Servers & Types of Web Hosting
If your IT background is not strong enough (read this sentence as Cher would sing it), that’s ok. First, definitions of server and hosting. Boring but necessary, therefore bear with us. We opted for an explanation shorter than Wikipedia’s. That one is 1309 characters long. Ouch.
A server is a computing system that stores and distributes data among interconnected devices. It’s a central facilitator, managing requests and delivering resources efficiently over a network, in our case, the Internet.
That wasn’t so bad, huh? So servers are basic building blocks of the internet. Or nuts and bolts of it. Whatever analogy works for you, the internet as we know it will not work without them. Now, there are many types and they do very different jobs.
First and foremost, what you need is a hosting service. Yup, that too is some kind of a server. But how do we explain hosting simply? You are basically paying for a chunk of resources to store your website’s files and make them accessible on the internet. It’s like renting space on a server, and it’s important to choose the right type for your online product.
Now there are many types, and they fit very different needs in terms of performance and scalability. Here are the options one usually comes across, ranging from very basic setups to power user mega solutions:
Shared Hosting
This is one of the most affordable hosting options. The catch? Multiple websites can be on a single server, so heavy traffic or resource usage from one site may affect others. This is the way to go if you are super small, as shared hosting can handle up to 1000 visits per month (very low to low traffic).
Think blogs, portfolios, small business websites and the likes. This option is great for beginners, especially if you choose a shared hosting provider that offers reliable customer support.
Virtual Private Servers (VPS)
Unlike shared hosting, VPS gets you a dedicated portion of server resources. Now we’re talking! There are usually 10-50 websites per server, but VPSs are smart. If there’s extra capacity not used by others, VPS will use it to temporarily provide flexibility for handling increased demand at the other end.
The ability to handle up to 50000 visits per month makes it great for low to medium traffic.
Dedicated Private Servers
All yours, baby. A physical machine dedicated to a single customer with exclusive access to all server resources. It can handle up to 100,000 or more visits per month (medium to very high traffic). Maintenance can be done either in-house or by a hosting provider, and the number of websites on a server depends on your needs.
The point is you have full control over server configurations if you want to customize software, change security settings, etc.
Cloud Hosting
If it’s in the cloud, it must be awesome! Well, more often than not, it is. With multiple servers in multiple locations, the failure of one server means the workload is automatically shifted to others, ensuring consistent availability
Available from 1 to 100 CPUs and GBs of RAM, it allows for seamless scaling. You can define min and max resources and the cloud automatically adjusts them depending on your traffic and settings.
These setups can handle anything from 0 to 1.000.000+ visits per month (both very low and very high traffic)
The usual setup is one site per hosting (you can have more, but it’s not a good practice). Cloud solutions often offer automated backups and robust security features. These tend to be pricey but pack a serious, scalable punch.
Kubernetes
This is a solution most often used by power users with serious traffic. These are not the people who read blogs in order to find out about server types, but for the sake of being thorough, let’s explain what it’s made of. Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system for automating software development, scaling, and management.
What the duck are containers, you’ll ask, and rightfully so.
They’re software packages that include everything needed to run a piece of software, including the code, runtime, libraries, and system tools)
Able to handle 1.000.000+ visits per month (High to Very High traffic), these solutions are ideal for enterprises and startups with complex and scalable applications, cloud service providers, Software as a Service (SaaS) providers, etc.
Kubernetes has many fancy features we should not explain in length since those that use them have specialists that handle the whole thing.
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
There are some cases where physical distance between content and users starts presenting problems, especially if speed is of importance to you. We do not want to have that Australian guy wait too long for your Greenland based content, heh? A bit oversimplified, but that is the general idea here.
So CDN is a network of distributed servers strategically placed worldwide to deliver static content, such as images and videos. Original source content is copied to multiple servers around the world and waits to be delivered locally, fast.
This is ideal for websites with a global audience. Or when you want to offload your server (eCommerce businesses, media companies, news and publishing organizations, online gaming platforms, etc.) However you put it, these are serious systems for serious needs.