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Friday, June 3, 2011

Shared Hosting, VPS and Dedicated Web Hosting

By Matt Ewing


With the rapid advancement of internet services web hosting has become a much sought after activity as far as online businesses are concerned. A web hosting company provides you the space to 'host' either your personal homepage or your business profile and webpage. Using a web hosting company can prove very beneficial to you, as even your prospective employers might want to take a look at your personal thoughts and other details from your very own web page. Businesses too can be successfully expanded and consolidated over the internet by building great networks through your business website. For all of this to work, one must understand the importance of web hosting.

There are a lot of types of web hosting services like free and paid hosting, shared and clustered web hosting, file and dedicated web hosting, etc. So when you select a web host, you have to consider your needs for it.

Three common kinds of web hosting are as follows:

Shared hosting

Simply put, a solitary server hosting and supporting several web pages is called shared hosting. Newly started businesses which are unable to spend larges sums of money to acquire dedicated servers suit this type perfectly. As a result, other expenses like maintaining a system administrator are done away with.

Various maintenance features are provided by the service provider of the shared hosting. These include security updates, server management, anti-virus backup and server software.

Web hosting can be conducted in two basic ways: based on the IP address and based on the name. In the former case, the host having his unique IP address provides every website that he hosts with their individual SSL certificates, which gives the website owners a lot of security. In case of the latter way, a lot of websites which the provider hosts are assigned just one IP address, which everyone uses.

Using a shared host might come cheap, but it comes without the sense of security that is there in IP based hosting.

The name-based web hosting system has other drawbacks as well. They are not fully compatible with old browsers. So an HTTP/1.0 browser will be unable to send requests which carry the name of the host, unless they are upgraded. Due to the fact that they share a common digital certificate, they even cannot support HTTPS websites. It becomes impossible to access them if the Domain Name System chokes out a website which a name-based web server hosts.

CPU, disc space, and your website's Bandwidth being affected or slowed as other sites are using the same server are the problems of a cost effective shared web hosting system. This system also puts certain system level things out of your control like scripts and the system software being used. But you can be comfortable without such features if your website is relatively small. You might want to gain knowledge about Virtual Private Sector or VPs if such things do bother you and you want some control over the things powering your website.

VPS - Virtual Private Server

Much like a shared server, even a VPS has a single server, but it uses software which divided it into many virtual machines. So though many websites still use the same server, each VPS gets its own RAM allotment, besides bandwidth and disk space, and they can operate independently by using the resources allocated to them.

Because you are granted this much greater freedom as compared to a shared host, you can do various things from running a totally different OS to having your own scripts and software of choice, without affecting the other sites on the server.

The root level access to the main server that you get in a VPS is virtually similar to the freedoms associated with dedicated servers. Only in case of a VPS you can install software of your choice, create accounts etc all at a comparatively lesser price than a dedicated server.

The sense of security of a VPS system is much greater than a shared hosting service because of the internal division of the former. All sites are at risk a shared hosting service if the main server is hacked into. On the other hand, this is not the case in a VPS system.

As far as the division of the server is concerned, it usually occurs evenly with the total equal distribution of resources among the number of websites that are sharing the server. So, if there are 10 websites on a VPS server, everything starting from the disk space to the RAM is divided into 10 parts, with each website getting 10% of the whole.

Dedicated Server Hosting

As mentioned earlier, dedicated hosting is meant for huge concerns who wish to have sufficient control of the website in their hands. In this case, a website gets a single server for its individual capacity, thus giving webmasters total control of the website. Besides the software, all other factors like supervision of power, security, etc. is addresses by the web hosting company.

The perfect solution for your website requirements of large bandwidth, greater resources like disk space, a high quality, customized server is choosing a dedicated host. A host of features for your website like settings, operating system, multi-media necessities, and software can then be chosen. Those who cannot afford to buy their own server but want similar services will find a dedicated hosting service ideal for their needs.

A dedicated server can save your expenses to the tune of 85%, if there is a lot of traffic o your website, but you are restricted by the technical knowledge and money to have your personalized IT staff.

Using a dedicated server also offers 100% assurance and security to you, because you know that you are the only one who is using this server. Apart from security concerns, not having other sites on the server also nullifies issues about downtime problems. Companies that need to have client databases and other important information up on their sites are bound to feel much safer using a managed dedicated host which provides the client with an extra layer of data security.

Though shared web hosts arrive with the heavy burdens of threatening security and accessibility concerns if other sites face heavy traffic at any point, they are nevertheless cheaper. You will have the comfort and knowledge that you are using a thousand time safer server and which cannot be slowed down by traffic of other websites with a slightly costlier dedicated server. Those looking for forward to expand and grow their business will consequently find a dedicated server perfectly suited to their needs.




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