The keys to successfully hosting media on dedicated servers

Streaming has become an integral part of our lives, both in our personal and professional spheres. People spend an average of 15 hours per week accessing popular streaming sites – such as Netflix, SoundCloud, Spotify, and BBC iPlayer – on their various devices. At the time of writing, the video streaming market is expected to be worth more than $125 million by 2025. Thanks to services like Plex, users can now host multimedia in a secure, isolated storage space. These platforms have integrated content management systems, restricting access to select users, regardless of their technical knowledge.

These can then be integrated with popular website builders, such as Drupal, WordPress, and Squarespace, when required, freeing you of the need to host media on your web servers. This flexibility helps private users, growing businesses, and global organisations boost their online presence. No matter what type of content delivery project you have, ensuring you have the right hardware, especially a suitable server, is absolutely necessary. Whether you prefer a Linux, a Windows, or a cloud server, having the right setup is crucial.

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 data storage

You can deploy any model from our bare metal ranges at any of our 43 global datacentres, ensuring your portfolio is hosted close to your end users, minimising latency and enhancing performance.

This global high availability is further enhanced by our network of points-of-presence (PoPs), all of which can be securely connected with the OVHcloud vRack’s private network.
Our wide range of servers feature the latest CPUs and GPUs, ideal for transcoding your files. With root access, you have full control to optimise performance.

All OVHcloud dedicated servers offer a baseline public bandwidth of 500 Mbps, the ideal launch pad for consistent results across all regions in which your end users are based.
This bandwidth is ideal for effectively managing traffic and maintaining top-notch performance.
This includes a burst feature for handling traffic spikes and one-click bandwidth boosting and reliability via the OVHcloud Control Panel.

Additionally, incoming and outgoing traffic is unmetered (except in the Asia-Pacific region), making it easier than ever to keep control of your costs.

The highest standard of protection for your media.
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.

Our hosting services, both physical and virtual, fully comply with data protection regulations, including the GDPR in Europe.

Our dedicated servers are protected by best-in-class security features, including industry-leading anti-DDoS protection. This ensures your machines remain safe during an attack, maintaining uptime and performance.

What is media hosting? And do i need it?

Media hosting refers to the service of storing and delivering digital content, such as video, audio, and images online. It enables businesses and individuals to reach a wider audience and share their content effectively. A reliable media hosting solution is necessary for excellent performance and quality, especially with heavy traffic or large files.

Media hosting allows users to upload videos, audio, and images, which can then be streamed or downloaded by others. Media-focused platforms value high-quality hosting for faster delivery and high-quality playback, even during peak traffic times.

The 4 types of hosting

There are four primary types of hosting – shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, and cloud hosting. Shared hosting is the most economical option, allowing multiple websites to resources. VPS hosting offers more control and resources by partitioning a server into virtual servers. Cloud hosting uses several servers to ensure high availability and scalability. Each type has its benefits, depending on your storage and bandwidth needs, or control over the hosting environment.

Examples of media hosting

They offer solutions that are robust enough to handle heavy traffic, and include features such as streaming, live broadcasting, and top playback quality.  Plex and similar companies provide solutions for creating private hosting setups. These platforms display the range of options available for various needs, from personal libraries to large-scale distribution.These examples highlight the diverse needs that media hosting can meet, from personal use to professional-grade solutions requiring robust, reliable hosting infrastructure.

When it comes to hosting, dedicated servers have the edge over cloud solutions because of their superior performance. They give you exclusive access to resources, for faster and reliable content delivery. This is particularly important for streaming video and audio, which requires uninterrupted playback. With this server type, you get an environment with extra security, allowing you to customise your setups to match your specific needs. They also offer an extra level of security compared to shared cloud resources, minimising the chances of data breaches and ensuring reliable performance. This makes them the ideal choice for high-traffic media sites.

What is a media server used for?

A media server stores, manages, and delivers multimedia such as videos, music, podcasts, and image galleries. Streaming services need them to ensure users can easily access and enjoy uninterrupted, high-quality media. They offer a range of functions, such as live streaming, on-demand video, and audio playback. Media servers can handle large volumes of data and simultaneous streams, ensuring a smooth user experience. They serve a wide range of purposes. Businesses use them to host promotional content, educational institutions to deliver online courses, and entertainment platforms to stream movies and music to users all over the world.

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. With the OVHcloud Load Balancer, you can relax as it effortlessly redistributes your resources for maximum efficiency, ensuring fast response times and strong fault tolerance - crucial for a top-notch streaming service. This way, you can maximise performance and speed, avoid unnecessary downtime, and effortlessly handle any unexpected surges in traffic.

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. As an added advantage, this means that the raw power of your server can be 100% allocated 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 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 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 machines 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.

Reliable and secure media hosting is essential for streaming video and audio, offering exclusive resource access, customisation, and robust security. You can leverage OVHcloud services to scale globally. By integrating automation and hybrid cloud solutions, you can efficiently manage traffic peaks and deliver high-quality content to your audience.