How can I add more storage space to my server?

There are several options available for someone who wishes to add storage to their server. Which one would be best for your server depends on your requirements, the current specification of your server, and the model of your dedicated server.

If you are looking to upgrade the storage space of your server as you wish to use this additional space for backups, please look at our “What back-up options do you offer?” section within the FAQ, as this will provide you with more details tailored to this scenario.

If you want to upgrade the storage of your server for other reasons, please see below for some examples of options you that we would suggest, dependent on your current server’s setup. Please also feel free to get in touch through a ticket and we will be happy to discuss what options are available to you.

One option would be to add additional drives of the required size to your server, in one or more of any available drive bays. This is the simplest and often the cheapest solution; however, your server must have available drive bays for this to be possible, the server and any RAID controller present must be compatible with the increased storage size and this also depends on how many drives / how much storage you wish to add.

A second option, which is often used when the above is not possible, would be to replace the drives that are currently in your server with larger drives. If this option is possible is dependent on how many drives you require, how much storage you wish to add, and the model of your server. This option is also a relatively cheap; however, replacing the drives of your server with larger drives would mean data loss; so you would need to re-build your server’s configuration and data from back-ups taken on an external device.

If the two options above are not feasible for one reason or another, another option that would be open to you would be to migrate to a new, higher specification server, which would be an upgrade on your current device and have a higher storage capacity.

Another option would be to have space from one of our shared NAS devices assigned to your server as a network drive. The benefit of this solution is that there are less restrictions caused by hardware and it means the data will be stored on a device which is separate to your server, within a geographically different site, protecting it from any hardware, network or power failure linked to your device. However, this option is only available for relatively smaller amounts of storage space, of 2TBs of less, and is currently only an available option within certain data centres within our hosting infrastructure.

If you require a large amount of storage space added to you server, another option would be to have a dedicated NAS device deployed and hosted with us, and attached to you server as an external storage device. This is one of the more expensive options; but benefits include having data on an external device within a different rack to your server, making it less likely to be effected by network, power and hardware failures which affect your main server; and NAS devices are scalable solutions which would allow you to upgrade the storage space the device in future, when required. You can also attach a single NAS storage unit to multiple servers; meaning you can use it as a storage unit for multiple servers.

A more cost effective way to increase storage space compared to a dedicated NAS device, when large amounts of storage is required, is to order an additional dedicated server. The benefit of this method is that you can order as much storage space as you require, your servers can be connected via a private VLAN and your data can be spread across multiple devices.

If you are interested in any of the above solutions, or if you wish to discuss an alternative solution, please feel free to get in touch through a ticket and we will be happy to discuss this with you.