Many organizations and individuals use internet-hosting services to serve content to the Internet. These services run internet servers and offer various types of services. Most common type of hosting is web hosting. The hosting service providers mainly offer a combination of services. Generic type of Internet hosting services provide a server to the clients where they can run anything they want and have an internet connection with good upstream bandwidth.
Complex Managed Hosting service applies to both physical dedicated servers and virtual servers. But many companies choose hybrid hosting solution which is a combination of physical and virtual servers. The key difference between standard and complex managed hosting service is the level of administrative and engineering support that the customer has to pay for. The service provider has control over most of the management, including security, memory, storage, and IT support.
In a Virtual Private Server, virtualization technology is used in order to allow multiple logical servers to run on a single physical server.
The most expensive one, colocation facilities provide the Internet connection, uninterrupted power, and climate control, but allow the client to administer his own system.
In Cloud hosting the user only pays for the system time and space used and the capacity can be quickly scaled up or down according to the changes in computing requirements.
Dedicated server hosting service is also known as managed server hosting service. Here the hosting service provider owns and manages the machine but gives full control to the client. Management of the server includes monitoring the server so as to ensure the server continues to work effectively, installation of security patches and other types of technical support.
The service provider leases an entire server to the client which is not shared with anyone else. This type of service is better than shared hosting service, as organizations can have full control of the server including choice of operating system, hardware.
In some cases, a dedicated server offers less overhead and a larger return on investment. Dedicated servers are mostly housed in data centers, which are similar to colocation facilities. This gives access to redundant power sources and HVAC systems to the clients. But unlike colocation, the server hardware is mainly owned by the service provider and in most cases they will provide help for operating systems or applications.
Using a dedicated server hosting service gives the benefits of high performance, security, email stability, and control. But it is mostly used by websites that receive a large amount of traffic due to its high price compared to others.
The price and availability are the key factors that determine which operating systems are offered on dedicated servers. Open source operating systems like Linux and Unix are provided to the customers at no extra cost.
Commercial operating systems include Microsoft Windows server, Red Hat Enterprise, a commercial version of Linux. Many other operating systems are available from the open source community like CentOS, Fedora Core, Debian and many other Linux distributions or BSD systems FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD.
The choice of any of these operating systems also depends on the level of management offered with a particular dedicated server-hosting plan. Operating system support is always provided by the commercial operating systems.
The support mainly includes updates to the core system which gives the latest security fixes, patches and system wide vulnerability resolutions. It also includes kernel upgrades, service packs, application updates, and security patches. All these keep the server secure and safe. So an operating system update and support reduces the burden of server management from the owner of the dedicated server.
Dedicated server hosting services primarily differ from managed hosting services in the aspect that managed hosting services offer more support. So a managed hosting service is targeted towards clients with less technical knowledge. But a dedicated server hosting service is suitable for web development and system administrator professionals.
Till date no standards have been set to clearly define the level of management of dedicated server providers. This means that every service provider will define them according to their own. Some dedicated server providers defines fully managed as having a web based control panel while others define it as having a dedicated team of engineers readily available to handle all server and network related problems.
Most of the dedicated server hosting providers provides the following types of server management support:
This is because of the rogue IRC users that may trigger DDoS attacks against the provider. This may overwhelm their servers, resulting in poor quality of service for all customers. Adult content is also not allowed by many providers. Because it may be a question of legal issues or consume large amounts of bandwidth.
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In a Virtual Private Server, virtualization technology is used in order to allow multiple logical servers to run on a single physical server.
The most expensive one, colocation facilities provide the Internet connection, uninterrupted power, and climate control, but allow the client to administer his own system.
In Cloud hosting the user only pays for the system time and space used and the capacity can be quickly scaled up or down according to the changes in computing requirements.
Dedicated server hosting service is also known as managed server hosting service. Here the hosting service provider owns and manages the machine but gives full control to the client. Management of the server includes monitoring the server so as to ensure the server continues to work effectively, installation of security patches and other types of technical support.
The service provider leases an entire server to the client which is not shared with anyone else. This type of service is better than shared hosting service, as organizations can have full control of the server including choice of operating system, hardware.
In some cases, a dedicated server offers less overhead and a larger return on investment. Dedicated servers are mostly housed in data centers, which are similar to colocation facilities. This gives access to redundant power sources and HVAC systems to the clients. But unlike colocation, the server hardware is mainly owned by the service provider and in most cases they will provide help for operating systems or applications.
Using a dedicated server hosting service gives the benefits of high performance, security, email stability, and control. But it is mostly used by websites that receive a large amount of traffic due to its high price compared to others.
The price and availability are the key factors that determine which operating systems are offered on dedicated servers. Open source operating systems like Linux and Unix are provided to the customers at no extra cost.
Commercial operating systems include Microsoft Windows server, Red Hat Enterprise, a commercial version of Linux. Many other operating systems are available from the open source community like CentOS, Fedora Core, Debian and many other Linux distributions or BSD systems FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD.
The choice of any of these operating systems also depends on the level of management offered with a particular dedicated server-hosting plan. Operating system support is always provided by the commercial operating systems.
The support mainly includes updates to the core system which gives the latest security fixes, patches and system wide vulnerability resolutions. It also includes kernel upgrades, service packs, application updates, and security patches. All these keep the server secure and safe. So an operating system update and support reduces the burden of server management from the owner of the dedicated server.
Dedicated server hosting services primarily differ from managed hosting services in the aspect that managed hosting services offer more support. So a managed hosting service is targeted towards clients with less technical knowledge. But a dedicated server hosting service is suitable for web development and system administrator professionals.
Till date no standards have been set to clearly define the level of management of dedicated server providers. This means that every service provider will define them according to their own. Some dedicated server providers defines fully managed as having a web based control panel while others define it as having a dedicated team of engineers readily available to handle all server and network related problems.
Server management may include some or all of the following aspects:
- Operating system updates
- Application updates
- Server monitoring
- SNMP hardware monitoring
- Application monitoring
- Application management
- Technical support
- Firewall services
- Anti-spam software
- Antivirus updates
- Security audits
- DDoS protection and mitigation
- Intrusion detection
- Backups and restoration
- Disaster recovery
- DNS hosting service
- Load balancing
- Database administration
- Performance tuning
- Software installation and configuration
- User management
- Programming consultation
Most of the dedicated server hosting providers provides the following types of server management support:
- Fully managed – this involves monitoring, software updates, reboots, security patches, and operating system upgrades
- Managed – this includes medium level of management, monitoring, updates, and a limited amount of support
- Self managed – this includes regular monitoring and some maintenance. Most operations and tasks are done by the customers.
- Unmanaged – very little or no involvement by service provider. All maintenance, upgrades, patches and security are done by customers.
This is because of the rogue IRC users that may trigger DDoS attacks against the provider. This may overwhelm their servers, resulting in poor quality of service for all customers. Adult content is also not allowed by many providers. Because it may be a question of legal issues or consume large amounts of bandwidth.