All About Virtual Private Server (VPS)

What is VPS Hosting?

A virtual private server (VPS) is a single server partitioned into multiple sections that each function as an independent server. It gives you the freedom to configure your server any way you want and costs less than buying your own server. Consider a VPS if you need to:

• Host and manage multiple Web sites on one server
• Get better control over your hosting environment
• Support resellers and multiple levels of access
• Install the applications you need for your Web sites
• Visually manage your server with an automation control panel

When you browse through some of the hosting types that your Web host offers you might stumble upon a listing for VPS hosting.

What is it?

Well, I am sure I will not cover every inch of what a VPS hosting account is, but let me go through the basics so we don’t need a degree to understand what it will and will not give you.
VPS stands for virtual private server. It is sometimes also referred to as a virtual server or a virtual dedicated server. It takes one big server and partitions it off into several smaller servers. Each VPS hosting account can have its own operating system and can be rebooted without effecting the other accounts on the machine.

Now that you know what it is, what is it good for?

These types of hosting accounts are usually used as a stepping stone between your basic shared hosting accounts and dedicated hosting accounts. You get all of the benefits of having your own dedicated machine, but you still have some limitation as to what you can do with it. If shared hosting is a light snack, and dedicated hosting is a three course meal, you can consider VPS hosting a regular sized dinner.

Now where with a dedicated machine, your RAM and CPU usage would be a little less limited, with VPS hosting you are more in the boat with shared hosting. You will be limited by your Web host in disk space, bandwidth, CPU and RAM usage. Now where a VPS is helpful is when you need the benefits of dedicated hosting such as certain types of script setups and account access.

So as I said before, this is a much needed plan in between your shared and dedicated hosting. It allows you a little more flexibility than a shared hosting account, but limits you more than a dedicated account would.

A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a hosting environment that combines the benefits of both shared hosting and dedicated hosting. It does this by creating a virtual server that runs inside a hardware server via a specially designed partition.

Each Virtual Private Server partition runs its own operating system in a secure and private environment and cannot be accessed or interrupted by its neighbours.

This system gives you the same level of root access as a dedicated server whilst sharing the cost of the hardware. With a VPS you are virtually running your own server but at a fraction of the cost.

The flexibility of a dedicated server

Users share system resources, such as the CPU and memory, but unlike shared hosting (a virtual host on a shared hardware server ) the file system is fully partitioned. This means you get a guaranteed share of the server's resources, while full root access allows you to completely customise the virtual server, adding or changing modules and installing your own software.

Highly cost effective

Because a single physical server is shared between several users, the cost of a virtual server is small when compared to the price of a dedicated server. But the level of flexibility is similar (although you'll still need a dedicated server for really demanding applications or high-traffic sites).

How much technical knowledge do I need?

All our VPS options include the Plesk control panel, which makes it easier to administer your websites and services.

However, because a VPS gives you root-level access, allowing you to install whatever software you like, you will need some technical knowledge and understanding of how servers work to run a VPS effectively.

The inclusion of the very latest range of software and control panels for Windows and Linux is accompanied by price reductions across the range so we're increasing performance, features and value at exactly the same time.

What is a VPS?

VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. Sometimes it is also referred as Virtual Dedicated Server.

When you take a server and part it into smaller independent servers where each of these smaller server runs on its own operating system and private environment but shares the same hardware – that’s what we called as VPS. A VPS is a hosting environment that combines both benefits of shared and dedicated hosting. It looks, feels, and acts like a dedicated server; but it cost a fraction of the cost of a dedicated hosting package.

VPS is most suitable for website owners that need an isolated hosting environment (for safety and performance purpose) and special hostingfeatures (such as custom firewalls, SSH access, dedicated IP addresses).

Benefits of VPS

The best things about VPS are its dedicated-server-alike features and affordable pricing.

Isolation Each private server has its unique file system and gets a guaranteed fraction of the server’s disk space, CPU power, bandwidth, and memory. Hence, a website hosted on a VPS runs on an isolated environment where its performance will not be affected by other websites. Also, a VPS does not share web application and services with other websites thus it eliminates the risk of downtime or hacks due to other’s mistakes.

Customization VPS users get full root access. This allows server customization – you get to install your own software/application and manage your server as you would on a dedicated server.

Affordable VPS is cheap. You’ll get features like dedicated servers but cost a lot more cheaper (in most of the case, 50% less) than a dedicated hosting plan. You can compare the pricing different between a dedicated server and VPS hosting below.

What to look for when choosing a VPS?

Besides pricing, there are a few other important points that you should look at when it comes to VPS shopping. Choosing a VPS provider that’s easy to communicate is very important. A web host who’s willing to listen and accommodate your specific needs is very important.

Also, getting a flexible VPS provider that allows hardware customization is very important. Avoid web hosts who offer only ’standard’ plans as this will creates troubles in your future upgrades. Each website has different needs, maybe you need lower CPU speeds, or larger storage, or less bandwidth, or more RAM – you’ll never know what kind of upgrades you need in the future. Do you want to upgrade your entire hosting plan everytime you need a minor upgrades? No, of course. If all you need is just some extra RAM, why should you upgrade the entire hosting plan and pay for all the unnecessary storage and bandwidth?

Is VPS right for you?

When your website has outgrown your shared hosting plan and you couldn’t afford the price of a dedicated server, then VPS is your answer. Most webmasters see VPS as the stepping stone to dedicated or self-managed private server.

VPS: More than Shared, Cheaper than Dedicated!

Virtual private servers (VPS) are an interesting middle-ground for those who need a little more than a shared hosting plan but don't want to pay the cost or need the power of a dedicated server. It is a virtual machine which operates on the same hardware as other virtual machines, yet it acts as an independent server would act. They were often used in mainframe systems to allow multiple users to harness the power at the same time, and they are experiencing an uptake in popularity as VPS technology advances.

How Does VPS Works?

The way a virtual private server works is this: a single server has multiple hard drives or partitions of a drive which are set aside for a user. Limits may be placed on the amount of processing power per user to eliminate the shared hosting problem of lag caused by the other users. A major advantage to the VPS is that each user can have an operating system that is independent of the other users, and the user can reboot their partition without harming the other users.

A virtual private server has many of the same options that a dedicated server would have including managed and unmanaged hosting plans, control panels, and tech support for upgrades and assistance. They are often used to help with the stability of a system by running a live, working version of a program or website while a secondary copy of the code is being worked on in a partition. That allows the developer to keep a website up until the secondary code has been improved and stabilized for release without endangering the primary. They are also used as honey pots to distract hackers from secure data by storing incorrect data on a VPS with intentionally lax security.

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All About Domain

What is Domain Registration

Domain registration is the process by which a company or individual can secure a website domain, such as www.yoursite.com. Once you have completed domain registration the domain becomes yours for the period of the contract, usually one year. Before registration expires it must be renewed, or the domain reverts back to being available to the general public.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) manages the international Domain Name Server (DNS) database. ICANN insures that all registered names are unique and map properly to a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address. The IP address is the numerical address of the website that tells other computers on the Internet where to find the server host and domain.

Domain registration is available to the public via a registrar. Fees and services vary from company to company, but the process is generally inexpensive. Before a domain registration can be approved, the new name must be checked against existing names in the DNS database. The online registrar provides a field into which you can enter your desired name and hierarchy —- that is, the letters that come after the "dot." Familiar hierarchies are .com, .net, .org, .name, .info and .biz. If the name is not already taken, it is available for domain registration.

During the domain registration process, you will be required to give contact information that will be publicly available through the WHOIS database. Anyone can go to a WHOIS search engine and enter a domain name to see who has registered it. Registrars require that this information be accurate and true. If you feel uncomfortable providing personal information, there are some registrars that will act as your proxy, supplying their information in place of your own as the contact for the domain. There may be a small fee for this service and potential drawbacks to balance against the ability to maintain your privacy, so read the Terms and Conditions carefully before deciding to opt for a domain by proxy.

Also important, be sure you will own the domain name, as some registrars maintain control over the domains they register. And be sure you retain the option to transfer the domain to another registrar, if you wish. There might be an initial period after which this becomes possible. Look for any fees that might be incurred as a result of transferring the domain. This could become important down the road if you wish to take advantage of another registrar's products or services.

Upon completing the domain registration process, it will take a period of hours to a few days to be able to see the domain online. The domain can be "parked" with an "in construction" page that acts as a kind of placeholder. Parking a domain is very inexpensive and most registrars offer this service for a small fee to give you time to come up with content. Once a registrant is ready to supply content, a web server must host the domain. The registrar might also provide hosting services, or you may wish to transfer your domain to another web hosting company.

If you are considering domain registration, ICANN recommends dealing with an accredited registrar. These registrars have entered into an official agreement with ICANN to meet minimal requirements for providing domain registration. For more information about domain registration, and for a list of accredited registrars, see the ICANN site.

A name that identifies one or more IP addresses. For example, the domain name microsoft.com represents about a dozen IP addresses. Domain names are used in URLs to identify particular Web pages

Every domain name has a suffix that indicates which top level domain (TLD) it belongs to. There are only a limited number of such domains. For example:

gov - Government agencies

edu - Educational institutions

org - Organizations (nonprofit)

mil - Military

com - commercial business

net - Network organizations

ca - Canada

th - Thailand

Because the Internet is based on IP addresses, not domain names, every Web server requires a Domain Name System (DNS) server to translate domain names into IP addresses.

A domain name is an identification label that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet, based on the Domain Name System (DNS).

Domain names are used in various networking contexts and application-specific naming and addressing purposes. They are organized in subordinate levels (subdomains) of the DNS root domain, which is nameless. The first-level set of domain names are the top-level domains (TLDs), including the generic top-level domains (gTLDs), such as the prominent domains com, net and org, and the country code top-level domains (ccTLDs). Below these top-level domains in the DNS hierarchy are the second-level and third-level domain names that are typically open for reservation by end-users that wish to connect local area networks to the Internet, run web sites, or create other publicly accessible Internet resources. The registration of these domain names is usually administered by domain name registrars who sell their services to the public.

Individual Internet host computers use domain names as host identifiers, or hostnames. Hostnames are the leaf labels in the domain name system usually without further subordinate domain name space. Hostnames appear as a component in Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) for Internet resources such as web sites (e.g., en.wikipedia.org).

Domain names are also used as simple identification labels to indicate ownership or control of a resource. Such examples are the realm identifiers used in the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the DomainKeys used to verify DNS domains in e-mail systems, and in many other Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs).

An important purpose of domain names is to provide easily recognizable and memorizable names to numerically addressed Internet resources. This abstraction allows any resource (e.g., website) to be moved to a different physical location in the address topology of the network, globally or locally in an intranet. Such a move usually requires changing the IP address of a resource and the corresponding translation of this IP address to and from its domain name.

Domain names are often referred to simply as domains and domain name registrants are frequently referred to as domain owners, although domain name registration with a registrar does not confer any legal ownership of the domain name, only an exclusive right of use.

This article primarily discusses the group of domain names that are offered by domain name registrars for registration by the public. The Domain Name System article discusses the technical facilities and infrastructure of the domain name space and the hostname article deals with specific information about the use of domain names as identifiers of network hosts.

Top-level domains

The top-level domains (TLDs) are the highest level of domain names of the Internet. They form the DNS root zone of the hierarchical Domain Name System. Every domain name ends in a top-level or first-level domain label.

When the Domain Name System was created in the 1980s, the domain name space was divided into two main groups of domains.^[1] The country code top-level domains (ccTLD) were primarily based on the two-character territory codes of ISO-3166 country abbreviations. In addition, a group of seven generic top-level domains (gTLD) was implemented which represented a set of categories of names and multi-organizations.^[2] These were the domains GOV, EDU, COM, MIL, ORG, NET, and INT.

During the growth of the Internet, it became desirable to create additional generic top-level domains. As of June 2009, there are 20 generic top-level domains and 248 country code top-level domains.^[3] In addition, the ARPA domain serves technical purposes in the infrastructure of the Domain Name System.

During the 32nd International Public ICANN Meeting in Paris in 2008,^[4] ICANN started a new process of TLD naming policy to take a "significant step forward on the introduction of new generic top-level domains." This program envisions the availability of many new or already proposed domains, as well a new application and implementation process.^[5] Observers believed that the new rules could result in hundreds of new top-level domain to be registered.^[6]

An annotated list of top-level domains in the root zone database is published at the IANA website at http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/ and a Wikipedia list exists.

[edit] Second-level and lower level domains

Below the top-level domains in the domain name hierarchy are the second-level domain (SLD) names. These are the names directly to the left of .com, .net, and the other top-level domains. As an example, in the domain en.wikipedia.org, wikipedia is the second-level domain.

Next are third-level domains, which are written immediately to the left of a second-level domain. There can be fourth- and fifth-level domains, and so on, with virtually no limitation. An example of an operational domain name with four levels of domain labels is www.sos.state.oh.us. The www preceding the domains is the host name of the World-Wide Web server. Each label is separated by a full stop (dot). 'sos' is said to be a sub-domain of 'state.oh.us', and 'state' a sub-domain of 'oh.us', etc. In general, subdomains are domains subordinate to their parent domain. An example of very deep levels of subdomain ordering are the IPv6 reverse resolution DNS zones, e.g., 1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.ip6.arpa, which is the reverse DNS resolution domain name for the IP address of a loopback interface, or the localhost name.

Second-level (or lower-level, depending on the established parent hierarchy) domain names are often created based on the name of a company (e.g., microsoft.com), product or service (e.g., gmail.com). Below these levels, the next domain name component has been used to designate a particular host server. Therefore, ftp.wikipedia.org might be an FTP server, www.wikipedia.org would be a World Wide Web server, and mail.wikipedia.org could be an email server, each intended to perform only the implied function. Modern technology allows multiple physical servers with either different (cf. load balancing) or even identical addresses (cf. anycast) to serve a single hostname or domain name, or multiple domain names to be served by a single computer. The latter is very popular in Web hosting service centers, where service providers host the websites of many organizations on just a few servers.

Resale of domain names

The business of resale of previously registered domain names is known as the domain aftermarket. Various factors influence the perceived value or market value of a domain name. Annually tens of millions of dollars change hands in connection with the resale of domains. Large numbers of registered domain names lapse and are deleted each year. On average, more than 25,000 domain names drop (are deleted) every day.

A domain name is a component of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) used to access web sites, for example:

URL: http://www.example.net/index.html

Domain name: www.example.net

Second-level domain name: example.net

A domain name may point to multiple IP addresses to provide server redundancy for the services delivered. This is used for large, popular web sites. More commonly, however, one server at a given IP address may also host multiple web sites in different domains. Such address overloading is possible through a feature in the HTTP version 1.1 protocol (but not in HTTP 1.0) which requires that a request identifies the domain name being referenced. This enables virtual web hosting commonly used by large web hosting services to conserve IP address space.

Domain Names, IP Address and DNS

Domain Names: Everyone is familiar with domain names, they are the names of the website or the part after the "@" on an email address. These names are used to find a machine (or sometimes, one of many machines) so that you can find the webpage or deliver the email to the correct place- it is the internet equivalent to a postal address.

IP addresses: Every machine or node that can be directly accessed on the internet has a unique IP address. This is a just a big number but to make it easier for humans, it is normally written as four numbers separated by dots (eg. 87.106.82.7). As an aside, for those of you that understand binary, each number is an 8 bit binary number 0-255 making a 32 bit number. As a rough analogy, this can be thought of as the postcode or ZIP code of the postal address. Once you have an IP address of a machine on the internet you can connect to that machine.

DNS (Domain Name Server): A DNS server is a server just like any other server on the internet. The purpose of DNS servers are to translate domain names (postal addresses) into IP addresses (postcode/ ZIP codes). Let's run through an example of what happens when you type www.wight-hat.com into your browser.

1) First of all, your internet provider will have a DNS cache- this is a list of previously obtained IP addresses for various domain names so that commonly used names do not have to be constantly looked up. In this example, we assume that this is the first time that a domain has ever been requested through the internet provider. The ISP (Internet Service Provider) will start from the right hand side and see that it is a ".com". It will go to one of the five top level DNS servers in the world (who's IP addresses are on the record to start with) and ask for the ".com" DNS server. The top level DNS server will provide the IP address for ".com".

2) The ISP will then request the "name servers" for wight-hat.com from the machine at the IP address just obtained (from the ".com" DNS server) and this will return two to seven "name servers" which are the machines that hold information on the whereabouts of wight-hat.com. It will receive one of two name servers, "ns1.wight-hat.com 87.106.82.7" and "ns2.wight-hat.com 64.15.153.83". These are the IP addresses of DNS servers that contain information on wight-hat.com.

3) Suppose the first one is received, "ns1.wight-hat.com 87.106.82.7". The ISP now goes to this IP address and requests "www" for wight-hat.com and receives the IP address 64.15.153.83. The ISP now knows where the machine is for serving the web page www.wight-hat.com.

4) The page www.wight-hat.com is requested from the machine at 64.15.153.83 and the machine responds with the page.

This may seem a little long winded but there is a reason for this. Remember that the ISP has a record of the previous requests? Lets look at what happens when we now send an email to someone@wight-hat.com.

1) The ISP knows the DNS server for wight-hat.com because it is in the cache (the record of previous lookups) and finds the DNS IP address is 87.106.82.7.

2) A request for the MX server (mail server) for wight-hat.com is sent to 87.106.82.7 and the response is that the mail server IP address is 87.106.82.7 (the same machine).

3) The mail is sent to the machine at 87.106.82.7. This machine then places the email in the "someone" inbox ready for collection.

You can see how, by breaking it into stages and caching the results, fewer requests have to be made over time. The cache will only be kept for each entry for a certain amount of time and is then discarded. After this a new request is made and so if the machine that hosts the www.wight-hat.com site changes, the ISP will be not forever look in the wrong place.

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What is Web Server, Bandwidth,Memory and Network Speed

What is a Web Server?

Generally used in reference to the computer hardware that provides World Wide Web services on the Internet, a Web server includes the hardware, operating system, server software, TCP/IP protocols and the Web site content. Web servers process requests from Browsers for web pages and serves them up via HTTP.

What is HTTP?

HyperText Transfer Protocol - the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web. HTTP defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what action Web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands. For example, when you enter a URL in your browser, this actually sends an HTTP command to the Web server directing it to fetch and transmit the requested Web page.

What is a Domain Name?

An addressing construct used for identifying and locating computers on the Internet. Domain names provide a system of easy-to-remember Internet addresses, which can be translated by the Domain Name System (DNS) into the numeric addresses (Internet Protocol (IP) numbers) used by a network. (CoffeeCup.com is a domain name as is Google.com)

What does URL stand for?

Uniform Resource Locator - the global address of documents and other resources on the World Wide Web. The first part of the address indicates what protocol to use, and the second part specifies the IP address or the domain name where the resource is located.

What does DNS stand for?

Domain Name System - a system of mapping names to IP addresses. Because domain names are alphabetic, they're easier for humans to remember. The Internet, however, is really based on IP addresses. Every time you use a domain name, DNS translates the name into the corresponding IP address. It is similar to a phonebook for the Internet.

What does FTP stand for?

File Transfer Protocol - Allows the transfer of one or more files from one computer to another across the Internet. Usually from a personal computer to a Server or vice versa.

What is Uploading?

Uploading - Is the transferring of files from your local computer to a remote computer, usually a server.

What is Downloading

Downloading - Is the transferring of files from a remote computer to your local computer.

What is E-Mail

As most people already know E-mail stands for Electronic Mail and is now an integral part of business and personal communication.

What are POP and SMTP servers?

Post Office Protocol is the most common protocol used to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. Most e-mail applications (sometimes called an e-mail client) use the POP protocol, although some can use the newer IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol). The newest version, POP3, can be used with or without SMTP (an e-mail sending protocol, stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). IMAP servers are similar to POP servers, the only difference being they save the e-mail so they can be retrieved from multiple locations or multiple users.

What is WebMail?

WebMail - Provides the user an interface on the Internet so they can access their e-mail messages from any computer.

What is a CGI Service

CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface. CGI provides a method to interface a computer program with an HTML page. CGI programs can be written to do many different things, which includes: counting visitors to your web site; processing data obtained from online forms; and creating simple animations. If you want any of these features it is essential that your host includes a CGI Service usually in the form of a CGI-bin.

What is Bandwidth?

Bandwidth in respect to hosting, is the amount of information that can be transferred from the server to a Browser. Hosts usually limit the amount of bandwidth a user has available per month. As an example, if you had a file on your site that was 1mb and you had 1Gb of bandwidth, users could download the file 1000 total times.

What is Disk Space?

Disk Space - the total physical amount of hard drive space a host allows a user to have.

What is a Dedicated Server?

A Dedicated Server is one that only has a single website running on it. Rather than a shared server which has multiple websites being served up.

Bandwidth, Memory and Network Speed

Bandwidth: This can be, rather misleadingly, two related but different concepts. The bandwidth of a connection or network is the speed capacity that data can go to and from a computer- this is covered further down the page under "Speed". The second meaning of this term is the amount of data going in and out of the server and is normally measured in MB/GB (megabytes/gigabytes) per day/month. Suppose that you have 100MBytes of data on your sever and you transfer it all just once in a day, you will have used a bandwidth of 100MB/day (this is ignoring data that goes into the machine!). The reason that this value can be important is that many hosting companies will have a maximum monthly bandwidth allowance and any amount over this figure will be charged for- like using up all of your free minutes on your cell phone.

For a standard website which has some pages and a few images this is not normally an issue (unless it has an enormous amount of visitors) but if you have a lot of very high resolution images, video clips of file downloading/ sharing the bandwidth ceiling can be reached quite quickly. It is worth calculating the expected bandwidth if you suspect that this may be a problem since you will be charged at a far greater rate if you exceed the allowance. A site I had around 10 years ago cost me $20/month hosting cost and $350 in unexpected over bandwidth fees in the first month!

Memory: The memory allocation you get will normally depend on what you pay for; most hosting companies will provide various packages with varying memory allocation. This is essentially the amount of hard disk space that is allotted to you- you cannot exceed this space. It is easy to find out how much you need if you have your web site on your computer, you simply look at how much space all of your web files take up and allow a bit more for email, statistics and other features of your hosting that may use memory. If you hit the memory limit, most hosting providers will allow you to just upgrade you package to the next level.

Speed: The speed that your web pages will be presented to the visitor depends on a number of factors. First of all it will depend on the server hardware (how good the computer is that is acting as the server). In addition, a hosting package will typically be one of hundreds if not thousands of others on the same machine- the more there are on a single machine the slower the machine will be serving your site's pages during busy periods.

Next is the data speed; which again is made up of many factors. The network speed and topology that the machine is connected in at the hosting companies building, the "pipe" that the hosting company has (which is the data speed in and out of their building and onto the internet) and the connection speed of the person accessing the site (broadband speed/ dial up modem etc.). It is important to not have your site load too slow since people will give up on a page within a few seconds if it is loading slowly.

To ensure that the machine is running quickly enough for the amount of accounts on it you have to rely on the hosting company, some are good and some are bad (in that some companies offer very cheap hosting but overload their servers). For high traffic sites you can move to virtual or dedicated server solutions which we will discuss later on but for most sites it is sufficient to use a good hosting company which does not overload their servers and provides a good data pipe.

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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.

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