When you upgrade your servers or buy new ones, you want to get the most from them, right? And it's possible. Some of the things you need to do include:
Choose the right server
Everything begins here, as there is no way you have the best experience from the wrong server. The server you choose should be appropriate for your intended usage.
There are various intricacies to consider when making the purchase, but in general, a configuration should be adapted to the application and the desired performance.
For example, the more cores and threads a CPU has, the greater your server's computing capabilities will be. If you choose a CPU with a higher clock speed, your server will operate faster and be able to handle more processing tasks.
Furthermore, for applications such as AI/ML, video streaming, HPC, 3D modeling, VDI, gaming, or big data analysis, you may need to select a specific GPU for your server configuration.
Due to their inherent limitations, integrated GPUs cannot compete with dedicated GPUs in terms of performance. As a result, you should avoid using them for data-intensive use cases or jobs that require a significant amount of processing power.
The good thing is that integrated GPUs use less power, making them ideal for applications prioritizing reliability above performance.
Also, if your server's RAM (News - Alert) is insufficient, it may result in poor user experiences. Your server will require more RAM as the load increases and more websites or other apps run on it.
To gradually increase the storage capacity of your server setup, ensure that you have adequate available slots.
To ensure you buy the right parts and hardware that will give you the experience you are after, get one from a reputable source such as Boost Hardware.
Put your servers into maximum use.
Servers not working at maximum capacity are simply squandering energy like a car idling in traffic.
According to a 2022 Uptime Institute data center survey, just 47% of enterprises achieved 50% or higher server usage, up from 36% in 2020.
Those figures may be overstated since organizations that answered may have only reported their best-performing servers, such as those exclusively running batch processes, which may boost usage as high as 80%.
Overall, use rates may be lower because many apps do not operate continuously. Most software programs are frequently used during working hours.
You can improve server usage by having those hosting business apps execute fewer time-sensitive workloads during off-peak hours.
According to Uptime, increasing low CPU use (20% to 30%) to higher levels (40% to 60%) will significantly improve the output you get from your unit.
To maximize impact, you should consider raising how you use your unit while simultaneously updating servers to the most recent models.
According to Uptime, by combining greater utilization with a server refresh, efficiency can more than quadruple. This signifies a 100% or more increase in workload processed for the same amount of energy.
When done on a large scale, this can result in significant capital and operational cost reductions, reduced energy consumption, and improved sustainability performance.
Make use of a content delivery network.
Adding a content delivery network (CDN) to a server can considerably improve speed, reduce server load, extend regional and global reach, improve dependability, add security, lower costs, and provide search engine optimization (SEO) benefits.
Given these advantages, it can be regarded as an essential tool for improving the delivery of websites and applications hosted on your servers.
The fundamental advantage of a CDN is its ability to distribute cached content across numerous Points of Presence (PoPs) worldwide.
Because of this geographic content distribution, website and application users will always receive data from the closest point of presence, reducing latency and improving server load times.
By minimizing resource bottlenecks and relieving server load, deploying a CDN in tandem with a high-quality server will enhance overall performance, which may improve a web application’s search engine optimization (SEO) ranks while boosting organic traffic.
CDNs can also help increase application uptime and reliability by enabling server redundancy and failover. CDNs will also improve scalability and regional/global reach.
They can handle traffic spikes and assist in building user bases without making significant changes to the server arrangement.
Many CDNs additionally include security capabilities such as web application firewalls, SSL/TLS encryption, and DDoS protection to help protect your server architecture.
Given that they may oversee a large volume of data transfer, especially for static sites, CDNs may help cut network bandwidth bills.
Finally, when integrating CDN technology with a dedicated server, it may be worthwhile to adopt a multi-CDN strategy to reduce latency while improving performance and dependability.
Balance your load among servers.
Load balancing will significantly improve a server's network capacity, latency, stability, and performance. The reason for this is because it efficiently distributes network traffic across several servers and processing resources, ensuring that demand is distributed consistently among multiple servers.
Load balancing uses a physical or virtual device to instantly assess which server in the pool is best suited to handle a certain client request.
This approach provides important failover capabilities while ensuring no single server experiences significant network traffic congestion.
In the event of a server failure, the load balancer quickly moves workloads to a backup server, minimizing inconvenience to users of the applications hosted on these servers.
Keep a close eye on the servers.
Server monitoring ensures that you have continuous operation of the IT applications that run on it.
There are various ways you can use to monitor a dedicated server's uptime, response times, and overall performance.
One way to monitor your servers closely is by using 'ping monitoring.' Ping monitoring involves sending many packets to a given IP address or domain name to assess response timings and availability.
If the hosted server and network(s) are active, it responds, and you'll get information about how long the interaction took.
If the server does not respond or responds too slowly, you know something is wrong, and it is time to check the server and network environment.
When you notice an issue with your servers, you should move with haste and fix them, ensuring that everyone enjoys using them.
