In this article we will explain in detail and in simple language what a Hosting is and we will give a review of all the types of Hosting existing in the market and its main characteristics.
Previously in What do I need to publish my Web site? we showed you the requirements that any Web site has to be published and one of them is a Hosting service or also called Web Hosting.
Concept
When you create a Web Site the final result you get is a group of files and elements that make up the structure, image and styles of your page. Such elements can be .html files, .css style sheets, images (.jpg, .png, .gif), videos, and more advanced elements such as applications programmed in php, databases, etc.
Of course, now that you have created your Web you need to publish it on the Internet and that is precisely what a Hosting or Web Hosting service is used for.
In simple words a Hosting is a “virtual space” that you acquire in a provider and that allows you to “upload” the files that conform your Web so that these are published in Internet. This “space” is an account located in specialized equipment (Servers) that have a public address on the network and have all the services and software necessary for the pages to function properly and be visible to all visitors 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
The idea is that you have a provider that takes care of the maintenance of the equipment and gives you an account where you manage your services. For this you usually have access to a control panel, where besides uploading your files you have many other options and added services.
Which options? A Professional Hosting plan allows you for example:
- Create and manage email accounts.
- Create accounts for FTP access.
- Manage your files.
- Create and manage databases.
- View statistics of visits to your Web.
- Backup your data.
- Schedule automated tasks (cronjobs).
- And much more…
Types of Hosting
There are different types of Hosting or Web Hosting that vary according to the way they are implemented, technology, exclusivity of resources and price.
Next we will review the most common types of Hosting in the market:
Shared Web Hosting (shared hosting):
As we mentioned before, a Hosting works on at least one Server, which is a high performance equipment located in a data center. As you can imagine, this equipment is expensive and keeping it running in a data center also adds fees for electricity, bandwidth, maintenance, etc.
The high costs mean that not everyone can afford to have a complete server for their Web site and this gave rise to the concept of Shared Hosting.
In this type of Hosting, multiple websites are hosted on the same server, which allows to distribute the costs among all users and this in turn results in much lower rates.
When you purchase a Shared Hosting, you basically get access to an “account” within a server and a “Control Panel” that allows you to have your own private disk space to publish your website, create your emails, your FTP accounts, etc.
Even if there are tens or hundreds of accounts on the same server, each user will only be able to access his own data.
In another article we will show you how to choose the best Hosting for your needs.
Reseller Hosting (Web Hosting for resellers):
Reseller Hosting or Reseller Web Hosting, is basically a Shared Hosting but it allows the same owner to create multiple individual Hosting accounts.
In this type of Web Hosting, the provider gives the client access to a Reseller control panel where he can create his own Hosting packages, create independent Hosting accounts for his users and manage all aspects of them.
Being a shared Hosting type its cost is low, so Reseller Hosting plans are very convenient for resellers, small businesses that have multiple websites, Web Designers with multiple clients, and basically any customer who needs to host multiple sites but does not have the ability to purchase and manage their own server.
VPS Hosting (Virtual Private Servers):
With the evolution of hosting new technologies emerged, among them virtualization, which basically allows us to take a physical machine (server) and by means of software divide it into multiple “virtual machines” independent of each other, which are called VPS (“virtual private server”).
By means of virtualization software we can create different independent “environments” within the same server, which use the same hardware but work with exclusive resources assigned by the software. We can for example create a server with 100GB of disk, 2GB of RAM and 1 cpu core; and in the same machine another one with 4GB of RAM, 50GB of disk and 4 CPU cores.
Each VPS has its own operating system, its own IP addresses, its own software, its own disk partition. This makes it possible to have in the same physical server a VPS with a Linux CentOS system, one with Linux Ubuntu, one with Windows, another with Solaris, and any other combination you wish.
In short, a VPS is a “virtual server” created using virtualization software, which allows you to have a completely independent system and exclusive allocation of resources.
The advantages of a VPS are many, but the most obvious one is its price, because by being able to divide a physical server into multiple VPS, the cost is distributed among all customers. This makes it possible to acquire a dedicated service (where no operating system, software, disk, etc. are shared) but at a lower price than a physical server.
In the market you can find Managed VPS, where your provider takes care of all the configuration, maintenance and troubleshooting; and Unmanaged VPS where the provider only intervenes in case of Hardware and Network problems, and everything else you must do yourself or your own technicians.
We invite you to see our article When is it convenient to acquire a VPS?
Cloud Hosting (Web Hosting in the cloud):
Surely you have already heard of the Cloud or CLOUD, a very fashionable term in recent years. But what is a CLOUD Hosting? we explain it to you.
We have already talked about the concept of virtualization, with which specialized software can create independent “Virtual Servers” within the same physical server.
In the Cloud, virtualization goes one step further and allows, through software, to create “virtual servers” that take their resources not from one, but from multiple servers and disk systems. The cloud then, is that group of interconnected servers that form a large platform to deploy virtual servers.
The Cloud Hosting then, is a hosting service hosted on a server that was created within a cloud of servers or Cloud.
In the market you can find very diverse Cloud services, but the most common are the shared CLOUD Hosting plans and VPS CLOUD servers.
Each “Cloud” of servers is different and its characteristics depend on the implementation, however when it is really well implemented the advantages it brings are remarkable, some of them are:
- Redundancy: Everything is replicated, so in case of any hardware failure of one or more components of the cloud, others will take over their work and the service will continue to operate.
- Scalability: The size of the server can be increased as required and servers can be added to the cloud to make it bigger when needed.
- High availability: As there is redundancy in all aspects of the cloud, points of failure are eliminated, making it possible to offer services with extremely high availability of hardware, where the failure of a component will not alter the services.
Dedicated Servers:
A dedicated server is just that, a hosting service where the entire physical machine is yours and you can do whatever you want with its operating system, software, IPs, etc.
This type of hosting service is normally used when you have a highly visited website that demands a lot of resources, or when you need to perform specific tasks that require a lot of hardware power.
There are many applications, but here are just a few examples of the use of a dedicated server:
- Hosting a Web site with many thousands of visitors.
- Hosting a very large online store.
- Streaming video or radio online to many simultaneous users.
- Hosting database-intensive sites or applications.
- Host mail services.
- Host a backup server.
- Process database jobs for a remote server.
- Host an online gaming community.
- etc.
- As with VPS, you can find 2 types of dedicated servers on the market: Managed and Unmanaged.
In the case of a Managed dedicated server your provider gives you the maintenance and technical support in case of software, services, etc. failures. In an unmanaged dedicated server you must manage the server and have your own expert staff that can solve any software, configuration, etc. problems.
Other types of Hosting
The above are the most commonly used types of Hosting and the most commonly found, however there are other types of Hosting specialized and dedicated to meet different needs.
Backup Hosting, Gaming Hosting, VoIP, Remote Desktops, Server Clusters, VPN, PABX, DNS servers and Mail Exchange are just some of the many hosting options created for specific needs.
The possibilities are so many that we could not cover them all in one article, however it is unlikely that you will need them, they represent a small percentage of the market and generally speaking they are not necessary for hosting regular websites and applications.