The keys to successfully hosting media on dedicated servers
Streaming media has rapidly become a ubiquitous part of our personal and professional lives, with virtually everyone accessing the most popular streaming services – such as Netflix, SoundCloud, Spotify and BBC iPlayer – through their mobile and laptop devices for up to 15 hours per week [1]. At the time of writing, the video streaming market is expected to be worth more than $125 million by 2025. Even better, services like Plex have made it possible for anyone to host files and media in a secure, isolated storage space with integrated content management systems, where they are then solely accessible to a select number of end users, regardless of their level of technical knowledge.
These can then be integrated with the most popular website builders, such as Drupal, WordPress, and Squarespace, when required, freeing you of the need to host media on your web servers. The possibilities for private users, growing companies and global organisations looking to enhance their online presence are therefore huge, but regardless of the nature of your content delivery project, the right hardware – more specifically, the right server – is essential.
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A robust network, enabling fast, globally consistent performance |
The bandwidth required for successful streaming projects – included with every server | The highest standard of protection for your files and media |
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You can deploy all the models from any of our bare metal ranges at any of our 30 datacentres around the world, ensuring your files and media can be hosted as close as possible to your end users, minimising latency. This global high availability is extended further by our network of points-of-presence (PoPs), all of which can be securely connected with the OVHcloud vRack’s secure, private network. This is supported by a wide range of servers that feature the latest CPUs and GPUs – ideal for transcoding your media – for which you will enjoy root access. This means that optimising speed, performance and response-time is simple and stress-free. |
All OVHcloud dedicated servers come with a minimum public bandwidth of 500 Mbit/s as standard: the ideal launch pad for consistent results across all regions in which your end users are based. This includes a burst feature, to accommodate occasional traffic spikes, and the option of boosting your bandwidth and making it guaranteed in a single click, via the OVHcloud Control Panel. Furthermore, incoming and outgoing traffic is unmetered (with the exception of the Asia-Pacific region), making it easier than ever to keep control of your costs. |
Whether it’s for your business’ critical files, or your family’s treasured media, OVHcloud treats your data’s security with the highest consideration, from the initial migrations to the long-term storage. Every physical and virtual solution we deploy in our datacentres is fully compliant with all relevant data protection regulations, such as the GDPR in Europe. Furthermore, all our server ranges are protected by our best-in-class security features (including our industry-leading anti-DDoS protection), to ensure your servers stay completely secure in the event of an attack, and uptime remains unaffected. |
Why consider a dedicated server for your next hosting project when cloud solutions are available?
It’s true that cloud services like a virtual private server or hosted private cloud are flexible, scalable and affordable if you simply wish to music or video files in a virtual server, but if you’re looking to set up a personal streaming service or content delivery system for your website, built on a platform like Plex, raw power and fully dedicated server resources become more and more important. As with any resource-intensive project, the power and performance of a physical server remains the best overall solution in such cases.
Our recommendation
Advance-2 Dedicated Server
Server powered by an Intel Xeon E 2388G processor (8c/16t @3.2GHz/4.6GHz)
Scale-1 Dedicated Servers
Server based on an AMD Epyc 7402 processor (24 c/48 t @2,8 GHz /3,35 GHz)
Tip 1: Automate the management of your website traffic
Depending on where your files and media are hosted and your end users are based, the intelligent routing of your traffic is vital. The OVHcloud Load Balancer takes all the stress out of this process, automatically redeploying your available resources to wherever they will be most effective, delivering optimal response times and high fault tolerance – both essential parts of any world-class streaming service. This way, you can maximise performance and speed, avoid any unnecessary downtime, and accommodate any potential traffic spikes.
Tip 2: Consider a dedicated storage server for your files
Whenever organisations experience leaks of their critical files (recent cases of blockbuster films leaking online prior to their official release, for example), the most likely cause is that someone has gained unauthorised access to the servers they are hosted in via the internet. However, this risk can be largely mitigated by the deployment of a dedicated storage server from OVHcloud, equipped with either SATA, NVME or SSD disks. This way, your files are stored on a fully isolated server, which is then connected to your main host server (or servers) via the OVHcloud vRack, which ensures your video and audio files will be otherwise inaccessible. And as an added advantage, this means that the raw power of your server can be 100% dedicated to your streaming platforms and applications.
Tip 3: Be creative when it comes to managing traffic peaks
It’s quite possible that you’ll occasionally experience bursts of high traffic that you’ll need to accommodate if your streams are to avoid any drops in performance. As mentioned above, all OVHcloud dedicated servers come with a bandwidth burst for this reason, but if you’re expecting a major spike in traffic for any reason (a remote training session, a conference, or the launch of a new series, for example), the OVHcloud Control Panel makes it easy to deploy an additional physical or cloud server during the expected spikes, then remove them afterwards, so you only pay for the resources you need, when you need them. And of course, the vRack and Load Balancer ensure that all additional servers will deliver the best possible level of performance.
You can even adopt a hybrid cloud approach, and connect Public Cloud instances to your servers to accommodate the traffic spikes and give yourself an extra level of agility and scalability. These virtual servers can then be removed with a single click when they are no longer needed.