same time be able to manage their hosting server with ease which would not be possible with a VPS Hosting server. The effective hosting of ASP.NET pages coupled with sole use of resources ensures that a Windows dedicated server is the perfect hosting solution for someone who needs to host a mission critical website or other type of web hosting service.