How difficult it is to manage a dedicated server?

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Shepseskare

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I'm on a shared hosting right now, with my websites growing, I'm considering getting a dedicated server.
My concern is that cheap dedicated servers are bare bones materials. No control panel, no PHP, no MySQL, no Apache, I'll have to install all that myself with command line instructions. I'm not used to that.
I guess I can learn though. I've learned html and php, and I've built my own CMS which is way lighter than Wordpress.
Also, regarding Control Panels, I have some experience with Plesk, but it's not free. Is there a free control panel software available? I know ispconfig, is there another one?
 
Last edited:
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How long is a piece of string? It's going to depend solely on what you're trying to do with the server. Installing LAMP so you can run Wordpress is bit different than installing LAMP plus IonCube Loader, FFmpeg, ImageMagic, Youtube-dl, etc. etc. so you can run Kernel Video Sharing.

If all you want is a control panel for free, login to the server and install virtualmin. Run command:
sudo sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://software.virtualmin.com/gpl/scripts/virtualmin-install.sh)" -- --bundle LAMP
Click to expand...
and you're good for basic things like running a Wordpress site.
 
For me, to manage a dedicated server is a hobby. I really enjoy it. After ten years of experience it's very easy.
 
SirSmash said:
How long is a piece of string? It's going to depend solely on what you're trying to do with the server. Installing LAMP so you can run Wordpress is bit different than installing LAMP plus IonCube Loader, FFmpeg, ImageMagic, Youtube-dl, etc. etc. so you can run Kernel Video Sharing.

If all you want is a control panel for free, login to the server and install virtualmin. Run command:

and you're good for basic things like running a Wordpress site.
Click to expand...
Home page of http://www.virtualmin.com/ doesn't show up...

MuayThai said:
For me, to manage a dedicated server is a hobby. I really enjoy it. After ten years of experience it's very easy.
Click to expand...
I'm sure I'll find it easy in 10 years, but as of today I have 0 day of experience...
 
Shepseskare said:
Home page of http://www.virtualmin.com/ doesn't show up...
Click to expand...
Problem on your end, it definitely works.

edit: See something like: https://www.browserling.com/browse/win10/chrome122/virtualmin.com for a website test.

No particularly nice way to say this though, if you're incapable of getting a basic website to load then perhaps running a dedicated server isn't for you.

SirSmash said:
Problem on your end, it definitely works.

edit: See something like: https://www.browserling.com/browse/win10/chrome122/virtualmin.com for a website test.

No particularly nice way to say this though, if you're incapable of getting a basic website to load then perhaps running a dedicated server isn't for you.
Click to expand...
It's working now, but it wasn't 1 hour ago...

Does anyone know them both:

https://www.virtualmin.com/

and

https://www.ispconfig.org/

Which one is better?
 
Shepseskare said:
I'm on a shared hosting right now, with my websites growing, I'm considering getting a dedicated server.
My concern is that cheap dedicated servers are bare bones materials. No control panel, no PHP, no MySQL, no Apache, I'll have to install all that myself with command line instructions. I'm not used to that.
I guess I can learn though. I've learned html and php, and I've built my own CMS which is way lighter than Wordpress.
Also, regarding Control Panels, I have some experience with Plesk, but it's not free. Is there a free control panel software available? I know ispconfig, is there another one?
Click to expand...
See it's not that difficult. First, choose your OS.
Let's say you choose Linux. Now learn how to install PHP and MySQL on Linux.

For example - for the WordPress setup you can install PHP and MySQL and then enable all the PHP extensions required by WordPress. You can get all the info on Google.

Here is a reference blog for you - https://agaetis.tech/development/how-to-install-linux-server-for-php-and-mysql/

Also, most dedicated server sellers or VPS sellers allow you to reinstall the OS. So, if anything goes wrong you simply reinstall the OS or raise a ticket and they will solve your issue.

Lastly, I want to say it's going to be a little painful :) seeing no GUI at the start but the performance boost you see in your sites will make up for it.
 
I wouldn't want to give naive advice to a beginner that managing a server is easy because it is not.

As the great boxer Mike Tyson said, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." The same is true for managing a server.

It's easy to copy and paste commands from articles to install something, but that's not managing the server. When strange issues start happening, it suddenly becomes difficult.

I would recommend OP to take a bit of time and play around with a cheap VPS and maybe read some Linux management courses to understand what to do when things happen. Or.. get a managed host until OP has more experience with managing the server because if the issue becomes too complicated, the service provider can help.
 
The cheap hosts I see do not offer much support, I'll have to do everything by myself.

As I don't want to spend too much time fiddling with Linux, I wonder if I can do everything with the GUI I would install right away (virtualmin or ispconfig), and if they're reliable. I know I can be helped to set-up the server, but from the second day I'll have my server, my plan is to be autonomous.

I understand it's a risky move, but my current host has told me my website has too many visitors. I have to migrate to a VPS or a dedicated server.
 
Shepseskare said:
I'm on a shared hosting right now, with my websites growing, I'm considering getting a dedicated server.
My concern is that cheap dedicated servers are bare bones materials. No control panel, no PHP, no MySQL, no Apache, I'll have to install all that myself with command line instructions. I'm not used to that.
I guess I can learn though. I've learned html and php, and I've built my own CMS which is way lighter than Wordpress.
Also, regarding Control Panels, I have some experience with Plesk, but it's not free. Is there a free control panel software available? I know ispconfig, is there another one?
Click to expand...

A dedicated server might be overkill. Have you considered using Digital Ocean or Vultr, for example?
As for the control panel, have you considered something like CloudPanel?
https://www.cloudpanel.io/
 
Deleted member 752298 said:
A dedicated server might be overkill. Have you considered using Digital Ocean or Vultr, for example?
As for the control panel, have you considered something like CloudPanel?
https://www.cloudpanel.io/
Click to expand...
Thanks, I didn't know that software. Do you think it's better than the 2 I've mentioned earlier?
I'm looking at all hosting companies. I see substantial price differences, and it's hard to tell which one is the best...
 
Shepseskare said:
The cheap hosts I see do not offer much support, I'll have to do everything by myself.

As I don't want to spend too much time fiddling with Linux, I wonder if I can do everything with the GUI I would install right away (virtualmin or ispconfig), and if they're reliable. I know I can be helped to set-up the server, but from the second day I'll have my server, my plan is to be autonomous.

I understand it's a risky move, but my current host has told me my website has too many visitors. I have to migrate to a VPS or a dedicated server.
Click to expand...

A control panel will not help you when something else that is not controlled by the panel happens or when you need to look deeper into logs to see what exactly is causing high IO usage, for example.

You will pay anyway. You will pay with money or you will pay with your time. It's your choice.

You need to be aware of those things if you want to manage your server. Alternatively, you can pay the service provider to manage things for you.. this is probably a cheaper option.

Also, it would be reasonable to understand how to secure your server. You wouldn't want a single vulnerable plugin to infect your whole server. It's not "if" it happens, but "when".. so you need to be ready for it.

There's a reason why some hosting services are more expensive than others. As I have always said, you get what you pay for when we are talking about hosting.
 
Diplomat said:
A control panel will not help you when something else that is not controlled by the panel happens or when you need to look deeper into logs to see what exactly is causing high IO usage, for example.
Click to expand...
Well, it was my hope that the control panel would be almighty, and that you would never have to go back to the command line. You make me understand it would not be like that. Got it.

I'm currently trying a cheap VPS for which I've paid a little extra to get Plesk on it.
I like it. The server speed is not what I'm expecting but it's easy to use. I've installed one domain, created email addresses and 2 DBs, all very easy.

I'm looking for something fast with the same features. Maybe a VPS would be enough for me, but theoretically a VPS is not easier to manage than a whole server, right?
 
Why not go managed dedicated, much easier and you do not need to be a system engineer to manage it. Plus security is taken care of for you. Cloudways is quite good.
 
Shepseskare said:
Well, it was my hope that the control panel would be almighty, and that you would never have to go back to the command line. You make me understand it would not be like that. Got it.

I'm currently trying a cheap VPS for which I've paid a little extra to get Plesk on it.
I like it. The server speed is not what I'm expecting but it's easy to use. I've installed one domain, created email addresses and 2 DBs, all very easy.

I'm looking for something fast with the same features. Maybe a VPS would be enough for me, but theoretically a VPS is not easier to manage than a whole server, right?
Click to expand...
I am running dedicated servers since a long time. It is not easy and it can be very time-consuming initially. If a problem comes up, you are as a beginner toasted and your money site might be inaccessible for longer time. Plesk might be a false friend.

You might want to or do it already: start with a VPS for training purposes only and try to get comfortable. In between, you might want to rent a managed server, e.g. https://www.hetzner.com/managed-server/
Other (temporal) options: CDN like cloudflare or caching plugins...

Yes, managing a VPS is the same as managing a dedicated server. You also might want to check for VPS providers where you can scale up cpu & ram.
 
cooooookies said:
Yes, managing a VPS is the same as managing a dedicated server. You also might want to check for VPS providers where you can scale up cpu & ram.
Click to expand...
Yes, that's what I thought first. The cheap VPS I have is upgradable but the upgrade I wish makes it more expensive more than a basic dedicated server. Also, I understand a manager server is much more friendlier, but it's also significantly more expensive.
Shared hosting was so easy, it's a big step when you want more...
 
Shepseskare said:
Well, it was my hope that the control panel would be almighty, and that you would never have to go back to the command line. You make me understand it would not be like that. Got it.

I'm currently trying a cheap VPS for which I've paid a little extra to get Plesk on it.
I like it. The server speed is not what I'm expecting but it's easy to use. I've installed one domain, created email addresses and 2 DBs, all very easy.

I'm looking for something fast with the same features. Maybe a VPS would be enough for me, but theoretically a VPS is not easier to manage than a whole server, right?
Click to expand...

Don't forget that Plesk itself needs resources as well + all the services it runs. If you look at Plesk's minimum requirements, you can see it needs a minimum of 1GB RAM + 1GB of swap (swap is a file that the OS uses when it runs out of memory, and it's as fast as your disk. meaning it's going to be slow): https://www.plesk.com/blog/various/plesk-requirements-hardware-software/

Let's take WordPress.. it would be nice to have at least 128MB of memory for each request. 64MB could do the job, but it will get tricky depending on your theme and plugins. So, if your server has 1GB of RAM it can handle about 2-3 users max. Do you know how many visitors you get per day? Based on this info, you can estimate how much RAM your server needs + add database server memory requirements + Plesk itself as well.

Yes, having a control panel is nice, but you need more resources for it.

You basically manage the VPS and the dedicated server the same way. The difference is that a dedicated server offers you direct access to all the hardware and usually comes with more resources than a VPS. A VPS is just a virtualized system that runs on a dedicated server. That way, you can have multiple different environments on top of a dedicated server. VPS are a lot more flexible and come in all kinds of sizes.
 
Diplomat said:
Let's take WordPress.. it would be nice to have at least 128MB of memory for each request. 64MB could do the job, but it will get tricky depending on your theme and plugins. So, if your server has 1GB of RAM it can handle about 2-3 users max. Do you know how many visitors you get per day? Based on this info, you can estimate how much RAM your server needs + add database server memory requirements + Plesk itself as well.
Click to expand...
Well, if WordPress is cached properly, the total cache would take 250MB or so on RAM, and it will not consume 128MB or so per visitor. However, that depends on the type of website being created—WooCommerce is bound to use RAM one way or another, but things are entirely different if we're discussing blog-like websites.
 
Diplomat said:
Don't forget that Plesk itself needs resources as well + all the services it runs. If you look at Plesk's minimum requirements, you can see it needs a minimum of 1GB RAM + 1GB of swap (swap is a file that the OS uses when it runs out of memory, and it's as fast as your disk. meaning it's going to be slow): https://www.plesk.com/blog/various/plesk-requirements-hardware-software/

Let's take WordPress.. it would be nice to have at least 128MB of memory for each request. 64MB could do the job, but it will get tricky depending on your theme and plugins. So, if your server has 1GB of RAM it can handle about 2-3 users max. Do you know how many visitors you get per day? Based on this info, you can estimate how much RAM your server needs + add database server memory requirements + Plesk itself as well.

Yes, having a control panel is nice, but you need more resources for it.

You basically manage the VPS and the dedicated server the same way. The difference is that a dedicated server offers you direct access to all the hardware and usually comes with more resources than a VPS. A VPS is just a virtualized system that runs on a dedicated server. That way, you can have multiple different environments on top of a dedicated server. VPS are a lot more flexible and come in all kinds of sizes.
Click to expand...
Thanks for all these advises. The VPS I have now has 4Go RAM. My plan is to get at least 16Go.
I'm averaging 4000 visitors a day. I had 15,000 on my best day.
I wrote to 2 companies asking for info. I'm waiting for their replies.
 
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