hosting service example

Examples of Hosting Services

·  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 sites to hundreds of websites. 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 basic and not flexible in terms of software and updates. Resellers often sell shared web hosting and web companies often have reseller accounts to provide hosting for clients.

·  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 reseller. Resellers' accounts may vary tremendously in size: they may have their own virtual dedicated server to a colocated 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 (unmanaged server) or the VPS provider may provide server admin tasks for the customer (managed server).

·  Dedicated hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server and gains full control over it (user has root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, the user typically does not own the server. One 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 server, which means the client is responsible for the security and maintenance of his own dedicated server.

·  Managed hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server but is not allowed full control over it (user is denied 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 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. Formerly, many colocation providers would accept any system configuration for hosting, even ones housed in desktop-style minitower cases, but most hosts now require rack mount enclosures and standard system configurations.

·  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. A cloud hosted

website may be more reliable than alternatives since other computers in the cloud can compensate when a single piece of hardware goes down. Also, local power disruptions or even natural disasters are less problematic for cloud hosted sites, as cloud hosting is sources consumed by the user, rather than a flat fee for the amount the user expects they will use, or a fixed cost upfront hardware investment. Alternatively, the lack of centralization may give users less control on where their data is located which could be a problem for users with data security or privacy concerns.

·  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. (Usually web hosts use clustered hosting for their shared hosting plans, as there are multiple benefits to the mass managing of clients).^[3]

·  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 host name 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.

How does hosting service work?

How Website Hosting Works ?

   

          To make as much sense as possible, let’s walk through a typical scenario where we’re setting up a website for a client. We’ll assume the design and development of the website are already done.

One important point to make before we get started is that you can often get everything you need from just one vendor (domain, DNS, and hosting) which is a convenient way to get it done. For our example we’ll assume you’re doing it all separately though, as it’ll help illustrate how all of the pieces fit together.

Domain Names

Step one is getting a domain name. You know, it’s the address for the website, like agencyfusion.com.

To purchase a domain name we’ll need to use a registrar, such as Namecheap.

Pricing for domain names is all over the map, from a few bucks to fifty dollars or more. Registrars all sell the exact same domain names so the only difference between them is the service they offer. It’s kind of like buying airfare from Expedia, Travelocity, or Orbitz. They’ll all sell you the same Delta flight but prices might vary and the extra services they offer might vary too. In the end, though, you’ll still be sitting in the same cramped seat on the exact same Delta flight regardless of who sells you the ticket.

Speaking of extra services a registrar might offer, be aware that you don’t actually need any of their services no matter how critical they may make it sound. Because domain name reselling is a lower-margin business than it used to be, upselling you on other stuff is their main game now. If in doubt, just buy the domain name.

We need to explain one more important thing about domain names before we move on. Every computer on the Internet has a unique number. It’s called an IP address. It’s like a phone number for each computer. That’s oversimplified, but it works for our purposes. A domain name is like an alias for that IP address…a more memorable way of identifying a computer on the Internet.

So…when you type in agencybyte.com that’s just an easier way of getting to my blog than remembering the IP address (70.87.126.226). Again, this is somewhat simplified, but that’s the goal right? To make this stuff easier to digest?

Nameservers (or DNS)

Step two is setting up nameservers or DNS for our newly-purchased domain name.

DNS is a commonly used acronym which, depending on context can mean Domain Name System or Domain Name Servers. Can you use it in a sentence, please? Sure…people usually say something like, “I need to setup DNS for my new domain name.” Or, they may ask, “What are the nameservers for our new domain?”

DNS is the least tangible and typically hardest part of the whole website setup process for people to understand so I’ll try to make it really simple.

Remember how the domain name (agencybyte.com) is like an alias for the IP address (70.87.126.226) of my blog? Well, someone has to keep track of that information. Someone has to be in charge of saying that agencybyte.com should “point” to 70.87.126.226. This is where DNS comes in.

Quite often the same company who sells you your domain name will also maintain this information but there are also companies who specialize in providing DNS services, such as DNS Made Easy. They have domain name servers, which are computers that keep track of all of this and are in charge of telling everyone that our new domain name goes to the IP address of the computer which has our new website hosted on it.

Makes sense right? Our new website won’t be hosted or stored on the same computers as, say, Apple’s website right? So there needs to be a way for domain names to take us to the right computers when we type them into our web browsers.

Now that we’ve mentioned that our website’s files won’t be on the same computer as apple.com or agencybyte.com, we’d better talk about where our website will be hosted.

Hosting

So at this stage we have a domain name and we also have domain name servers making sure that our domain name is properly routing visitors to our website when they type in the domain name.

Our actual website is just a bunch of files. HTML files, CSS files (stylesheets), images and photos, etc. All of these files need to be in a folder on a computer that is connected to the Internet. That computer is usually called a “server” because it serves up our website files when people come to visit. When you pay a company to put your files on their web server, you’re buying hosting. They are hosting your website on their servers.

So now that we have it all setup, here’s what happens when you visit the new website.

You type the domain name into your web browser. The DNS makes sure you get connected to the right computer. And that computer or server has your website files hosted on it. Let’s look at a diagram to make sure this all clicks in your head.