WHAT IS HOSTING?

HOSTING DEFINITION

Short and concise, the hosting definition is as follows: connecting a piece of space to the internet, on which website files are placed. However, hosting comes in all shapes and sizes, hence an article with more explanation about hosting.

How does hosting work? Explanation & meaning

Hosting a website can be done on a regular home computer connected to the internet. To realize such a hosting setup, there are complete programs such as WAMP or MAMP , in which web server components such as Apache, PHP and MySQL are installed. But there are drawbacks to this. For example, the website will load slowly and the home computer must be on day and night so that the website is continuously accessible for its visitors. That is why there is a lot of investment in facilities such as well-secured data centers that are specially equippedfor hosting websites and applications. Below you will find a description of different types of hosting solutions.

TYPES OF HOSTING

Shared Hosting, a virtual hotel room

This is one of the most popular hosting solutions as most starting websites have enough space and processing power available with it. A web server, placed in a data center, is divided into small compartments on which each compartment is rented out as hosting space. With a little imagination you can create shared hosting like renting a hotel room. But just like in a hotel, one can sometimes be bothered by a neighbor who is having a party, for example. The same goes for Shared Hosting. When a compartment needs a lot of processing power because there are many visitors or because heavy applications are running, other websites on the same server can also be affected. However, reliable hosting providers use tools to arrange this. For example, CloudLinux can be used as an operating system for the web server , whereby all compartments are isolated from each other via LVE technology.

Reseller Hosting

With Reseller Hosting , a large compartment of the web server is provided, which the reseller can divide into smaller compartments. This has both advantages and disadvantages. For example, the reseller does not have to worry about software updates or technical issues, but support is also well taken care of. The hosting provider often provides full support for the reseller and his customers. However, the freedom of the reseller is limited to the resources that are made available to him by his hosting provider; he will always have to request it from his hosting provider to install a module or adjust a configuration setting.

dedicated server

Although with the rise of Virtual Private Servers – see below – the demand for Dedicated Servers is falling, they are still seen as a sound investment for companies that run critical applications or heavy websites. The big advantage of a dedicated server is that you are completely free to set it up and are not hindered by other users on the server, which is the case with shared hosting. The server can be used for specific applications such as sending and receiving HTTP requests (e.g. a web server such as Apache or IIS), storing databases (e.g. MySQL, Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server), handling e-mail traffic (eg. a mail server such as Kerio Connect, Postfix or Microsoft Exchange), processing DNS requests (ie a DNS server)…

Virtual Private Server

Just as with Shared Hosting a server is divided into compartments, a server can also be divided into virtual servers that are separated from each other and each use a part of the hardware. This has enormous economies of scale: when the virtual server consumes more than anticipated, it can be allocated more processing power. Just like with a dedicated server, you also have complete control over the setup and virtualization techniques are often even used with a dedicated server. It is easy to move a virtual server to another dedicated server when problems arise.


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