When it comes to buying a business server, your startup have many options to choose from. The overall process can be confusing and down right frustrating if you are unsure about what your startup needs. Meanwhile, many business technologists will claim that you should just go straight to the cloud. Yet, you still want to have control of your own dedicate server hardware configurations and ability to maintain cost savings as the business gets larger.
As a small business CEO, you should carefully consider the following options before buying a server for your startup.
Choose An Operating System
Before getting into your hardware options, CEO’s should consider the type of software that the startup will use. Depending on the type of development, applications and projects, every start up will need its own mix of software.
Many companies all require different packages and platforms to run. The could be anything from Microsoft platform packages to Red Hat linux compilations. In some cases, you may have to license the rights to enterprise platforms. If you are going through all the trouble to get the best software for your startup, you should make this decision upfront. Then, you can start to acquire the hardware that will perform best with the software and programs that your engineering team will run.
Type of Physical Server
In addition to be compatible with your software, the startup’s server should be optimized for your space as well. Typically, servers come in three different categories known as tower servers, blade servers and rackmount servers. As you can imagine, the tower server looks mostly like a desktop PC tower. Meanwhile the blade server are thin servers that required a chassis to be installed. Then, you have industrial rackmount servers that can be installed on server racks. Of course, rackmount servers work for startups who may add more servers to their rack in the future.
Depending on your storage and space constraints, you should carefully consider your types of physical server options.
Server RAM Memory Capacity
After deciding on the physical server type, you have many options for the memory that you would like to include in the server. For standalone testing environments, a minimum of 4 GB of RAM might be fine. However, the additional cost for your startup server might be worth the upgrade. In some linux operating system servers, you can find a default of 32 GB of RAM for added capacity. To give you an idea, that’s nearly 4 times the memory that most good computers are using. Obviously, more memory will give your development the resources it needs now and in the future as the company grows.
Make sure that you consider the types of applications the server will be running to see if you could use the extra memory.
Startup Server Storage Options
In additional to customizable RAM options, your business server can have RAID or SSD hard drives for storage. The amount of storage that you company needs will depends entirely on the type of projects you are running. Here, SSD can offer major performance benefits. Meanwhile, RAID storage options might give you a greater amount of storage at a lower cost. In either case, you can always buy a server that has the capacity to add more storage space as needed.
CPU Processing Power
Additionally, you will need a server that has top notch processing performance. While low-end servers essentially have the same processors as laptops, you can upgrade to top of the line chips. These processors have advanced multi-threading improvements over their predecessors. If you invest in a great processor, the server’s ability to crunch data at phenomenal speeds should enable your entire IT team to be more efficient. Moreover, it’s a one time cost that could increase the company performance dramatically over the life of the server.
By now, you should have a pretty good idea of the main options for choosing a business server. As the CEO of a startup, you need to balance the present and future needs. If possible, make the added investment to get your IT team the equipment they need to succeed. It will pay off in the long run. They will appreciate the right platforms with optimized hardware. Furthermore, the company will benefit by saving space with the right type of physical server
When the servers are deployed the extra memory capacity, high performance hard drives and CPU processor will make a difference in your startup’s ability to deliver.
