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.