The reason most companies upgrade to a dedicated (or semi-dedicated) server is to set up a controlled environment and allow for more "independence" than shared hosting allows.
It's very much like the difference between living in an apartment (shared hosting) and owning your own house (dedicated server).
In an apartment building there are more restrictions as to what you can do and when, but there's also a landlord to call for when things break or to take care of the regular upkeep of the building.
When you own your own house, however, you have a lot more leeway (depending on the city you live in, but for this example let's exclude building codes and zoning regulations). You can paint the walls purple, tear them down, install new appliances and light fixtures, and any number of other changes. You're also the one responsible when the plumbing springs a leak or the air conditioning breaks down. If you have specialized construction skills you can sometimes fix it yourself, but more often you'll call in a licensed contractor or repair person who has years of experience (and hopefully a license) to fix whatever broke.
With our dedicated and semi-dedicated servers, we've tried to bridge the gap between them and shared hosting, and give you freedom to set up your own hosting environment yet without leaving you completely on your own to deal with server issues. While we try to make sure everything is always running smoothly on your server, included support is not intended as a substitute for a Server Administrator...for there being a person (or persons) responsible for monitoring the server for errors and alerts. Going back to our apartment/house example, the owner of the house is responsible for arranging for repair or service (or doing it themselves) when something isn't working right, At the very least they are responsible for making the call or submitting a support ticket.
Not every company or small business who needs a dedicated server has the time or in-house expertise to manage a server, or wants to spend hours-days-weeks learning all that goes into being a Server Admin. That's why we also offer professional Server Administration Services, available on either a monthly or as-needed basis. We have over a decade of experience managing cPanel / Linux servers and can troubleshoot most issues in a timely manner. By leasing a dedicated server with us you are not by any means obligated to use us. You are always free to do the job yourself or hire from elsewhere.
If you've never run your own server before, it can probably be confusing as to "what's included and what's not." What follows is a list of examples (though by no means a complete list of all possibilities) of what is included and what you'll pay extra for (or do yourself or hire elsewhere). Any time you have a specific question, please feel free to ask for clarification.
Included In Dedicated Server Support
- Initial server setup and installation of a LAMP environment, your core software: CentOS (the server OS), Apache (web server), MySQL (database), PHP, Python.
- Initial installation of cPanel (hosting control panel), Exim (Mail server), Dovecot (IMAP server), Pure-FTP (FTP server), CSF firewall (installed with a default configuration), and other basic software typically included on a server in a cPanel environment, all with a default configuration.
- Linux Kernel upgrades, major OS version upgrades (upgrading to the next major version of CentOS requires migrating to a new physical server, due to potential issues with doing an "in place" CentOS upgrade).
- Network issues.
- Hardware failure replacement (replaced at no charge, as quickly as possible).
- cPanel updates itself nightly, if you have automatic updates enabled (you are always free to disable automatic updates). With some services (such as Exim, Dovecot, Apache) it's standard to have automatic updates disabled (either in the cPanel Update Configuration or in yum.conf) and to update those service manually, so you don't end up with any surprises from an overnight update gone bad.
- We're available if anything that was included in the initial installation stops working or has a problem, all the server administrator/owner needs to do is submit a support ticket. Custom software support is available for an additional hourly charge and can be arranged on an as-needed basis or as a monthly service.
Server Administration Tasks
- Installing and/or maintaining custom software (at our recommendation, such as security software, or your request).
- Minor version upgrades of CentOS.
- Upgrades of Apache, MySQL, PHP, etc.
- Software configuration and tweaks beyond the defaults.
- PHP: making adjustments to the php.ini as required/requested for specific scripts.
- Initial configuration of cPanel:
- tweaking the settings
- setting server time
- setting up SSH keys
- setting up hostng packages (for resellers)
- configuring log rotation
- installing SSL certificates (cPanel comes with self-signed certificates which while providing encryption will result in user errors and can not be used for eCommerce)
- setting server contact preferences (all server alerts go to both the server owner and the administrator)
- configuring cron times
- etc.
- Nameserver setup, checking DNS, assisting with DNS configuration if needed.
- CSF (firewall) configuration (beyond the default), including custom rules based on your needs, opening ports for custom services, etc. Monitoring firewall activity emails/reports, pre-emptively blocking malicious IPs as needed.
- Installation of additional security software such as ModSecurity (customizing the rules, whitelisting), plugins to WHM to make monitoring and configuring easier (ModSec Control, Mail Manage, Mail Queues, etc).
- Monitoring reports and server logs, watching for signs of security issues and configuration problems. We receive the server alerts and respond to them immediately as needed, 24/7. Restart services as needed.
- Explaining or tutoring on server administration, if requested. In general we always explain what was done when any work is done on your server, as well as keep a real-time Admin Log online available for you to review and have a list of what's been done and why, and when possible a link for you to read more information. If you want more detailed explanations (listing of commands used, detailed reasons why something was done, etc) can be very time-consuming, and if the explaination takes more than 15 minutes you'll be charged for that time.
There is no contract with our Server Administration Services, and you can cancel at any time you wish.
