What is server hosting Everything you need to know

The market for dedicated server hosting has a value of USD 12 billion and expects to grow at a CAGR of 18.90% through the year 2029.

Why is the market so big? Well, mostly it is because data growth is through the roof.

TechJury recently released statistics that users create 1.145 trillion MB of data each day. Internet Live Stats say that people send 3,026,626 emails each second.

This leads to a good question that many people often ask: “What is server hosting?”

Server hosting is the answer to what humans can do with all the data and information they create. To discover more about what it is, how it works, the various model solutions, and more, keep reading.

This article will give you a ton of detail on server hosting, starting now. 

What Is a Server?

A device or computer that has a network and manages network resources is a server. By design, they will run something on the Internet. It could be an application or website.

It is a specialized kind of computer, though. Servers are engineered to operate 24 hours a day at a consistent performance level.

A server runs a type of operating system. It can be for one organization with what you would refer to as a “single-tenant server,” or resellers can offer what people call “shared servers.” 

You find that many web servers have dozens or even hundreds of servers on large racks in their data center. Here, they store many kinds of data. These servers will host data that other organizations can access.

A web host, or host, is a company that leases its servers to the hosting service provider.

What Is Server Hosting?

The management of hardware resources is server hosting. This is to ensure that content for emails, websites, and media files is accessible so that people across the world, and anyone with the Internet, can access it.

Both companies and individuals lease their server hosting from a provider of web services. It is a lot like virtual real estate. Email systems, websites, and other properties you have located on the Internet you can store and deliver with server hosting.

The web hosting provider has the responsibility to keep their servers connected and running on the Internet. This assures organizations that the end-users will receive communications from their requests and content.

Basic Responsibilities of Hosting Service Providers

Beyond keeping their servers running and connected, it is the responsibility of the hosting service provider to keep servers from overheating. When you run hardware around the clock all week long, there is a potential for overheating.

They must replace their hardware when they need to and provide basic customer service support to their clients.

Guide to Server Hosting

Companies big and small look to server hosting to help them store their workload. Server hosting helps organizations with everything from:

• Development
• Testing
• Application delivery
• Backup
• Disaster recovery

For a company to purchase and manage servers onsite, on its own, can be expensive and time-consuming. Server hosting offers many benefits, like faster application delivery and server deployment. It is a way to make businesses more flexible and agile.

If you consider how much time it would take your company to purchase, install, and configure an on-site server, this can take weeks. A cloud service provider can offer all this within minutes, speeding up operations and their objectives. If you are trying to bring a solution to the market for your customer and boost sales, this is a great way to deliver fast!

Foreseeable Costs

Further, you can budget better with predictable costs and there are no capital expenditures. On your own, you could pay thousands for hardware and a computer. This would be a depreciating asset.

Server hosting, however, offers a predictable monthly fee. The rate for what you will pay for usage covers not just storage, networking, CPU, and other IT resources, but it covers other things as well. It includes cooling, redundancy, power, and management of the infrastructure and hardware 24/7.

Scale Easier

With server hosting, scaling is simple, inexpensive, and responsive. If you do this on your own, you could end up over-provisioning your servers. This is how you can handle spikes in business.

When you cannot fully predict the future, unfortunately, even making an educated decision can still end up wasteful.

If you decide to wait and see, adding the physical server capacity as you go, can end up slowing down your operations. Not to mention, this can be expensive too.

Server hosting lets your organization scale up or down at any time. It dramatically reduces cost too, because all you need to do is change your usage cost or the subscription you pay. 

Types of Server Hosting

There are variations to the best server hosting for your organization. However, these are usually the three categories you will find.

1. Shared Server Hosting

This is the most cost-effective type of server hosting. It is also the most basic. A physical server is virtualized and available to over one tenant, sharing equal proportions.

If you have a web application with little traffic or a basic personal website, this is the type of server hosting for you. Shared server hosting works well when there are few technical requirements, limited performance, or few security requirements.

Tenants can only buy a small amount of space, so the server capacity has its limits. Websites cannot scale beyond these limits.

Shared server hosting is also susceptible to “noisy neighbors.” This means that another tenant could consume more than their share should be of resources without warning, which will cause challenges for you.

2. VPS Hosting

A virtual private server hosting is the next level of multi-level hosting. In this kind, tenants share some space. They do not share all the space, though.

You get a bit more control with a VPS hosting environment because each VPS will run on a separate operating system and its own applications. The VPS hosting environment will reserve a portion of its server’s resources.

This way, you get more control over:

• Guest operating systems
• System specifications
• Overall software stack

This is also the best server hosting option for scaling, as it is easy and affordable. Email servers, CRMs, eCommerce systems, and other applications are a perfect choice for VPS hosting.

3. Dedicated Server Hosting

This type is single-tenant hosting. It is an exclusive server hosting option where your company would have access to all its single hardware server resources. This is the greatest level of isolation you can get.

There are three dedicated hosting models to choose from.

Dedicated Host

This provides single-tenant access to the complete hardware server, including all software that is installed on it. With this model, you get the most transparency, hardware flexibility, and control.

Dedicated Instance

You get the same workload placement control and isolation. However, it is not on a specific machine. This means that if you must reboot, your information could go to a new physical machine.

The machine dedicates itself to your account, even though it is still a new machine, possibly even at a new location.

Bare Metal Server Hosting

This model has cloud-like characteristics. Bare metal server hosting offers billing in hourly increments along with providing high-end hardware. They even include GPUs or graphic processing units.

Server Hosting Tips

With all the various server hosting options on the market, how do you choose the best server hosting for you? When looking to set up server hosting, you will want to understand your needs. Based on your needs, this will help you weigh a few factors, leading to the best solution.

Upfront Cost and Ongoing

Basically, all types of server hosting will save you on IT costs versus having to run such a system yourself onsite. However, some server hosting models will lower your costs more than others will.

Shared hosting or VPS hosting will usually cost less than a dedicated server hosting will. Bare metal hosting could require that you pay a substantial fee upfront.

Performance

Do you need the ability to run high-performance applications? Do you have complex architectures? In this case, choose a dedicated server hosting solution.

This will help your organization avoid potential bottlenecks. It will also avoid the reliability risks that can occur with multi-tenant hosting models.

Flexibility and Scalability

If you do not have concerns about having a performance at the top level, and you are more interested in a solution with maximum flexibility, consider a VPS model. This will help your organization to scale workloads better.

Unlike dedicated server hosting, you get more versatility. You can shift workloads quickly to multiple virtual servers, making scaling easy. It uniquely solves the challenge of unpredictable surges in business.

Security, Data Privacy, and Compliance

A dedicated server hosting solution offers single-tenant isolation. It is the best option for sensitive workloads.

However, you find that more and more cloud hosting service providers are offering certified compliance for multi-tenant hosting. This includes regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, PCI, and more.

With dedicated hosting, though, you do not need to make sacrifices with scalability and workload to achieve better data privacy, security, and compliance.

Infrastructure Reliability

The physical nature of a dedicated server means one must keep them in a data center. When you work with a server hosting solution that has data centers, you also get redundant power sources.

This is to ensure that your servers are always up and running, even when the power grid could fail. If the power grid is down, backup power generators will kick in.

Around the Clock Support

If you have on-site servers, then you have your staff overseeing them. Staff is usually full-time, with specific work hours during the week. They probably have paid time off, sick time, and holidays.

What happens if you need server support on a holiday?

When you leverage the help of server hosting services, you do not need to worry if your staff is taking care of your servers. You have the assurance that no matter if you are sleeping, or if it is a holiday, your hardware has on-premise support 24/7.

Unique IP Address

If you choose to go with dedicated server hosting, each server will have a unique IP address. For a large e-commerce site, you will want a unique IP address, particularly for credit card processing.

Factors for Considering a Dedicated Server Provider

If you think that your business can benefit from the robust advantages that dedicated server providers can offer, you still need to decide on a provider that will be best for your business.

There are a few factors to help your team consider which is the best-dedicated server provider for your organization, which are:

• Hardware options
• Pricing
• Server location
• DDoS protection

The best provider of a dedicated server comes with DDoS protection. This is because hackers are running rampant, and it is only getting worse.

In fact, recent statistics show that the year 2021 saw 9.84 million DDoS attacks.

You want a provider who can help with managing malicious traffic, and who can block it. You need a dedicated server provider who can give you uninterrupted service and access.

Esited Web Hosting

What is server hosting? This is how you can grow your business, safely and at an affordable cost.

For the best server hosting, look no further than Esited. No matter how big or small your operations are, whether you are scaling or need a complex server, we can help.

Let us help you so you can focus on other big-ticket items, like growing profits. Call or email us right now. We love to hear from you!