Servers

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What You Need to Know About Buying a Server – A Guide for Nervous Business Owners

If your business is growing and you have finally hired some employees, you are probably wondering about whether or not you need a server.  A server is going to be great, because it is going to increase your computing speed, make data easier to manage and in the long run help your business to grow.  But buying your first server can be a really scary step, and buying the wrong server is always a possibility.  Here is everything that you need to know when buying a server.

The first thing that you need to do is your homework and a lot of planning.  You are going to need to know what size of server you need and what your business expansion is going to look like during the next 3 or 4 years.  A server’s life span is around 3 to 4 years, so you want to buy the proper size for the future.  If you buy too big of a server, you are going to find that you waste a lot of money because you don’t end up using it to its capacity.  If you buy a server that is too small, you are going to end up wasting a lot of money upgrading a server that is already 2 or 3 years old or buying a new one when your old one is still working. 

Another thing you have to plan is whether or not you are going to manage the server yourself.  If you hire an employee to do the work for you, you are going to have to add this expense to your budget, but you can relax a bit because you won’t be responsible for learning a lot of the details.  A lot of company owners don’t learn anything about their servers, relying on their IT department to do everything and then hit a huge snag when something goes wrong and the server guy is out to lunch or on vacation. 

When you know more about your requirements, you are going to have to start learning about the technical aspects of buying a server.  The size of your server is going to be determined by how many computers you are trying to connect, and you will have to ask questions about how much memory, speed and what generation of a server you want.  You may think that this is pretty straightforward but it isn’t easy to compare servers.  For example, if you are looking at processing speed, you may think that buying a server with more Gigahertz is going to be faster, but it also depends on whether your processor can handle multiple requests at once. 

Finally, you are going to want to make sure that your server stays safe.  If something goes wrong, you are going to want backups of all of your data, so make sure that you make backups and know how to use them.  Another thing that you need to know before you buy is about the warranty of your server.  A final thing that you need to be aware of is what happens if the power goes out.  Most servers are going to have a battery backup that will allow the server to power down safely without losing any data, but some can run on this battery backup for a couple of hours.  If you don’t have a server with a battery backup, you are risking your data.

A server is a big step, and if you need one, doing a lot of research is going to make sure that you don’t get the wrong type.  There are so many things to consider that it can get overwhelming when deciding what to buy.