Migration from Shared to Dedicated Hosting
Shared hosting is the most ideal option for new websites with low intensity traffic. This type of hosting as the name suggests is refers to a form of hosting where a single physical server is responsible for hosting hundreds or even thousands of websites. Shared hosting is less secure and the fear of downtime is always present.
Websites as such who start experiencing heavy network traffic should migrate to dedicated hosting for high uptime and availability. Dedicated hosting is exactly as it sounds. You buy or lease an entire server, install applications and software of your choice and manage it exactly the way you want without interference or meddling from anybody. Dedicated hosting is a powerful and most advanced form of hosting option that allows your high traffic website to perform at its optimum level despite intense traffic fluctuations.
The process of migration
With growing business operations and subsequently increasing network traffic, there will come a time when organizations have to make a move from shared hosting to either Virtual private server (VPS) hosting or Dedicated hosting. Fortunately, this should not pose much of a problem as the process for both is more or less the same.
Things that demand your attention
• When making a server move there will need to be a ‘change freeze’ period. This means that all website stakeholders and editors will need to be notified that beyond a certain time and date no changes should be made to the live site, either through the content management system (CMS) or FTP. Login details should be changed after this point to prevent accidental changes.
• When moving emails, after the DNS update (covered later (link to section)) there may be some emails that go to the old server and some that go the new server. This period should typically last no longer than 24-48 hours.
• Your choice of website platform (WordPress, Magento etc) might require specific changes to be made as server paths will probably change.
