Upgrading a server

If you rent a dedicated server, you may at some point or another consider upgrading the hardware. You might want to add a RAID hard drive configuration for redundancy, or perhaps you need more RAM or bandwidth. What you’ll quickly find, however, is that dedicated hosts charge hefty fees for add-ons.

For instance, it’s not at all uncommon for a host to charge $20 a month to add an extra hard drive or $10-$15 for RAM, depending on the amount. While these upgrades look cheap up front, over the course of many months, they add up to quite a bit.

Often times the upgrades are so pricey that its cheaper to just rent a higher-end server. Another thing providers let you do is pay a one-time fee for the upgrade, such as $100 for RAM or $200 for RAID. This is cheaper in the long run, but make sure you’ll be using the server long enough to break even on the expense!