Hosting Services Demystified: Shared, Dedicated, Virtual

This is a guest post by Matt Whitted, Hosting Director of CybrHost. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Miva Merchant.

In the early days of the web, hosting packages were simple. You’d have two or three packages available, primarily based on how many megabytes (not gigabytes) of storage and bandwidth you wanted. Advanced features might include web statistics or a basic “hit counter.” The dynamic and resource intensive web applications of today simply didn’t exist.

Over the past few years, the hosting market has taken a new shape. As software has increased functionality and resources, such as computer hardware and Internet connectivity, have become substantially less expensive, hosting options have become more complex. Most web hosts now offer a dizzying array of customizable attributes.

Most hosting options can be broken down into three categories: Shared, Dedicated, and Virtual. Every option has strengths and weaknesses, and the pros and cons of each may even vary between hosts.

Shared Hosting

In the most popular form of web hosting—Shared Hosting—your website shares resources with other customers on the same server. Hosts can squeeze anywhere from dozens to many hundreds of customers on a single server, making it usually the least expensive hosting option.

As modern computer hardware performance has increased, hosts have been able to increase shared hosting density dramatically. “Density”—the number of customer sites (e.g. websites, e-commerce stores, etc.) per server—is a key aspect in shared hosting packages. How many websites does a host put on a single server? How many of those are high traffic or are resource intensive? How powerful is the hardware hosting the shared sites?

Hosts generally do not share this information, but it’s safe to assume that hosts offering pricing for just a few dollars per month operate at a much greater density than the higher priced options. They are able to provide lower prices because they provide fewer resources to each customer. In contrast, hosts that focus on a specific industry or a special type of hosting—such as e-commerce—will generally operate at a lower density. Shared hosting with such a provider generally costs more than a high density host, but typically provides better site performance for their customers.

Dedicated Hosting Servers

At the other end of the spectrum is the Dedicated Server—your server is dedicated solely to you and your websites. If you need real horsepower, or you want to completely ensure that other websites are not touching any of your resources, dedicated servers offer the most power and flexibility. Density is no longer an issue—the entire server and all its resources belong completely to you.

Dedicated servers are generally priced by the actual configuration of the server. How much memory do you need? How big a processor? Finding the right package is crucial. If you undersize your server, your site’s performance will suffer. If you oversize, you may be paying for a lot more than you are using. It can be more difficult to change between server configurations, so it’s important to ensure the solution you select fits within a balance of current and future needs.

Dedicated servers may be “Managed” or “Unmanaged” with many flavors in between. Who is responsible for applying security patches and maintaining the underlying operating system? Is the server automatically backed up? How often? What levels of redundancy are available? If the server goes down at 2 am, how is the outage handled?

Reliability may be another issue. What level of redundancy exists? The most common parts to fail in a server are disk drives and power supplies. Both can be made redundant in modern servers—usually at an additional cost. Still, no server can guarantee 100% uptime, and if you have a dedicated server outage, all sites on that server will be out simultaneously.

Private and Virtual Hosting Servers

Between the extremes of “Shared” and “Dedicated” servers lie virtual servers. These are usually referred to as VPS (“Virtual Private Servers”) and VDS (“Virtual Dedicated Servers”). These hosting solutions use virtualization technology to provide an environment similar to a dedicated server without requiring a dedicated machine. The specific (and constantly evolving) technologies popular in the hosting industry make these the most difficult to compare. The key difference lies in how computer resources are allocated and at what level your site or server is separated from other sites and servers.

Most Virtual “Private” Server offerings are based on “containers.” Your site’s application processes (generally the web server application) will usually run separately from the processes of your virtual neighbors, but your physical memory and processor will be shared.

Virtual “Dedicated” Servers, as the name suggests, usually allocate fixed and dedicated resources (disk, memory, and processor) to your website. The benefit provided by Virtual Dedicated Servers is generally similar to that of real dedicated servers.

One advantage of a virtual server is the increased control and redundancy available. For example, some types of virtualization can automatically recover from failures of the underlying hardware, allowing your virtual server to be automatically moved around the host’s available hardware resources in the event of a failure.

Another advantage is that most hosts will accommodate your changing business needs. As your site grows, it is much easier to add additional resources to a virtual server with minimal, or no, site downtime.

Given the advantages, there are still potential disadvantages to virtual server solutions. Like shared hosting, virtual offerings can suffer based on the density of virtual servers per physical host. Here are a few questions you should ask your host before you decide if their specific virtual offering is a good fit for you:

• What resources are truly dedicated to me, and what resources are still shared among other customers on the server?
• What advantages does your virtual hosting product offer over shared hosting? Over dedicated hosting?
• What type of redundancy and high availability does your virtual hosting product offer? Is it an automated or a manual process?

So, which is right for me?

The answer varies greatly between any two websites. I have seen e-commerce sites generating over a million a year in revenue on a shared hosting package, and I have seen smaller e-commerce businesses that go with dedicated servers from the beginning. Unfortunately there is no universal answer.

What is most important to you? Is performance your top concern? Is it more important to have the highest possible level of reliability? And most importantly, what is your price range?

If you are looking for the highest possible performance, a dedicated server is almost always going to offer the fastest speeds. Of course, a dedicated server is also generally the most expensive option.

Is reliability most important to you? While a dedicated server can be configured with multiple levels of redundancy, some virtual server offerings can “cluster” your site automatically between multiple physical hosts, making your site even more reliable than a dedicated server.

Is price crucial to you? Shared hosting is almost always the least expensive option. If you are operating a simple website or do not receive a lot of traffic, this may be the perfect option. As your business grows, you are likely to outgrow shared hosting as well. A virtual private or virtual dedicated server may provide the dedicated features you need and still be within budget.

Above all, I personally believe the most important factor is finding a web host you can trust and grow with. Providers who specialize in e-commerce shopping cart platforms will be best equipped to help you find the right technology and the right package for your needs.