Dedicated, Shared and Virtual Servers

Whatever type of website or application you're looking to get hosted online, there'll be a few factors that you'll be most likely to be interested in, namely security and reliability. These factors can usually be attained simply by going with a reputable company that will guarantee an adequate adherence to these needs and will see your site up and running without too many problems.


However, there are other aspects of web hosting that need to be considered which could affect your website, the amount of money you're spending on it, as well as the amount of control that you, have over its operation. Hosting comes in several forms and can be confusing to somebody coming across them for the first time. What exactly are the differences between dedicated servers, shared servers and virtual servers? While the clues for some may be in the names, it's still not very easy to hazard much a guess at what makes each unique.


Perhaps you're just starting out and looking for a small deal to get your website off the ground until you've found your audience and have a good idea of your traffic volume. If you don't think your site is going to be too busy to begin with, you might want to consider a shared server. This is a cost-effective solution that will see your website sharing its hosting with other sites, securely, and running smoothly as a low-volume task. However, your site may quickly outgrow a shared server or you may want to receive a higher level of support or greater flexibility, in which case you should consider another type.


A dedicated server gives you a far greater amount of server space to utilise - the entire machine, in fact - and is a good option for high-volume websites that need constant attention. You can use this type of hosting and receive managed support, where your hosting provider provides full or partial support for your server, or unmanaged. Often, you will have full root access to install whatever you will require on you dedicated server and the provider will manage everything up to the application layer.


If you find a dedicated server a little too much for your site as it is currently, a virtual server is a virtualised partition of a dedicated server that is capable of running as if it was an autonomous server, with no particular reliance on the original machine - that is, it can run its own apps, operating system and be rebooted without the physical server being affected. Virtual servers can be operated like dedicated servers but can be far less costly and, as a bonus, eco-friendly too