Main Types of Servers Used in Web Hosting

Having your own, or your business’ online presence, through a website has many benefits to offer; which is why the number of websites that are present over the Internet is increasing steadily. Availing the service of web hosting from a professional web hosting service provider is an indispensable step in making your site accessible to online site visitors. Let us elaborate on how this service of web hosting is made available to you, as a website owner, and provide information on different types of web servers that are used in website hosting.

How Does Web Hosting Work?

Website Hosting or web hosting is a service that needs to be availed by every website owner for ensuring that his/her site is seamlessly accessible to online site visitors. This service is provided by web hosting companies and can be availed from these service providers by opting for an appropriate web hosting plan, among the many plans offered by them. Every web hosting plan is priced differently from the others and offers features that ensure the uninterrupted online availability of your hosted site.

The service of web hosting makes your site accessible to those browsing the Internet, by providing a platform where your sites’ files get stored and processed on and subsequently get retrieved from by the browsers of the site visitors’ Internet-connected devices. If you are wondering about the storage facility provided by web hosting service providers, then it is the web servers that are being referred to here.

A web server is a type of server that is used in web hosting for not only storing the files of websites but also for processing those files, based on the incoming requests that are received by the servers from browsers of site visitors. How does this work? The content of any site is included in its files. These files are stored on the web servers of web hosting companies, post availing the service of website hosting. Each time that a site visitor wants to visit a website, its browser sends request for the same to the web server hosting the site. The web server receives this request and locates the files in its storage. These files are then processed and delivered over the Internet to the browser of the site visitor that had requested for the web page. In this way, the website becomes accessible to the site visitor.

As we know, there are different types of websites, such as sites of organizations, online stores, blogging sites, etc. In a similar way, there are different types of web hosting solutions as well to cater to the different hosting requirements of different types of sites. The main types of hosting solutions for hosting a website are Shared Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, VPS Hosting and WordPress Hosting. Let us describe these in brief, next.

• Shared Hosting – In it, multiple websites are stored on a single web server and these sites share the server space and the server resources among themselves.

• Dedicated Hosting – In Dedicated Hosting, a single website is hosted on a single web server to ensure the availability of dedicated server resources to that website.

• WordPress Hosting – This type of web hosting service is meant for the enhanced performance of WordPress sites, as it caters to the specific hosting requirements of such sites.

• VPS Hosting – Virtualization Technology is used in VPS Hosting to virtually partition a physical web server, for creating the environment of a dedicated server on that physical server space, which is shared by multiple sites.

Next, we shall touch on the topic of different types of web servers and the way these are used in different types of website hosting solutions for rendering websites accessible.

The Three Main Types of Web Servers

Web servers are at the core of the service of website hosting, as these are used to host websites that are meant to be made seamlessly accessible to online site visitors. Just as there are different types of web hosting solutions, which have been mentioned before, there are different types of web servers. The main types of web servers are-

• Shared web servers

• Dedicated web servers

• Virtual Private Servers (VPS)

The functioning of the service of Shared Hosting relies on shared web servers. On the other hand, dedicated servers are used for hosting websites in Dedicated Hosting. Last but not least, Virtual Private Servers (VPS) are meant for offering the service of VPS Hosting to the websites which are hosted on these servers.

The purpose of all these types of web hosting services is the same, which is to host the files of websites in order to render these sites accessible over the Internet. The difference is in the way the files are hosted on each of these servers. Let us discuss that at length, next.

A shared web server is used to host the files of multiple sites. This proves to be an economical web hosting solution for those that have less budget for availing the service of website hosting. Its disadvantage is that it cannot provide dedicated server resources to the hosted sites. That is because the server resources get shared among the sites that are hosted on the same web server. This limits the server resource availability to the individual sites and often impacts site speed, security and performance. Shared web servers can cater to the hosting requirements of sites which are not resource-intensive, such as simple sites, blogging sites, sites that get less traffic and sites of small businesses. Availing server space on such web servers is not an ideal hosting option for sites that have strict requirement for speed, performance and security, as the shared server resources are not capable of fulfilling this requirement.

Both, dedicated servers and VPS are able to deliver dedicated server resources to the hosted sites and can perfectly enhance the speed, security and performance of such sites. That is why these types of servers are preferred over shared servers by those that have the budget to avail these and/or need dedicated server resources for the effective functioning of their sites. Usually, dedicated servers and VPS are availed by resource-intensive sites and big businesses for their sites, as well as by online stores and sites that get a lot of traffic. How do these two types of servers provide dedicated server resources? That is explained next.

A dedicated web server hosts a single site and provides dedicated server resources to it. A VPS offers dedicated server resources to each of the multiple hosted sites on a single physical web server that has been virtually divided into many, isolated, independent, private servers.

In a nutshell, the main types of web servers, which are shared servers, dedicated servers and VPS, differ from each other, owing to their ability or inability to provide dedicated server resources to the hosted sites. Shared servers host multiple sites and offer shared server resources, whereas dedicated servers and VPS are configured to offer dedicated server resources to the hosted sites.

HTS Hosting, the best website hosting company, as well as the best cloud hosting company, offers different types of web hosting solutions through its affordably-priced web hosting plans that constantly deliver high uptime, fast speed, powerful security and peak site performance. The fully-secure and fast VPS, shared and dedicated web servers of HTS Hosting operate from its state-of-the-art data centre to ensure the best hosting experience for your site and its seamless online availability.

Source:https://www.htshosting.org/knowledge-base/web-hosting/336/main-types-of-servers-used-in-web-hosting