Outsourcing Web Hosting

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As Web sites become more critical to the information infrastructure of companies, there is a growing need to provide high-quality , high-availability solutions. For example, a business selling something only online can't afford to have its site go down if at all possible. The serving of a site to an e-business is as critical as power and telephone services would be to a traditional business. This trend might be termed the "utilization" of the Web, as some might consider the health and delivery of their Web site as important as utilities such as power, phone, or water. Firms quickly discover that it is, in fact, quite expensive for companies to develop in-house the talents and facilities to run a mission-critical Web site. Similarly, a small firm typically does not have the resources to build and maintain a basic Web server facility. For these reasons, many firms have decided to outsource their Web facilities. Web server outsourcing comes in many flavors, but many of the differences revolve around two factors: whether you are sharing a machine with other sites and whether or not the machine being used is owned and managed by you or the outsource vendor. Each type of service will be discussed in turn , with special focus on their pros and cons.

Shared Hosting

The most basic form of hosting is called shared hosting and can range from free Web space added to other services, or in exchange for advertisement placement, to high-end application service providers (ASPs). At the low end, many Internet service providers will provide a directory on one of their Web servers with a few megabytes of disk space and possibly access to a few shared CGI programs and other tools that can be used on your Web site, such as simple form handling scripts, counters, or message boards . Usually, the URL for a site such as this is of the form http://www.isp.net/~enduser or http://www.isp.net/enduser. The hosting service lacks any customization such as your own domain name (yourname.com), and may impose limits on traffic delivered or particular technologies that can be used. The upside to these types of services is that they often are free and may be included in the cost of your Internet connection. There also are many vendors who will provide free Web serving in exchange for personal information for marketing purposes, or if you agree to show banner advertisements they book on your Web site. Whereas these services are appealing to home users or those looking to put up a site for fun, most will prefer other forms of shared hosting.

Shared host services that provide a domain name (www.yourname.com), often called a virtual server , generally are not free. These services also provide improved development facilities such as your own cgi-bin directory, statistics reports on site traffic, and other useful features, including shopping cart facilities. The costs for virtual server accounts on a shared system usually start around $20 or more per month. However, costs vary greatly and the more bandwidth your site consumes or the more special requests you have, the higher the possible cost-even if the machine is not dedicated to you. In fact, with complex shared hosting services, in which you might have access to content management systems or e-commerce facilities, the cost can literally skyrocket to hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month.

The major downside of shared Web hosting is that it involves using the shared server facilities of a hosting vendor. This means that the site will share Web server resources and bandwidth with other hosted sites. Server responsiveness can be significantly affected because of other hosted Web sites, particularly if those sites become popular. Furthermore, many customers are wary of sharing a server with others because security often cannot be guaranteed on these shared systems. Despite its drawbacks, shared hosting is very popular- mainly due to price.

Dedicated Hosting

As a result of the security and control issues with a shared server, many people opt to use a dedicated server. Dedicated servers are advantageous because you can customize your server with whatever tools or programs you like, and they are not affected by other sites as much. However, the trade-off is cost. Dedicated servers tend to be more expensive.

There are two forms of dedicated server hosting. In the first, the outsource vendor owns and maintains the equipment. This is called fully managed or dedicated hosting . In the other, you own and may even be responsible for maintaining your server. This usually is called colocation . With colocation, the vendor provides space at its facility, electrical power, a network connection, a certain amount of bandwidth, and very limited system management for your server (such as rebooting it if it crashes or maybe doing tape backups ). Colocation generally is cheaper than fully managed services, but for those who don't want to be bothered with the details of Web site delivery, colocation is not as great a deal as it might seem. The extra money paid for a fully managed service seems to be appreciated only when a machine fails in the middle of the night.

Dedicated hosting solutions are very attractive to those who want control, security, and power, but don't want to deal with many of the day-to-day issues of running a Web server. The major downside of these solutions is price. Services-provided top- tier hosting vendors might run many thousands of dollars per month based on the equipment and bandwidth required as well as any services added, such as security monitoring or sophisticated hosting requirements such as mirroring a site at multiple locations. However, if a business really relies on robust, fast Web site delivery, many of these vendors are a bargain even at what appears to be a high price. Consider the actual cost of maintaining a telephone company - grade equipment room filled with servers connected to numerous Internet providers being monitored twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week by capable system and network administrators, and you'll see that the cost might be well worth it. Consider that some of the largest content, search engine, and e-commerce sites don't run their own servers and you'll see that considering an outside hosting vendor is a good idea.

Companies looking to save money on Web delivery may find outsourcing very attractive, but some flexibility and security may have to be sacrificed. With less experienced hosting companies, this lack of control can be disastrous, resulting in hidden costs or problems with reliability. Those who want more control over their Web services should consider colocation or running their own servers locally. Of course, running your own servers introduces the potential headaches involved with setting up and administering your Web server continuously, which even for small sites might be a significant amount of work.

Tip  

A directory of commercial hosting vendors can be found at http://www.webhostlist.com.



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HTML & XHTML
HTML & XHTML: The Complete Reference (Osborne Complete Reference Series)
ISBN: 007222942X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 252
Authors: Thomas Powell

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