How does Web-Hosting Work ?

Dedicated web hosting is basically renting a whole server solely for your use (dedicated). It is much like having your own server but the biggest difference is you do not need a large initial investment to set it up. Dedicated web hosting comes in two forms. Managed and unmanaged.

Commonly, unmanaged hosting plans include hardware, operating system, web server and Internet connection. Managed plans however include the basics and pretty much everything else that the only thing you need to worry about is your web site and content.

Knowing this, you should carefully review your organization’s setup to see if you have the financial & physical resources to manage your servers. For most organizations, the higher monthly cost of a managed plan works out to be more cost effective overall. There would be occasion an unmanaged plan works best. In these scenarios the organizations already have a good support department but would rather not have hardware and certain software maintenance concerns.

Without needing to share space & resources you gain many benefits. Your web page will run better and faster because resources are used to serve only your web site and you can optimize the server and database for your web site. Another benefit of server customization is you get to install and run the programs that your web site needs, not re-programming your web site to fit the server.

You also have full access to storage, which is certainly a perk for a growing web site. Managed dedicated hosting customers also generally enjoy a better level of service. Many web hosts assign a personal representative who also supports a handful of other accounts. Managed plan customers get the freedom to build the web site the way they want it without having hardware, operating system, certain software, middleware, security, Internet connection, backup, power backup, staff, casualties & loss prevention even insurance responsibilities.

Part 2

Hardware & Connection

As with choosing the operating system or software, hardware requirements depend a lot on your web site’s current and future needs. We’ll give you some good basics to look for.


Processor Type

Intel is recommended for large web sites because it’s emits less heat. You should choose Celeron for small web sites and Pentium 4 for medium web sites. Dual Xeons are highly recommended for high traffic web sites to give you the processing power; more so if your web site uses a lot of server side scripting. On the average, processor speeds of 2 to 2.4 GHz are good choices.


Memory

Your server should have at least 512MB of memory for serving up your pages in a reasonable time. If your web site makes heavy use of server side programming languages (PHP, CGI, ASP) we highly recommend a 1024 MB minimum and high traffic web sites should have 2048 MB and thereabouts.


Hard Drive

Between IDE and SCSI hard drives, most would like to have a SCSI drive. They are very robust, and use little if no processor power making them very fast; an ideal situation for anyone but the cost is prohibitive. If budgets permit, an 18 GB SCSI hard drive is very sufficient for most. If you choose IDE, choose a 7200-RPM drive with about 40GB of storage. You might wonder why you need so much since your shared hosting plan only has a fraction of that and you still have left over space. Do not forget, with a dedicated server, you need space for software to run your web site. In a shared environment that software space is owned by the web host and not added towards your hosting plan.

Part 3

Estimating Bandwidth

Web hosts calculate your usage using one of these three methods. Per use, capped, or 95% use. Each one is quite different so be sure you understand your requirements versus the method used in the plan. You’ll need to first understand the basics. Data transfer is measured in bits or bytes. Here’s a simple equivalents chart:

8 bits (b) = 1 byte (B)
1024 byte = 1 kilobyte (kb)
1024 kilobytes = 1 Megabyte (MB)
1024 Megabyte = 1 Gigabyte (GB)


Data transfer is the measure of bits or bytes traveling over time. So, if you are told 1 Mbps it means 1 Megabyte is being transferred in one second. If your hosting plan has 600 GB per month you can transfer as much as 600 GB of data in one month.

To calculate usage, your host relies on usage reports such as Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG). The report shows your web site’s average incoming and outgoing traffic. The following formula is then applied:

( Monthly Average incoming + Monthly average outgoing data ) /8 x 60sec x 60min x 24 hrs x 30.5 days = Total month’s bandwidth

Per Use Method

In this method, a web host calculates your usage in a month and bill you the price per Gigabyte, Megabyte or Kilobytes. Some web hosts charge in blocks of 10 or 100.

Capped Method

Using this method, your web host will allocate a certain amount of transfer a month. If you exceed it, your web site will either be inaccessible or is considerably delayed. While this sounds like a bad option, most use this method because it’s a fixed cost. You should get the plan with a little more transfer than you expect to use.

95% Method

In this method, your web host looks at your total bandwidth usage for the month. The top 5% of use is discarded. The remaining 95% of will be used to calculate your usage. If you have occasional usage spikes, this might be a good method for you because the peaks will not be calculated.

Knowing this, you need to go back to your current web host’s control panel to find out what your average use is. Add on a certain percent for growth you expect, and then look for a plan matching those requirements.

Part 4

Choosing A Dedicated Web Host

Having a dedicated server is expensive and not as easy to migrate as a shared server environment. So making sure the host is right is ever more important. Some of the utmost concerns you should have when choosing a dedicated web host is of course the company reliability and support. You should expect better, more responsive support than a shared web host. You shouldn’t settle for anything less than 24 x 7 telephone support preferably toll free. Find out how quickly the average response is in the event of hardware, connection or certain software failure. If they never had a failure, do they have a contingency plan in place? Check their network reliability. Verify information, as best you can; don’t take the web host’s word at face value. Take your time, ask around and talk to their customers.

If purchasing a managed plan, ensure server monitoring is included and your web host stays on top of security patches. Try to stay away from long term contracts and choose a month to month option at least until you know how satisfactory the web host is going to be.

Ask this pertinent information about your plan before signing up:


What it costs for additional storage space or transfer
What it costs for additional IP addresses. How many does it come with
What it costs for memory upgrades
Is there an uptime guarantee
What method is used to calculate bandwidth
Is there a money back guarantee

Dedicated hosting and other high-end plans are more profitable for the web hosts; so web hosts have the tendency to accommodate you. Negotiate and you might end up getting additional IP addresses or setup at no cost. Source: Askwebhosting.com


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What is Web-Hosting

You have to own a piece of space in cyberspace.

Web hosting empowers you and anyone with a computer and internet connection to own a piece of cyberspace. In your space, you can have news, bulletins, documents, data, files (your web site) and your own post office (mail server) to accept mail, all in the context of you or your business. This is your space and to get this space you either have to own a piece of the physical internet with a network connection to the internet backbone and computer(s) operating as server(s) offering access to your files and post office, for people on the internet to view your web site or send and receive email with you.

The cost of owning a direct connection to the backbone and a server dedicated to a web site and email is out of reach for the average business and especially general members of the internet. Even running a web site and mail server on your own computer when it is connected to the internet requires a lot of technical ability and knowledge. The internet itself has to be your business for either of these options to be viable.

In our modern society, for every person in business or with a career in most industries today, it is imperative to have a place in cyberspace, not just to be competitive but to survive. Web hosting companies were born out of this great need to provide an environment for the masses to own a piece of cyberspace, to offer an environment where people could have their piece of cyberspace on the internet 24/7 without the great cost. Web hosting companies developed a model where they could split up areas on the servers connected to the backbone and ?rent? this space, cutting the costs across many people sharing the server and backbone connection to the internet.

In a web-hosting environment, you are offered a web site to place your files, data, documents, and bulletins for people to access with their web browser and an email server for you to send and receive email messages. The web host will also provide you a means to get an address for people to get to your web site with a web browser and post email to you.

To obtain space in a web hosting environment you become a member and agree to terms and conditions of renting the space ? just as if you were to rent a house or commercial premises for your business. Once you agree and become a member, you are given an access code, a key, to your piece of cyberspace. This key, in the form of a login and password, allows you to connect to the web hosting server and up-load (transfer to) your web site so it can be accessed on the internet. Your login and password is also used to connect to a mail server to create and administer mailboxes to send and receive email for you, your staff, or family members.

Just like when you rent a house or commercial premises for your business, you have so many rooms, bathrooms, and floor space to use. In a web-hosting environment, your area is defined as disk space and network transfer.

Disk space is measured in Megabytes (MB) or Gigabytes (GB). Megabyte roughly means 1,024,000 characters and Gigabyte roughly means 1,024 Million characters. Imagine a character as one key on your key board. These amounts determine how many files, documents, or data you can have on your web site.

Network Transfer is also measured in Megabytes or gigabytes which determines how much data (how many of your files, documents or data) can be downloaded (transferred to) people accessing your web site. The more people, or the more data each person accesses on your web site the more data is transferred on the network.

The more disk space and network transfer you use the greater percentage of the web-hosting environment you are using ? therefore the higher the rent.

Just as no office building and home is the same, neither is every web-hosting environment. Some offices have stairs, others have lifts, some houses have ensuites, swimming pools, and gardens, ? and others do not. Web-hosting environments are much the same, some offer bare structures to do just the basics and others offer an array of features and facilities to help you do just about everything you could ever need or want. Some of the features and facilities likely to be offered are ranges of software to use, components, databases, and server side script processing.

The similarity of renting an office or home to renting space in a web-hosting environment is even more similar. With some buildings a gardener and/or a guard is available to look after the gardening or provide security. In a web-hosting environment, you have support people to help you do what you need to do on your web site to make it grow and there are server administrators to protect and secure your web-hosting space.

When you rent a building there are key parts needed to work or live in the space, like rooms, offices, kitchens, toilets, and bathrooms. In your web-hosting environment, you will find equally important components that are required to make the space workable. The core components in a web-hosting environment are:

Web Server

The web server is a relatively simple piece of software that accepts requests over HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and delivers HTML pages and Image files.

FTP Server

FTP is the means of which a web master can transfer files to and from the server. To put your HTML and image files on a server you will generally use FTP to upload (transfer to) your files to the server running the web server.

Mail Server

The mail server consists of two parts POP (Post Office Protocol) and SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). POP is where email is received into your mailbox and SMTP is what is used to send and receive email between mail servers.

Database Server

If you are using server side scripting on your web server (you use something like Microsoft Internet Information Server) then instead of providing ?static? data only on web pages you can provide data from a database allowing your users to search and view the data in different and dynamic way. Also, a Database server is used to gather data from visitors to your site; orders, feedback, discussions and the like.

Each one of the above components are software programs running on servers in the web-hosting environment. You can interact with each of these with special software programs you use on your computer. The main ones being:

Web Browser

When viewing the web you use a web browser like Internet Explorer. Many web hosting companies provide a ?Control Panel? to administer your web host account, which you use with your web browser. Most allow you to configure most aspects of your account using a simple web browser.

Web site/page editor

Today many web servers allow editing of WebPages over HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) based on Microsoft FrontPage technology. These special editors allow you to essentially look at your web site as if you were using a web browser and edit the pages directly as you see them using WYSWIG (What you see if what you get) technology. Most web hosting environments support this, and if you are starting out, make sure it is available. One tip: make sure the web host providing this really does understand this technology ? it is the main area of which many hacks and security intrusions occur.

FTP Client

This is a very simple piece of software that allows you to view the server folders and files in your web host account as if they were files and folders on your own computer. You can then drag and drop files between you computer and your web host account.

Email Client

If you are on the internet you would already be using an email client to send and receive your email. The most common are Outlook Express, Eudora and Web based mail clients like Hotmail.

Database Administration Client

The most common databases used with web servers are Microsoft SQL Server (available only on Windows) and MySQL (commonly found on Linux and UNIX but also available on Windows). SQL Server comes with it's own administration client where you can view your databases, edit them, backup data and do all the administration functions you need. MySQL has an active online community where there is a range of administration clients available.

Choosing a web host is, again, similar to choosing a house to live in or commercial premises to do business. You need to define what it is you require: how much space you need and what features and facilities you need.

If you have been reading this article because this is new to you, then it is likely at this stage you only need minimal space and basic facilities. Once you have worked with the basic facilities you will learn more and become aware of greater facilities and features and then you can simple move from one web ?hosting environment to another ? paying more or paying less. Moving in cyberspace is much easier, faster, and more seamless than physically moving house or commercial premises.

Initially you may use the web-hosting environment offered by your ISP (internet Service provider), the company you use to connect to the internet. But remember these companies main business is connecting many thousands of people to the internet ? not managing web hosting environments. You will generally find they offer less than basic facilities and minimal space.

If you are just starting out with your first web site the first major choice you will be faced with is ?Unix? or ?Windows?. For a person just starting out on the internet, both are equally capable and will offer the facilities you need to have your place in cyberspace.

If you have a web designer or technical person to help you, you only need to consider how much space you really need. With this simple idea in mind, when you are just starting out, owning your piece of cyberspace will not cost anymore than $8 per month. Many web-hosting companies will offer what you need for as little as $3 per month (usually paid yearly).

If you are going alone and doing it all yourself you may want to consider an account with a web hosting company that offers and prides itself on it's support and customer service, 24/7 support access and the experience, knowledge and skill of it's server administrators. Be sure to leave your Comments!>