Virtual vs Dedicated Hosting: Which Type Do You Need?
Many site owners believe that the next logical step after outgrowing a shared hosting solution is to invest in their own dedicated server. This is a possible solution, and is necessary for many particularly large or complex sites. However, for small to medium size websites, a virtual web hosting solution may prove to be the ideal solution.
Virtual Hosting
Less expensive than a dedicated server, virtual hosting is an excellent and relatively inexpensive solution for those who own websites that are too large for a shared hosting solution, but don’t really need their own dedicated server. It is fine to have a smaller site on its own dedicated server, but it is expensive to do so. Virtual web hosting provides more flexibility than shared web hosting, and provides many of the advantages associated with a dedicated server without the expense.
The expense associated with owning and operating a dedicated server can be several hundred dollars each month. Virtual hosting solutions, on the other hand, tend to cost between $35 to $100 per month, depending on the resources needed by your particular site. Pricing for virtual hosting is a function of the amount of disk space required to adequately host your site, the quantity of bandwidth allocated to you, and the number of domain names provided to you as part of your agreement.
With virtual hosting, you will subscribe to the services of a web hosting company. The hosting company likely owns several dedicated servers, and they lease space on their servers to owners small and medium sized websites that do not need the full capacity of their own server. When you use a virtual hosting solution, your site will be placed on a server alongside other small to medium sized website with similar server resource requirements.
Security is an overriding concern when it comes to selecting a web hosting provider. Of course, there is no completely foolproof security system, and even the most secure site can experience security breeches that can put your site at risk. Being exposed to potential virus and hacker attacks is, unfortunately, an inherent aspect of doing business on the Internet.
With that said, it is vital to verify that the web hosting company you select does have a solid security system in place and that the company is committed to ongoing mitigation of risk when it comes to security. Another important consideration when selecting a virtual web hosting solution is to verify that there is sufficient bandwidth for both your site and the others located on the shared server.
The last thing you need is for your customers and prospective customers to experience delays with pages loaded on your site because the other tenants on your virtual server are using all of the bandwidth. It is also important to find out whether or not the virtual host allows non-public directories to be accessed. If your site holds sensitive data that should not be accessible to Internet surfers, make sure that you select a hosting company that does not allow non-public directories to be accessed.
Dedicated Hosting
When you use dedicated web hosting, you are the only site on your dedicated server. Dedicated hosting is necessary for large or particularly complex websites. Websites that need a lot of bandwidth to function effectively are good candidates for dedicated web hosting.
Other sites that need the benefits of dedicated hosting include many e-commerce websites, those with very high site visitors, and those for which security issues are an overriding concern. There are many benefits associated with dedicated hosting, with the only real drawback being the cost.
The size and complexity of your website may dictate that dedicated web hosting is the only viable option for your site. If you own a smaller site, it is a good idea to look at the benefits associated with dedicated hosting and compare them to the cost savings you will realize from going with a virtual web hosting option. Such a comparison will enable you to make a sound decision. If you decide that dedicated hosting is the best solution for you, the next step will be to decide if you need managed web hosting or unmanaged web hosting.
If you have a full staff of expert technical support professionals, unmanaged hosting may be your best option. Unmanaged hosting less expensive than managed hosting, but the savings are real only if you have someone on staff to handle the technical support requirements of the site. Managed web hosting solutions offer varying degrees of technical support services. With managed hosting, the web hosting company’s technical support staff takes care of the routing maintenance and technical updates associated with keeping your site up and running.
When you select a dedicated hosting solution, you are not sharing space with other tenants. Your site enjoys all of the bandwidth and processing speed capabilities of your web server. Websites housed on dedicated servers typically run faster than those that operated on shared or virtual servers, although with smaller sites the speed improvement is not likely to be very noticeable.
With a dedicated server, you have more freedom in managing your website. With a dedicated server, there is no limit to the number of domain names you may operate. This is a great benefit for those who own or operate multiple websites, as they will be able to host all of their sites on the same dedicated server. You are also free to customize the server for your specific needs.
The server settings can be customized to meet the specific needs of your site, which will optimize your site’s performance. There are also security benefits associated with using a dedicated server. Because dedicated servers can only be accessed by the owner of the site and the web hosting company, there is less risk of security breaches.
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This entry was posted on Monday, May 24th, 2010 at 10:24 am and is filed under Dedicated Hosting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
9 Responses to “Virtual vs Dedicated Hosting: Which Type Do You Need?”
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I agree with David except he left out one thing, which is speed. If your server resides in your building, you're going to be able to access it at the speed of your local network, often 100Mb or even 1Gb/s. If the server is hosted remotely, you access the files over the internet. a typical broadband internet connection is perhaps 1-5Mb/s. So in the best case scenario access to the hosted server is going to be 1/20th as fast as access to the local server.
If you're only storing and retrieving very small files and you need to do it from many remote locations, hosted is a good option. If you're mostly working from one location and use the server any more than a little bit, a local server is your best bet.
Hope this helps, and feel free to check out http://www.inovagent.com/file_servers for more information on local file servers.
Good Question
This is the most dedicated web hosting today on the planet SBI. It helps you build from stores to information websites.
ALL web hosts offer you space, bandwidth, and some functionalities but they don't give a crap if your business succeeds or not. SiteSell offers many tools and stuff to make your website succeed. I am toooo lazy to explain everything myself so just follow these links. Whatever you do take the video tour) When you are ready to buy please follow one of these links, I get a commision;-) You won't regret it I use it and it's the bomb and there 30 day money back guarentee. You won't loose anything.
In my personal opinion, that would be godaddy. They host even the big boys you see out there. Gice me a holar back for more info if interested.
I prefer http://secure.hostgator.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=7affiliate for dedicated web hosting.
$174 a month
Intel Xeon 3040 (Dual Core)
1 GB DDR Memory
250 GB Hard Drive
1,500 GB Bandwidth
5 Dedicated IPs
Unlimited Disk Space
Unlimited Bandwidth
Free SiteBuilder (Try Demo)
Easy Control Panel (Try Demo)
4,500 Free Website Templates
99.9% Uptime Guarantee
45 Day Money Back Guarantee
24/7/365 Technical Support
However, if you don't need dedicated hosting you should go with http://www.webhostingpad.com/5494.html which is more affordible. They offer free wordpress auto install. They have plans that start as low as $1.99 a month and offer a 30 day money back guarantee!! They have web designing programs that are easy to use and look very professional.
Free Domain name
24/7 security server monitoring
Advanced Firewall
OS Commerce Shopping Cart
Password Protected Directories
Open PGP/GPG Encryption
Many people have this question where they need to understand the concept of dedicated hosting and managed dedicated hosting.
A dedicated server is a server that is leased or purchased by a client. Unlike shared hosting, it will be only the owner of that server who will host websites on that server. That is, that server wont be shared with any other clients, except the websites hosted by the owner of that server.
Most web hosting companies offer 100% root / Administrator access to the dedicated server, i.e the owner of the server will be able to access the dedicated server with root privilages.
Now, its upto the client that they purchase managed services while trying to signup with web hosting company or manage the server on their own. Managing the server includes various tasks such as initial server setup, server security including firewall and anti-bruteforce application installation, OS optimization, application optimization, service monitoring, 3rd party application installations etc.
If the client himself has good technical knowldge of managing a server, he can just purchase the server without managed services. Such a server is called UNMANAGED dedicated server.
If the client is not sure about technical issues related to server or does not have enough time to manage his/her own server, he can either purchase managed services from his web hosting provider OR hire a 3rd party server management company who specialize in server management support.
There are various companies that offer managed and unmanaged servers such as http://www.webhost.uk.net, http://www.infrenion.com etc. Going with a managed server is sometimes feasible instead of managing the server on your own as in such case the web hosting company techs are more acquainted with managing the server more efficiently than a third party entity.
Most web hosting companies offer only basic server support under their MANAGED server segments, however there are few companies such as http://www.webhost.uk.net that take complete care of the server incluing server monitoring and reboot requests.
Hope this helps..
As far as I know, The Planet and EV1 (now The Planet) along with SoftLayer and Fast Servers.net I would say are the biggest and the best in the industry.
Take a look at http://www.webhostingtalk.com and look in the Dedicated Hosting section. It's a VERY active forum and I'm sure you'll find your answer just by searching!
Godaddy web hosting sucks . I moved to my websites to http://aplis.net/ . I do not know whether it would suit you.
Although your specific dedicated server hosting needs may be unique in a few ways, generally, one can make a decision on a dedicated web server provider by considering the following things:
Data Transfer Rates
Data transfer will need to be determined based on the amount of information that will be downloaded, as well as the type of content a site will be sharing (general text vs. high resolution graphics and multimedia).
Platforms
The two most common systems available are Windows based servers versus some flavor of UNIX (Linux and Solaris). Windows is historically more expensive, but is generally regarded as more user-friendly, especially with the ubiquitous presence of Windows-based pc's and administrators. Linux, on the other hand, is less expensive to install, but harder to maintain, as a steeper learning curve exists for those unfamiliar with it.
First, the platform should be conducive to the coding in which the website and necessary applications are developed. Next, since administration of the dedicated server will be done by the subscriber, the necessary skill base to support the platform must be in place. Commands and administration techniques are definitely platform-specific.
Monitoring
Dedicated server monitoring works to prevent service interruptions. The web host will provide a service that can, at a pre-set frequency, check a website to see downtime.
Automation
Although dedicated web servers may require a greater degree of skill, certain dedicated server hosting companies may offer software that will automate common procedures, thus lessening the high level knowledge necessary to maintain servers and implement new services.
Data Backup
Some dedicated server providers assist the web hosting subscriber with data backups.
Scalability
Dedicated server hosting providers should be able to account for major growth.
Service Level Agreements
More dedicated server hosts are publishing their SLA's, which thoroughly documents what they will do in exchange for what the customer is responsible for. For instance, some dedicated server hosts are offering features such as: 100% uptime guarantees, unlimited live answer technical phone-based support, free upgrades of patches, hot-fixes, etc. Try to visit this website for more information: