Web hosting service

An example of rack mounted servers

A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server owned or leased for use by clients, as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center. Web hosts can also provide data center space and connectivity to the Internet for other servers located in their data center, called colocation, also known as Housing in Latin America or France.

The scope of web hosting services varies greatly. The most basic is web page and small-scale file hosting, where files can be uploaded via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a Web interface. The files are usually delivered to the Web "as is" or with minimal processing. Many Internet service providers (ISPs) offer this service free to subscribers. Individuals and organizations may also obtain Web page hosting from alternative service providers. Personal web site hosting is typically free, advertisement-sponsored, or inexpensive. Business web site hosting often has a higher expense depending upon the size and type of the site.

Single page hosting is generally sufficient for personal web pages. A complex site calls for a more comprehensive package that provides database support and application development platforms (e.g. PHP, Java, Ruby on Rails, ColdFusion, or ASP.NET). These facilities allow customers to write or install scripts for applications like forums and content management. Also, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is typically used for websites that wish to keep the data transmitted more secure.

The host may also provide an interface or control panel for managing the Web server and installing scripts, as well as other modules and service applications like e-mail. A web server that does not use a control panel for managing the hosting account, is often referred to as a "headless" server. Some hosts specialize in certain software or services (e.g. e-commerce, blogs, etc.).

Reliability and uptime

Multiple racks of servers

The availability of a website is measured by the percentage of a year in which the website is publicly accessible and reachable via the Internet. This is different from measuring the uptime of a system. Uptime refers to the system itself being online. Uptime does not take into account being able to reach it as in the event of a network outage. A hosting provider’s Service Level Agreement (SLA) may include a certain amount of scheduled downtime per year in order to perform maintenance on the systems. This scheduled downtime is often excluded from the SLA timeframe, and needs to be subtracted from the Total Time when availability is calculated. Depending on the wording of an SLA, if the availability of a system drops below that in the signed SLA, a hosting provider often will provide a partial refund for time lost. How downtime is determined changes from provider to provider, therefore reading the SLA is imperative.[1] Not all providers release uptime statistics.[2] Most hosting providers will guarantee at least 99.9% uptime which will allow for 43m of downtime per month, or 8h 45m of downtime per year.

Types of hosting

A typical server "rack" commonly seen in colocation centres

Internet hosting services can run Web servers.

Many large companies that are not Internet service providers need to be permanently connected to the web to send email, files, etc. to other sites. The company may use the computer as a website host to provide details of their goods and services and facilities for online orders.

Some specific types of hosting provided by web host service providers:

Obtaining hosting

Web hosting is often provided as part of a general Internet access plan from Internet service providers. There are also many free and paid providers offering web hosting.

A customer needs to evaluate the requirements of the application to choose what kind of hosting to use. Such considerations include database server software, scripting software, and operating system. Most hosting providers provide Linux-based web hosting which offers a wide range of different software. A typical configuration for a Linux server is the LAMP platform: Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python. The web hosting client may want to have other services, such as email for their business domain, databases or multimedia services. A customer may also choose Windows as the hosting platform. The customer still can choose from PHP, Perl, and Python but may also use ASP .Net or Classic ASP. Web hosting packages often include a Web Content Management System, so the end-user does not have to worry about the more technical aspects.

See also

References

  1. Dawson, Christian. "Why Uptime Guarantees are Ridiculous". Servint. Retrieved 7 October 2014. a good SLA will clearly state how uptime is defined and what you’ll receive if the “uptime promise” is not met.
  2. Vanvleet, Derek. "Google Apps vs. Office 365: What Does 99.9% Uptime Really Mean?". Cloud Sherpas. Retrieved 7 October 2014.
  3. Buyya, R.; Yeo, Chee Shin; Venugopal, S. (September 2008). "Market-Oriented Cloud Computing: Vision, Hype, and Reality for Delivering IT Services as Computing Utilities". 10th IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing and Communications, 2008. HPCC '08: 5–13. doi:10.1109/HPCC.2008.172.
  4. Han, I.; Park, Hong-Shik; Jeong, Youn-Kwae; Park, Kwang-Roh (February 2006). "An integrated home server for communication, broadcast reception, and home automation". IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics 52 (1): 104–109. doi:10.1109/TCE.2006.1605033. ISSN 0098-3063.

External links

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