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When should you Upgrade from Virtual Hosting to Dedicated Web Server Hosting?

Virtual hosting is an inexpensive way to gain access to the internet if you have relatively few pages viewed on your web site or files downloaded. However, it is very easy to outgrow virtual hosting. Ask yourself these questions:

If high volume on someone else’s site that shares my virtual hosting server slows down my web site, is it a major issue to me? You are one of many customers on the hosting server and your site can easily be affected by things beyond your control.

Do I need to add an application, such as a database to my site for my customers or employees? Because this hosting dedicated server has to meet the needs of many different companies the applications available are typically limited to email and similar basic applications.

Has the volume to my web site increased enough to slow down the response time? The available bandwidth on a virtual hosting server is quite limited. Growth is the leading cause of upgrading to dedicated web server hosting.

Are the services provided by my virtual hosting server critical to my business or could I easily overlook it if the server went down for a day or two?

Virtual hosting is much less reliable than dedicated hosting. You are taking a large risk being on a virtual hosting server if you can not afford your web server to be down.

Do I need easy access to experienced engineers to help me support my site? A virtual hosting company may have thousands of clients so it is difficult to get expert support.

If you answered yes to any of these questions it is probably time to seriously consider migrating to a dedicated web server hosting.

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What is Web Server Clustering ?

Web Server Clustering is where two or more web servers are configured to act as a single system. Web server clustering can improve the reliability and throughput of an Internet-based system. Troubleshooting and determining the root cause of problems also can be much simpler with web server clustering. However, clustering requires a great deal of technical knowledge if the system is to be properly set-up and maintained.

Advantages of Web Server Clustering

Clustering improves the reliability of Internet-based systems because it eliminates many of the single points of failure that are possible in a single web server system. For example, with web server clustering you could have two or more web servers supporting your Internet site. If one of the web servers fails your throughput might be impacted to some degree but the site would still be available on the second web server. In a single server system your site would be offline if this happened.

The throughput of a system can be vastly improved with clustering because you can put a load balancer in the system that will send traffic to the least busy resource. This also means clustering can handle huge swings in volume that may occur during the day.

Web server clustering also makes it much easier to troubleshoot systems if properly configured. Instead of having many different items loaded on one web server you can put similar programs on each web server so it is easier to determine if a problem is related to an application, database, bandwidth, etc.

Web Server Clustering Issues

The drawback to clustering is you have to know what you are doing. Web server clustering done right is easily scalable and easily maintained. Clustering configured wrong is a nightmare you don’t want to experience.

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Web Server Load balancing is a way of distributing the throughput or processing requirements evenly among multiple web servers in a clustered environment. Web Server Load balancing allows a computer system to easily handle large fluctuations in volume to web sites or databases. Without web server load balancing, one web server could be under utilized while at the same time another web server was being swamped by requests.

Web Server Load Balancing — Methods

Web Server Load balancing can be accomplished with software, hardware, or a combination of both. There are trade-offs to consider in how to implement web server load balancing, so it is best done by someone with web server load balancing expertise.

Web Server Load Balancing — Benefits

While web server load balancing improves the throughput and efficiency of a computer system, it does not improve reliability. Because of this, it is typical to combine failover capabilities with load balancing to improve the robustness of the system.

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Web Server hosting is where a server has only one customer on it and he controls all aspects of the server. This provides much greater flexibility than a virtual server, but the burden of administration must be handled by the customer or outsourced to a web server hosting provider.

Web Server Hosting — Control

You get much greater control with web server hosting as you do not share the web server with anyone else. No longer will the volume of another site on the server impact you. Web server hosting also allows you to add any application onto the server that you require, so you are no longer limited to just the standard email and other basic applications found on a virtual server.

Web Server Hosting — Reliability

Web Server hosting provides much greater reliability than virtual hosting. You no longer are exposed to the business practices of other companies sharing a virtual server. Plus you can ensure that security and upgrades are implemented since you control server administration with web server hosting.

Web Server Hosting — Support

Engineering support is also vastly improved with web server hosting. You will still need to select a qualified provider that has good technical skills, but with dedicated hosting the support engineer to customer ratio is much more attractive.

At some point your business requirements may out grow web server hosting on a single server and cause you to upgrade to clustered hosting, but web server hosting is a logical first step for most businesses. Web server hosting allows you to control how your server is used which improves speed, reliability and scalability.

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SQL Server Hosting

SQL server hosting is where a server that stores and manages databases via Structured Query Language (SQL) is located off site at a hosting company. The hosting company provides access to the Internet and leases the use of the SQL server.

Most often, the phrase “SQL server” refers to Microsoft’s version of SQL which is called either MS SQL or SQL Server. However, some people do use this term when referring to other versions of SQL such as MySQL or PostgreSQL.

SQL Server Hosting Support

The Internet has substantially increased the demand for SQL server hosting as more companies look to make their databases available to customers, vendors and employees. This also requires that the SQL server be available 24/7 so the choice of SQL server hosting provider is critical as well. Unfortunately trying to find a SQL server hosting provider that is qualified is difficult.

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