All About Hosting

Web Hosting or Hosting is a service provided by a vendor which offers a physical location for the storage of web pages and files. Think of a Web Hosting Company as a type of landlord, they rent physical space on their servers allowing webpages to be viewed on the Internet.

Different Level of Web Hosting
There are three level of hosting

• Shared Hosting (Virtual Hosting)
  Servers are expensive so hosting service provider shares the sever space to host many sites on the same machine. So the one server servers many web sites. Usually on one server 1,000 web sites can be hosted. This makes web hosting affordable because you pay a portion of the server fee instead of the entire server. Over 95% of websites of the internet are hosted on shared hosting environment.
  
  Shared hosting is an economical, flexible Web solution for both individuals and small- to medium-sized businesses looking to establish an online presence through static, personal and "test" Web sites.
  
• Dedicated Server
  If you planning to host big application on the internet in that case you need a full server for running the application. In this case you are using the Dedicated Sever (server dedicated to your web site only).
  
• Server Co-Location
  In some cases you can buy your own sever and setup the applications according to your requirement and place the your server on some ISP with high speed internet connection. This is called Co-Location hosting.

Hosting uptime refers to the percentage of time the host is accessible via the internet. Many providers state that they aim for at least 99.9% uptime (roughly equivalent to 45 minutes of downtime a month, or less), but there may be server restarts and planned (or unplanned) maintenance in any hosting environment, which may or may not be considered part of the official uptime promise.

Many providers tie uptime and accessibility into their own service level agreement (SLA). SLAs sometimes include refunds or reduced costs if performance goals are not met.

Many large companies who are not internet service providers also need a computer permanently connected to the web so they can send email, files, etc. to other sites. They may also use the computer as a website host so they can provide details of their goods and services to anyone interested. Additionally these people may decide to place online orders.

• Free web hosting service: offered by different companies with limited services, sometimes supported by advertisements, and often limited when compared to paid hosting.
• Shared web hosting service: one's website is placed on the same server as many other sites, ranging from a few to hundreds or thousands. Typically, all domains may share a common pool of server resources, such as RAM and the CPU. The features available with this type of service can be quite extensive. A shared website may be hosted with a reseller.
• Reseller web hosting: allows clients to become web hosts themselves. Resellers could function, for individual domains, under any combination of these listed types of hosting, depending on who they are affiliated with as a provider. Resellers' accounts may vary tremendously in size: they may have their own virtual dedicated server to a collocated server. Many resellers provide a nearly identical service to their provider's shared hosting plan and provide the technical support themselves.
• Virtual Dedicated Server: also known as a Virtual Private Server (VPS), divides server resources into virtual servers, where resources can be allocated in a way that does not directly reflect the underlying hardware. VPS will often be allocated resources based on a one server to many VPSs relationship, however virtualisation may be done for a number of reasons, including the ability to move a VPS container between servers. The users may have root access to their own virtual space. Customers are sometimes responsible for patching and maintaining the server.
• Dedicated hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server and gains full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, the user typically does not own the server. Another type of Dedicated hosting is Self-Managed or Unmanaged. This is usually the least expensive for Dedicated plans. The user has full administrative access to the box, which means the client is responsible for the security and maintenance of his own dedicated box.
• Managed hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server but is not allowed full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, they are allowed to manage their data via FTP or other remote management tools. The user is disallowed full control so that the provider can guarantee quality of service by not allowing the user to modify the server or potentially create configuration problems. The user typically does not own the server. The server is leased to the client.
• Colocation web hosting service: similar to the dedicated web hosting service, but the user owns the colo server; the hosting company provides physical space that the server takes up and takes care of the server. This is the most powerful and expensive type of the web hosting service. In most cases, the colocation provider may provide little to no support directly for their client's machine, providing only the electrical, Internet access, and storage facilities for the server. In most cases for colo, the client would have his own administrator visit the data center on site to do any hardware upgrades or changes.
• Cloud Hosting: is a new type of hosting platform that allows customers powerful, scalable and reliable hosting based on clustered load-balanced servers and utility billing. Removing single-point of failures and allowing customers to pay for only what they use versus what they could use.
• Clustered hosting: having multiple servers hosting the same content for better resource utilization. Clustered Servers are a perfect solution for high-availability dedicated hosting, or creating a scalable web hosting solution. A cluster may separate web serving from database hosting capability.
• Grid hosting: this form of distributed hosting is when a server cluster acts like a grid and is composed of multiple nodes.
• Home server: usually a single machine placed in a private residence can be used to host one or more web sites from a usually consumer-grade broadband connection. These can be purpose-built machines or more commonly old PCs. Some ISPs actively attempt to block home servers by disallowing incoming requests to TCP port 80 of the user's connection and by refusing to provide static IP addresses. A common way to attain a reliable DNS hostname is by creating an account with a dynamic DNS service. A dynamic DNS service will automatically change the IP address that a URL points to when the IP address changes.

Which is better - Linux or Windows?

We are often asked which hosting platform one should choose: Linux or Windows. Below, we've listed the major differences between the two that you should consider in making your decision. In the process, we have also tried to dispel any common misconceptions regarding these platforms. Generally, we recommend to use Linux, unless they need specific features/applications only available on the Windows platform.

Reliability
The general consensus is that Linux is more reliable and our experience also shows this. We have had servers up for over one year without any downtime. Microsoft's Windows 2000 is much more stable and reliable than previous versions, but there are still cases where a server will require a reboot to resolve an issue.


Functionality
This is where these two platforms differ the most. There isn't much that can be achieved using one platform that can't be done on the other one. The main difference are the underlying technologies. For example, if you need a database driven web site, you can choose either PHP/MySQL combination under Linux or ASP/MS SQL combination under Windows�2000.

Security
Out of the box, neither Linux or Windows is very secure for Internet use. So some modification is required to make it secure.

Price
Linux holds an edge due to the fact that the most of the software we use is open source (free) and that it's easier to maintain Linux servers than Windows servers for the same level of reliability and performance. On Linux apache web server is nearly bullet proof and it is very stable and gives high performance.

Hosting Choice
When it comes to Web hosting, Linux has, for some time, been widely considered the best OS for Web servers. It's typically found to be the most reliable, stable and efficient system and, as such, it's commonly used for the demanding environment of Web and mail servers. If you use PHP, Perl or MySQL, Linux is the way forward. If apps are Microsoft-specific, then Windows is what you need. But the fact that over 75 per cent of all sites are hosted on a Unix platform tells you something.

Speed
There is no difference in terms of speed between the two platforms.

File Types
Almost all the file types are supported on Linux web server. Commonly, the following extensions are supported:
.cgi, .html, .htm, .pl, .php, .shtml, .asp (requires additional plug-in), .xml, and others. Basically it means that you can host web sites that use different types of server side scripts including .cgi, .pl, .php, and .asp (with plug-in).

Easy to move to other Hosts
A web site designed to be hosted on a Linux based web server can be hosted on a Windows web server easily, where as the reverse is not always true. This provides flexibility in changing hosts as required.

Scalability
Usually, a web site starts with a few pages of html and grows over a period of time to suit the customers requirements. It is preferable to design a web site keeping this requirements in mind. A web site designed for compatibility with a Linux/Unix based web server meets the scalability requirement easily without making any site wide design changes.

Features you should consider while choosing the Web Hosting Companies:

• Select the Hosting plan having SSL support.

• Your plan should have the support for shell (telnet or SSH) access to your account and the FTP access.

• You should have access to raw logs and stats for figuring, this will help in understanding the statistics of your visitors

• Your plan should have the support for streaming media support

• Select the hosting plan having static IP

• You plan should allow you to create sub-domains

• Control panel should be there for managing the account

• You should select the plan with anonymous FTP support

• Your company should provide the 99.99 percent guaranteed uptime
  

Choosing a Web Hosting Service

When choosing a Web Hosting company there are many things you need to keep in mind. Things like: Do I have FTP access? Do I receive E-mail and how many accounts do I get? How much Disk Space am I allocated? What is my bandwidth limit? What happens if I go over my monthly bandwidth limit? Does my account have a CGI-bin? What types of support does the host offer? What if I need a dedicated Server, can I get one? Are any ads placed on my site? Do I receive and free software with my account? All these questions should be asked before you choose a Web Host.

Free vs. Subscription

There are two types of hosting companies. Hosting companies that will host your site for free, Yahoo's Geocities.com or Lycos' Tripod.com are examples of free hosts, and companies that will host your site if you pay a monthly/yearly fee like. So why doesn't everyone choose the free sites? Free sites are very limiting, and don't allow you to store much on your pages. You will probably not be able to run cgi-scripts. Worse, you may not be able to choose a domain name, and you will probably have annoying banners on your site. By paying for a site, you get flexibility and capabilities beyond what any free site could give you.

Where to start looking.

Now that you are armed with all the right questions, you need a starting point; Google.com is a great place to find thousands, if not millions of hosting companies. If you are a bit scared by those numbers then you may want to ask a friend who has a webpage, where they host. Or you can ask your ISP if they have any recommendations. Or you could ask the company who provides your web design software who they recommend.

Support is the deciding factor.

When making the final decision between one host or another, ALWAYS choose the one that offers the more comprehensive support. The host should offer at least 24/7 phone support. for instance, offers 24/7 phone support as well as 24/7 Live Chat and e-mail. You should now be prepared to go out into the wide world and find a Web Hosting Service that is offering exactly what you want.

Shared Hosting & Dedicated Server

Shared Hosting: This is by far the most common type of hosting that websites use. One server is configured to serve hundreds and maybe thousands of websites and because of the large volume of sites to each machine, this service can be offered at a very low price. The more sites hosted by a single machine will result in less "run time" for each website and so overloaded machines can cause a site to load slowly or fail to deliver a page to every request. However, as long as the hosting provider does not overload the machine and the sites on the machine do not attract too much traffic, this is a good solution for most websites. Cheaper offerings tend to cram more sites onto the same machine and so, again, you get what you pay for. Another drawback to this style of hosting is that if you want to run some special software, you may not be able to install it as you may not have the appropriate access permissions- and if these permissions are given, another sites software errors may cause the whole server to go down bringing your site down with it. In short, for a simple site with low traffic a good shared hosting provider is the best value for money. We recommend 1 and 1 hosting, they have many packages to chose from which will fit the majority of peoples needs.

Dedicated Server: By contrast, this is where an entire machine is rented in the providers premises for you to use as you wish. Technically this is the ideal situation since you have complete control over the machine; you can load whatever software you require, an enormous amount of memory is available, the bandwidth allowance is usually very high or unlimited and other sites cannot affect your sites. Since you have the whole machine at you disposal, the sites that you host can be served very quickly (unless of course you overload the machine yourself!) and you will have "root permission" which means that you can install and configure anything you like on the machine. The two main disadvantages to this style of hosting are cost and you will need a greater degree of technical knowledge to set it up. Normally you are responsible for all aspects within the server so you would have to schedule your own backups, monitor the server's uptime and configure your own DNS and IP addresses. A dedicated server is normally used for either companies that are providing hosting themselves, high traffic/ volume websites or specialised internet services such as gaming, file transfer and secure transactions. If you think that you may need to go down this road we can provide the technical support necessary to manage and maintain the server should you not have the technical expertise in house. We can also provide redundant server hosting (where more than one server is used so that if one machine goes down the website is not affected) which is described in more detail later in the guide. Contact Wight Hat on the Isle of Wight if you would like to discuss your requirements further.

Virtual Server: In a way, this is like a hybrid of the two options above. One physical machine is divided up into seperate independent servers to provide you with a smaller "mini server". This gives many of the advantages of a dedicated server such as root access permission but since a few virtual servers are on one physical machine it costs less. Often this is a good compromise and is becoming increasingly popular. You will still need a greater technical understanding to setup, manage and maintain the virtual server as opposed to shared hosting but the monthly charges can be less than half that of a dedicated server. Again, if you are interested in this solution but require some technical help, we can provide a setup and management service- please contact Wight Hat on the Isle of Wight if you wish to discuss this further.

Kunjungi www.investasi-saham.com untuk investasi saham dan bermain saham. Panduan Lengkap dalam Berinvestasi di Pasar Modal, Bursa Efek Indonesia, Saham, Obligasi, ORI, SUKUK, Reksadana, Derivatif, Investasi Syariah dan Produk Investasi Keuangan lainnya serta Belajar Menjadi Investor/ Trader (Main) Saham.