Last updated on July 12th, 2023 at 07:46 am
Learn How to choose the best server location.
Servers are the residences where digital content lives. They are the homes for our websites, applications, databases, and every good thing that is found online.
Servers live in Datacenters, and datacenters are in different locations. The location matters because it determines other factors that affect the servers. If you are looking for a virtual private server, a dedicated server, or colocation services.
Here are four things you should consider
1. Cost
The cost of doing business varies from one part of the world to another, making the cost of running servers vary from place to place. This is majorly based on factors such as taxes, cost of power, and cost of cooling, which is determined by the local climate.
Servers in European and American countries are cheaper, compared to servers in Africa. This cost is also influenced by the scale of operations for the hosting companies. Choose a location where costs are within your budget
2. Latency
Latency is the time it takes for data to travel from the server to your clients. This is a function of geographical distances and internet connections.
Although the distances do not have much impact, they are critical in the case where you want your website to load very faster for your users, and also when hosting applications that require very low latency, such as online games.
3. Legal Requirements
Different countries of the world have laws and regulations that affect data storage and processing.
The US has Hipaa while the EU has GDPR, and Kenya has its own law on data protection and privacy. Some data require to be stored within certain geographical locations, and if you are dealing with such, you need to have servers in such location.
There you have it, three things to help with how to choose the best server location.