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Different types of web hosting explained!
1.
2. TABLE OF CONTENT
Different Types of Web Hosting.
There’s different Types of Web Hosting.
Shared Hosting.
VPS Hosting.
Dedicated Hosting.
Cloud Hosting.
Conclusion
3. DIFFERENT TYPES OF WEB HOSTING
Shared, VPS, Dedicated and Cloud
hosting explained
All websites and blogs on the Internet
start with hosting. A Host is a type of
computer on which webpages are
stored for retrieval.
A lot of people get confused about the
different types of web hosting that we
have out there. In this article I’ll clear
up the differences between the most
common hosting types: Shared, VPS,
Dedicated and Cloud, let’s get started.
4. BUT, WHAT IS WEB HOSTING?
First, let’s clear up what hosting is in the first place. When you view a website in a
browser, you are actually receiving code written in a bunch of different coding
languages Hosted or stored on a Web Server.
Your browser converts this code into something we can actually understand:
images, buttons, text columns, and so on.
But, what is a Web Server? A Web Server is essentially a computer that holds a
bunch of files and is capable of performing operations on them. It has a CPU, it
has memory, it has a hard drive, and other components. It even has an operating
system, usually a Linux-based one.
So where does hosting come in, what’s the difference between a host and a
server? Your host is the company that owns the server your content is on. In
addition to giving you the hardware for your website a host usually offers a bunch
of other services like server management, support, malware scanning, and
backups and so on.
“In simple words: a hosting provider is a company that sells server space and
related services.”
5. THERE’S DIFFERENT TYPES OF WEB
HOSTING
There are three basic ways to differentiate between
hosting packages. One way is to look at the
technology used for the server.
This is what gives us our four categories: Shared,
VPS, Dedicated and Cloud.
The second way is to look at the level of
management offered. Most hosts offer server
management, but you can buy servers where you
need to do all of this work. A managed server means
less work for you but also less flexibility, an
unmanaged server means more work but more
flexibility. There are packages that offer some
management services so unmanaged/managed is
only the two extremes, there is a spectrum of
services in between.
The third way is to look at the additional services on
offer. Some additional services would be: backups,
level of support, malware scanning and cleaning, SSL
certificates, free CDN bandwidth, platform specific
services (e.g. WordPress), staging site creation, etc.
In this article we’re focusing on the first way, looking
at the technology used on the server. Let’s explore
them each in detail.
6. SHARED HOSTING – CHEAPEST, BEST FOR BEGINNERS
Shared hosting is the budget option. It is extremely cheap, but also not very good – let me explain how it works.
Remember how a server is a computer with resources like hard drive space, CPU speed and RAM? In a shared hosting
environment the host puts a large number of users on a single server. By large number I mean that it can be over 1,000 users.
Each user may have a number of sites so that one single server houses somewhere around 3,000 sites.
The problem is that these websites all share the server’s resources. If one website has some faulty code or simply gets a lot of
visitors it could use 75% of a server’s memory for example, which means that the other 2,999 sites are left with 25% of the
total RAM.
Needless to say, this leads to websites going down or loading slowly for people who have nothing to do with the site the issue
originated at. Even worse: these issues are completely unpredictable from the point of view of those 2,999 sites.
This is called the “bad neighbor” effect and is one of the main reasons shared hosting is not the best idea.
To be fair, many hosts try and make things better by detecting faulty sites – or sites that experience a high level of traffic – and
either working with the owners, or disabling the site temporarily. This rarely works in the long run. It’s not the hosts’ fault, it’s
simply a Sisyphean struggle.
In addition: do the math. If each customer is paying $5 per month, is it really worth spending hours of support on a single
customer? Not really.
So is shared hosting ever a good idea? Yes! It can be great for housing development sites, test sites or websites where uptime
is not a huge bother. You could have a personal diary or a website created for your family. It may go down a few times a
month, but that shouldn’t be a problem.
Shared hosting is also a great option if you are on a very tight budget. Shared hosting allows businesses to create a web
presence in countries where it would otherwise be impossible. As such shared hosting is an extremely important tool for
equality on the web.
7.
8. VPS HOSTING – MORE POWERFUL THAN SHARED HOSTING
VPS stands for Virtual Private Server and is probably the most popular service to upgrade to and it can be the most well-balanced one
as well.
A VPS server is still a shared environment, but the way it is shared is very different.
First of all, a VPS server is usually limited to 10-20. This decreases stress in itself, but the real improvement comes in the form of the
hypervisor – which is the coolest name for something ever.
A VPS server is literally split into as many parts as there are users. If there are 10 users, 10GB of RAM and 200GB of hard drive space on
the server, each user will be able expend 1GB of RAM and 20GB of space. Once you hit the RAM limit your site may go down, but the
others will remain stable. The hypervisor is the one responsible for managing the virtual machines that create this separation within the
server.
This simple addition removes almost all of the bad neighbor effect. Extremely rarely there can be some issues which affect multiple
users by affecting the hypervisor itself, but this isn’t something you need to worry about.
Another big benefit of VPS servers is that they are highly configurable, providing a lot more flexibility. On shared hosts you can’t really
modify your environment because you’d be changing everyone else’s as well. Since your account is contained within a virtual machine
you can make a lot more changes without affecting others. This is something developers will be happy about.
Lastly, VPS is scalable. Since you are running a virtual machine which takes some percentage of the resources available to the server as
a whole, the amount of resources you are allowed to use can be increased in seconds. This is a great comfort to business owners who
expect their sites to grow and flourish.
So, who is VPS for? I would actually recommend VPS services to anybody who has around $20/month to spend. VPS can get a lot
more expensive, but even the lowest tier will be a lot better than any shared hosting solution.
VPS packages can come as low as $10/month but most of them would clock in at around $25 with the average service being $50 a
month. As you scale up you can get into the $120 – $150 range but don’t worry too much, if you actually need that much RAM and
bandwidth you are probably making enough money to easily cover the cost.
A little addition here at the end: A high end VPS can be a lot cheaper than a low end dedicated server and also a lot more powerful.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that dedicated is a more advanced option just because you are the only person on a server. Look at the
resources available to you instead, that’s what really matters.
9.
10. DEDICATED HOSTING– IF YOUR SITE EXCEEDS 100K VISITS/MONTH
This is the hosting service that negates all bad neighbor issues because you are all alone on a server. This provides a host of benefits, but also
comes with quite a few downsides.
Since you get a computer all on your own, many companies allow you to customize it extensively. You may be able to choose the amount and
type of memory, the OS to install, and other hardware elements that make up a computer. This gives you a lot of flexibility which may be
needed for some specialized software.
The downside here is that you actually need to know quite a bit about computers and server technology. While there are managed dedicated
hosting solutions you’ll still need to do a lot more on your own.
On the extreme side of things, you could get a completely unmanaged service where you would even need to install the OS yourself, let alone
all the tools needed to run a web server, security scanning, malware removal and so on. I wouldn’t actually call this a downside, but it’s
something you need to be aware of when shopping for a server. If you want to go dedicated you’ll need a server admin, or sufficient
knowledge to do it yourself.
With great flexibility comes great control. You can potentially run a lot more applications in a more streamlined fashion. You can run a bunch of
tools that serve only one purpose: making your website faster.
Being alone on one server comes with another downside: hardware failure. With a cloud VPS if RAM fails in the system, other memory modules
simply take over. With VPS if something fails, another memory module might take over, or the module will be replaced automatically pretty
quickly. With dedicated servers you might need to wait a lot more, especially if all the server monitoring is up to you.
When would someone need dedicated hosting? In today’s World with cloud VPS catching on I would maybe even discount large sites needing
dedicated hosting. Dedicated can take a lot more hits than traditional VPS, but nowhere near anything a cloud based system could scale to.
The only two times I would say you definitely need a dedicated server is if you have highly specialized needs in terms of hardware, or you want
a lot more control over your data’s privacy than anywhere else. A dedicated server compartmentalizes you which can be a bad thing, but from a
security point of view it’s great.
11.
12. CLOUD HOSTING
Cloud hosting is essentially the same as VPS hosting. Some companies don’t
even call their service VPS anymore, the say Cloud or Cloud VPS. Let’s look at
what cloud computing is first, and get back to what this has to do with
hosting.
Until now we’ve been talking about computing that is similar to buying unit
based products. If I buy a one-use battery and put it in video camera I can use
it for a set amount of time until the battery runs out.
Cloud based computing is similar to how utilities work. If I plug my video
camera into the mains I can use it as much as I need and it will take as much
power as it requires at the moment. If it is on standby it will use very little
power, when it is recording it will use a lot more but the electric system can
handle the changes in power requirements.
Cloud based hosting allows you to use the resources of multiple servers in a
network. This makes it even more scalable, in addition to providing a host of
additional benefits, mainly based around security.
A traditional VPS can be scaled, but only to a certain point: the maximum
capacity of the hardware it is on. A cloud based system can be scaled a lot
further.
Cloud based systems also have a much higher chance of protecting you
against DDoS attacks. DDoS attacks are not a security risk, their only purpose
is to overwhelm your website with requests, causing the server to crash.
Currently the best method of protecting against such an attack is to block as
many requests as possible and spread the rest within a large network. With
cloud systems the network is right there, if it is large enough it could
withstand an attack much better than any single-server system
13. CONCLUSION
Choosing a hosting package can be pretty difficult.
The first step is understanding the type of hosting you
need: Shared, VPS, Dedicated or Cloud. Hopefully this
article has given you the background to figure that
out.
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