In the previous article, you had read about Shared Web Hosting, and how it is used by several businesses as a means of getting their website onto the Internet. The advantages of Shared Web Hosting were cheap, effective and hassle free.

However, it was also mentioned that there were limits to the strain that could be placed on the Server resources, since each Server was, in reality, doing the work of Several Servers at the same time. Since most businesses do not need more than what Shared Web Hosting can provide, this works find most of the time.

But what if your business has expanded to reach a state when your website has more traffic that a Shared Web Hosting plan can offer? What if you’re a news site that people visit every day from all around the world? Or if you have a Social Networking site that thousands of people log onto everyday? Websites like Amazon.com, an online shopping system, have unimaginably large amounts of Traffic.

In such situations, Shared Hosting is no longer an option. You can no longer afford to share Server resources with other websites, and you need a complete Server all to yourself. This arrangement is achieved with the Help of Dedicated Web Hosting

What is Dedicated Web Hosting?

Dedicated Web Hosting, as the term implies, is when you agree with your provider, to rent or lease an Entire Server for your Website, not to share with anyone. In addition to giving you more resources, it also allows you to be more flexible in how the Server is managed.

Since Dedicated Servers cannot afford to be down at any time, they are usually housed in Data Centers. Data Centers are establishments that have the infrastructure to house and maintain highly mission critical and expensive computer systems. They usually have multiple sources of power (redundancy), a controlled environment (temperature, humidity etc), multiple data connections, and high security.

Bandwidth Costs

When you lease a Server, you are additionally charged for the amount of data that is transferred to and from the Server. Bandwidth is usually measured by one of the three following systems:

1. 95^th Method: This method, takes 5 minute samples, and averages the bandwidth usage over that 5 minute period. At the time of billing, it ranks all the 5 minute averages in descending order, and flatly discards the top 5%. The 95^th Percent sample, is the bandwidth average that you are billed for. This method has the advantage, of allowing spikes in network traffic.
2. Total Transfer out Method: In this method, you are charged as per the actual amount of data transferred either in, out, or both in and out of your Server.
3. Unmetered Method: In this method, there is a flat cap on the Bandwidth you can utilize. Anything more than that will not be allowed. You are charged a flat fee, and there is not danger of paying for extra Bandwidth Utilized.

Management of Dedicated Servers

Unfortunately, there is no clearly defined terminology that is prevalent among providers to describe the management of the Dedicated Server. What one provider terms fully managed need not be what another terms as the same.

Nonetheless, management of Dedicated servers falls into three grades

1. Fully Managed: In this model, the customer does not have to bother about the technical aspects of the Server at all. The provider takes care of the Operating System (OS), Patches, Software, Security, rebooting the system, backups, hardware maintenance, and System upgrades.
2. Managed: This is a middle path, where the provider monitors the system, and updates
   it when necessary. The customer has the ability to perform specific tasks on the Server
3. Self Managed: In this, the customer does most of the work in maintaining the server.
4. Unmanaged: In this model, there is no involvement from the providers side at all.

You need to choose the type of management that suits you best. If you need a lot of flexibility, have very specific needs, and have the IT experience to do this sort of work, then you’re better off managing your own Server. But if you just need the dedicated resources, and don’t care about specific requirements, then you can have the provider manage the Server for you.

In the previous article, you saw what a Web Server was, and understood the fundamental structure that makes up the Internet Architecture. In today’s article, we are going to discuss Shared Web Hosting. It is a technique that is very commonly used as a relatively inexpensive way for Business to host their websites, and yet have fairly decent qualities of Key Parameters.

Key Parameters consist of:

1. Uptime
2. Support
3. Number of Services, and
4. Bandwidth

What is Shared Hosting

Ever since the power of computers increased dramatically, it has become obvious that sometimes, the work that a computer doesn’t make full use of it’s capability. An example would be the latest laptop with 4GB RAM, and what not, being used for typing word documents.

Similarly, with Web Servers, most Web Sites do not handle the sort of Traffic that Google, or CNN’s Web Site gets. Consequently, even though a normal business Web Site requires reasonably high levels of Key Parameters, it is rather a waste to use a full dedicated, and costly Server for it.

Technology has enabled us to design a computer system in such a way, that it can handle multiple tasks simultaneously. An example, would be running Windows Media player, and playing Solitaire at the same time on your computer. You may not realize it, but (Unless your computer has two processors) the CPU, in order to handle the programs, is actually switching very fast between Media Player, and your game. The switching is so fast however, that you think that both programs are running simultaneously. In fact, most computers have dozens of programs that are running simultaneously, and each program thinks that it’s the only program that is running.

If that is not enough to make your head spin, here is what Powerful Servers can do. A single Server can be spilt in such way, that we can make it look as if multiple computers themselves are running! In reality, it’s the same computer, but using it’s vast resources in such way, that it can perform the
jobs of several computers at the same time. This is called partitioning a Server. This means, that for one Server, we have several effective Servers.

However, in Shared Hosting, the Servers are still not truly virtual. They do not have the appearance of each having their own hard disks, and being able to reboot independently of other Servers. That nifty piece of work belongs to the realm of Virtual Private Servers.

In Shared Hosting, what happens is, that each website, runs in it’s own
Partition, or space. The main Server is powerful enough to keep up that appearance. As mentioned earlier, it won’t be sufficient for very high Traffic Sites, but it gets the job done quite satisfactorily for most businesses.

Since multiple websites are sitting on one Server, it is the Provider’s responsibility to administer the overall system. Also, most providers allow their users to customize certain features of their private server. These administration activities, are done with the help of control panel software such as cPanel, DirectAdmin, Plesk etc.

This sort of hosting is very convenient for most businesses, because they don’t have the hassle of maintaining the Server like installing updates, taking Backups,installing Server Software, and the like.

There are essentially two types of Shared Hosting. Name Based, and IP based. Name Based, is where the main Server has the IP address, and each browser that connects to it, must also send which host it wants to connect to, since there are several hosts running on the same server. In IP based hosting, each host has it’s own IP address. The precise differences between the various types of shared hosting, is beyond the scope of this article.

So that is essentially, the basics of Shared Web Hosting. Being the most commonly used Hosting Service, there are a huge number of parties who supply this sort of Service, and you must find one that suits your needs. If this type of hosting does not fit your business needs, read our guide on dedicated web hosting .

In the previous article, we had read about free Web Hosting and how it was suitable for personal needs and not for business needs. In the following articles, we will read about another type of Web Hosting, which, is more suited for the field of Business.

But first, we need to understand a basic concept with which we will be working – The Web Server

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In the last article, you saw the way Servers work, and how a web page is delivered to your browser. Today’s article builds on this background, and tries to show one way by which this process is achieved.

The Important things to worry about when you’re deciding on what sort of hosting plan to use are listed below. Keep in mind that different businesses require different levels of the qualities listed below. Higher levels mean that the cost is consequently more. Let us call these Key Parameters. (more…)

This is a series of articles, that explain in demystified terms, what web hosting is all about. The idea is not to make you a professional in the field – that would require specialized training, and would take many years – but to make you conversant with the concepts in the field, so that you can ask the right questions that really matter. (more…)

Virtual Private Servers (VPS) became more popular and more people decided to use VPS instead of more expensive dedicated servers. At cheap VPS web site you can find some nice offers for cheap VPS hosting. Some details about those offers are provided. If you know some new good offers or promotional codes you might visit VPS deal and inform them and they will add those information to their site.

Technorati Tags: cheap vps , vps deal

Many people recognize Linux Web Hosting as the best type of web hosting solution around, because of the added advantages of this web hosting solutions, which provide reliability, security, functionality, and affordability all in the one package.

Linux Servers Advantages Linux servers have been known to run for long periods of time without technical difficulties or down time being experienced, which is a considerable achievement since many Microsoft servers need to refresh and reboot their operating systems at regular intervals. (more…)