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The Motherboard
The motherboard is often an overlooked feature as few web host providers worry about it. However, the motherboard forms the foundation of the server and is critical to select a high performance and reliable motherboard brand. If the motherboard (sometimes referred to as the system board) is not up to the level of quality as other system components, it will become a bottleneck and reduce the performance of the whole system. Brands, such as, Tyan, Asus and Gigabyte are will known the server motherboard market and is well recognised in the web hosting industry.
Random Access Memory (RAM)
The web server's main memory (RAM) is used to temporarily store applications and web data in the cache to serve out all requests made by users. The more RAM, the more web data it can hold in memory at any one time. The benefit of this is it minimises the fetching of data from the hard disk where all the files are permanently stored. If you intend to host databases and amongst other activities on the web server, it is ideal you select a dedicated server plan with a minimum of 256MB of memory.
If the type of RAM installed on the system can be selected, choose ECC (Error Checking and Correction) memory modules. ECC memory allows the system to check and correct bits in memory that are "incorrect" and repair the data in real time without fetching the data from the source again.
Internet Protocol (IP) Addresses
With named-based virtual hosting implemented in most web servers eg Apache, having two IP addresses is often enough to handle as many web sites your hardware can cope with. One IP for the name server (DNS) and the other IP for your domains. The name server is similar to having the authority to delegate Internet Domains. However, if you intend to introduce SSL (Secure Socket Layer), a protocol for secure communication, for a domain then it is required to have its own dedicated IP address. The recommendation is to look for dedicated plan that allows you to have at least 10 IP addresses, or more as long as you can justify the reason for it.
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