A computer combines various hardware and software, which everyone is familiar with when thinking of a typical desktop PC. Similarly, an enterprise server contains premium components engineered explicitly for continual mission-critical use.
Consider comparing a Boeing 737, a passenger transport in continuous operation, to a Toyota Corolla. One is a personal vehicle used occasionally to get from place to place and mostly parked in a garage. The other is an exorbitantly expensive machine requiring round-the-clock operation for decades. Doing so safely and efficiently requires an incredible upfront financial investment and regular maintenance. You must also refuel and clean the plane for it to continue functioning at a high level. Much more frequently than with a typical car. This is a comparable analogy for the difference between your home PC and an enterprise server.
With all that said, how does an enterprise server improve your website? This article will explore what enterprise hosting entails and why it’s a game-changer for businesses with substantial online operations. We’ll explore the benefits of enterprise website and application hosting and how it addresses constant server maintenance. How enterprise hosting employs cutting-edge networking equipment, ensures your website performs optimally at all times, and much more. Whether upgrading your hosting or starting fresh, understanding the advantages of enterprise hosting helps you make an informed decision. With a focus on providing a comprehensive overview, this guide aims to be your go-to resource for enterprise servers. Let’s get into it!
Table of Contents
What is an Enterprise Server?
Enterprise servers are robust machines with far more resources than your typical hosting offers. They’re built to cater to the entire organization rather than individual users. These servers are essential for managing large-scale software assets. They are characterized by their ability to handle significant processing demands with minimal downtime. The performance of enterprise servers is superior to typical hosting solutions due to their advanced processing power and premium hardware. Naturally, this allows for quicker response times and enhanced reliability.
Typically utilized to meet the rigorous demands of large businesses and organizations looking for around-the-clock operation times. Enterprise-grade equipment is generally designed to withstand high-capacity workloads 24×7 for years. Another critical component of enterprise servers is having dedicated server resources, ensuring no compromise on performance, stability, or security. The infrastructure is almost always built with multiple levels of redundancy. Thus, it offers high availability and uptime, typically with SLA guarantees, ensuring that websites and applications are always accessible.
In combination, this makes enterprise servers a robust solution for business websites demanding high levels of server maintenance. This applies to any business requiring advanced networking equipment or cutting-edge server technology. Designed for large-scale operations, an enterprise server is ideal for high-traffic websites, e-commerce platforms, and comprehensive enterprise hosting applications.
Difference Between Enterprise and Consumer-Grade Hardware
Enterprise-level hardware is physically larger and more robust than its commercially available counterparts. It is designed to be stacked for more efficient scaling and cooling, ensuring continuous peak performance and security while offering easy scalability as your business grows.
All enterprise server hardware differs significantly from consumer-grade hardware in terms of endurance, reliability, and performance. As it is designed for continuous operation under high loads, enterprise hardware can withstand the rigorous conditions of an always-on business environment. This includes enhanced error-checking, wear-leveling, and data protection features that are not typically found in consumer-grade products. Additionally, enterprise systems are often equipped with better support and warranty conditions, ensuring that any issues can be swiftly addressed without significant downtime.
In essence, enterprise hosting offers businesses the stability, scalability, and security needed to operate efficiently and effectively. By investing in an enterprise-grade server, companies ensure that their IT infrastructure can support their growth and adapt to any changing technological needs.
How does an Enterprise Server improve your Website?
Selecting the right web hosting service goes beyond just keeping your site operational. It’s about ensuring peak performance, security, and scalability as your business grows. Typically, we do not think about these things until something goes wrong, at which point it is already too late. This might be something to recover from for a hobby site, but for a business, this could cost thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Enterprise servers offer robust solutions for websites that demand the highest levels of server maintenance, advanced network equipment, and peace of mind regarding security and stability. This is especially crucial for high-traffic websites, e-commerce platforms, sites, and applications that can never afford to go down, such as any government, medical, military, or financial sectors.
Reliable Performance
An enterprise server ensures that your website operates efficiently under any condition. It provides fast data transfer rates, which is crucial for maintaining high performance and minimizing user frustration from slow loading times. This speed is essential for user satisfaction and improving your site’s visibility in search engine results. The best fully managed hosting providers even help you optimize your servers and website to get the fastest possible page loading times.
Enhanced Security
The larger the business and the more complex the website, the more serious the security threats. Enterprise hosting offers robust security measures, including SSL certificates, constant backups, and advanced protection against various attacks. Most importantly, managed servers come with round-the-clock support, proactive monitoring, and malfunction prevention. These features help safeguard your site’s data and, importantly, maintain the trust of your visitors.
Increased Uptime
Uptime is critical for any website and is essential for businesses and e-commerce stores. An enterprise server often comes with higher-than-usual uptime guarantees, ensuring that your site remains accessible to users continuously. This reliability is vital for maintaining a consistent user experience and for supporting your business operations during peak traffic periods. Any downtime on a website can also drastically cost your business in lost search ranking positions, decreasing traffic along with sales and conversions on your site.
Adaptability to Growth
Enterprise hosting provides seamless upgrade pathways, allowing your site to handle increases in traffic without compromising performance. Whether you experience annual growth or receive seasonal traffic, such as that of a major sporting league season, enterprise hosting ensures your website remains stable and responsive. Traffic growth should be a welcome boon for your website, bringing in new users and conversions. An enterprise server ensures this is the case and does not become a nightmare scenario where you miss out on free revenue because your site went down.
Better Support and Maintenance
Choosing enterprise hosting also means gaining access to superior support and maintenance services. With 24/7 customer support and proactive management, issues are resolved quickly, minimizing potential downtime. Regular updates and maintenance ensure that your website remains secure and operates at peak efficiency, contributing to a seamless user experience. Look for level 3 support availability whenever possible. It’s like having your own virtual IT team at your disposal whenever you actually need them.
CPU Cores are not all Built the Same
Enterprise server hardware typically consists of processors, memory, storage, and a power supply to keep everything running. There are also networking cards, cooling systems, and additional auxiliary equipment for connectivity, longevity, and redundancy. Usually, hosting providers only list the number of CPU cores, GB of RAM, and GB of storage a plan contains. Unfortunately, this doesn’t consider the type of hardware, such as Intel vs AMD processors or NVMe vs SSD storage. Even more importantly, it doesn’t stipulate the age of the equipment used.
Take processors as an example. Let’s use CPU benchmarks from PassMark for an enterprise-tier CPU model over the past 15 years.
| YEAR | CPU MARK | YOY GROWTH | 5-YEAR GAPS |
| 2024 | 17,904 | 25.7% | CURRENT |
| 2023 | 14,245 | 13.9% | |
| 2022 | 12,504 | -2.7% | |
| 2021 | 12,848 | 51.1% | |
| 2020 | 8,504 | -9.8% | |
| 2019 | 9,427 | 7.4% | 189.92% |
| 2018 | 8,777 | 3.9% | |
| 2017 | 8,447 | 4.9% | |
| 2016 | 8,054 | 10.6% | |
| 2015 | 7,283 | 0.9% | |
| 2014 | 7,217 | 6.7% | 248.08% |
| 2013 | 6,764 | 14.3% | |
| 2012 | 5,917 | 20.7% | |
| 2011 | 4,901 | 28.0% | |
| 2010 | 3,830 | 33.9% | |
| 2009 | 2,859 | 33.7% | 626.23% |
The above table showcases that a modern-generation CPU is, on average, 189.92% faster than that same 5-year-old processor from 2019. The difference is further exaggerated at the 10-year mark with almost 2.5 times performance or an increase of 248.08%. Looking further back to 15 years, the difference is suddenly much more drastic, with 626.23% of the processing power.
In short, a next-gen processor, RAM, or storage can be multiple times faster than outdated equipment, yet it is still common practice to advertise “X CPU Cores” and “Y GB of RAM.” Many hosting providers compare one brand of apples to another, whereas it’s more like comparing an apple to a single grape.
When hosting providers combine outdated equipment with overprovisioning, server performance suffers. We’ve seen cases where our 3 CPU Core, 4 GB RAM VPS outperformed multiple competitor 8 CPU Core, 32 GB RAM servers! Worse still, the price between those plans was virtually identical, but the competitor offers weren’t fully or even semi-managed. They were entirely DIY and sold at a premium on spec numbers from old oversold equipment alone!
How do you find a good Enterprise Server Provider?
To avoid these pitfalls, there are a few factors to look out for. In years gone by, we would have suggested that you look at professional and peer reviews as a first port of call. Unfortunately, marketing isn’t immune to underhanded tactics, and many companies manipulate their reviews. While there are many legitimate organic reviews, it’s also standard practice to ask satisfied customers for positive reviews. That part is fair game for virtually any industry and something to expect.
Paying for positive reviews, however, is not! Virtually every “Best VPS” or “Top 10 Hosting” list has exclusively become a pay-to-rank list. Google “best hosting” or “top 10 hosting,” and you’ll quickly find all of them. Even WordPress.org itself now recommends some notoriously bad hosting providers under its “best providers” list in return for a loftier-than-average affiliate fee. This is an unfortunate state of affairs for the hosting and many other industries, where customers ultimately suffer the most.
Certain providers have even built a reputation for bullying customers with legal threats for negative reviews. Worse still, these very same providers control many of the most prominent hosting Facebook groups. They remove any negative comments and reviews while promoting their brands.
So what can you do?
Despite what we mentioned, do not neglect user reviews. To get the best idea, you want to sort reviews by most recent. This will let you know if a company that once had a strong reputation has gone downhill. Look at multiple negative reviews to determine if the reviewer is simply being petty and unrealistic or if there is a pattern. You’ll often see a lot of recent 1-star reviews all complaining about a common topic, such as poor customer support, buried underneath a lot of “encouraged” newer 5-star reviews with little text. Pay special attention to patterns and reviews with text that goes beyond “good”, “bad” or “best hosting ever!” You can also ignore 1-star and 5-star reviews and look at the average number of 2, 3, and 4-star reviews to eliminate the bias.
Additionally, try to find any reference to benchmarks or a hosting provider that is open about their servers and service benefits. Some key features to keep an eye out for when looking for an enterprise-grade server include:
- Ensure that you’re getting dedicated resources and CPU cores, which are clearly outlined on the hosting provider’s website.
- Find out if they’re using the latest generation enterprise-grade hardware or pennies on the dollar outdated OR commercial-grade hardware.
- A no overselling policy is necessary for any business, especially if you’re already promised dedicated resources.
- There should be no throttling or unnecessary limits, referred to as arbitrary limitations. Make sure to look for this in reviews and T&Cs.
- Transparent pricing, with no additional costs, hidden fees, or jacked-up prices upon renewal. Many companies lock you in for 3+ years on a super-discounted rate, increase their regular pricing several fold, and then hit you with a 6-7x the price hike on another upfront 3+ year renewal payment. This is not just an example but an actual real-life case.
- Don’t pay too much attention to the number of data centers or “loyal customers.” These can often be pointless vanity metrics. A good CDN makes multiple data centers irrelevant when it comes to speed and latency
Ready to migrate to the Best Enterprise Server?
Now you have a comprehensive understanding of enterprise servers and the strategic importance of selecting the right web hosting service for your businesses. If you’re looking for the very best Linux VPS hosting or dedicated enterprise server hosting, look no further than RoseHosting. We tick all of the aforementioned boxes and then some, and our customer support can be with you at a moment’s notice, ready to answer any difficult questions you may have.