Tags: Web Hosting / Web Server

Cloud Hosting

- Tuesday, 4 November 2014 5 Comments

What is Cloud Hosting?

Are you looking for hosting that's flexible, scalable and affordable? Have you outgrown traditional shared hosting, but aren't ready for (or don't want to bother with) purchasing or leasing your own server? Then cloud hosting might be for you.

Cloud hosting combines the powerful resources of Virtual Private Server hosting with the scalability and versatility of cloud computing. By virtualizing your Web server and drawing on the pooled resources of a group of computers, cloud hosting is an increasingly popular choice for business sites of all sizes.

How Does Cloud Hosting Work?

While shared hosting is like living in an apartment with many other tenants, and dedicated hosting is like moving into your own home, cloud hosting is something different altogether. When you choose a cloud hosting plan from your provider, you're actually paying to use a part of the pooled resources of hundreds, or even thousands, of machines in the larger network. Your Web server, applications, and data files are stored (as multiple copies to provide redundancy) across these systems, which collectively make up the cloud.

Cloud hosting is efficient and more affordable than traditional dedicated hosting because the demand for resources is distributed across so many machines. This also means that you can scale your plan on the fly to meet demand. So, for example, if your site is currently experiencing high traffic due to popular files or increased eCommerce activity, with cloud hosting you can simply scale up the bandwidth and processing to match the demand. And since many cloud hosting plans are "pay as you go," you're not stuck paying for a full month at a higher rate for only a few hours or days of increased resource use.

The nature of cloud computing means that managed hosting and advanced configuration features are also included with many plans. Maintenance and upgrades are also generally included, since there's no single "server" to update or maintain.

Cloud hosting is more expensive than most shared hosting options (as well as some Virtual Private Server (VPS) plans), but for those who have outgrown the capabilities of shared hosting, the configurability, scalability, and versatility afforded by cloud hosting plans makes them a smart choice.

Cloud Computing Overview

Cloud computing is decentralized, multi-machine network computing. More simply, this means that all the applications, websites, and data that would normally reside on a single machine are instead spread across a large network of machines on the Internet. This provides greater security, power, and reliability with:

Built-in redundancy: In the cloud, files of all kinds are automatically backed up and continuously updated, so even if one copy fails, becomes corrupted, or is deleted, another copy can be accessed by the system right away. This improves uptime and helps prevent site crashes or failures.

Isolated computing environments: Cloud servers run in their own memory space, independently of any central operating system. This makes them more secure and also means that your sensitive files and applications are kept separate from not only other servers in the same cloud, but from the Internet at large. Firewalls and other security options can be adjusted on the fly to enhance security or simplify access.

Dedicated resources: Cloud computing gives greater flexibility than any other platform for on-demand upgrades. Resources can be allocated as needed to meet increased demand, and because you only pay for the resources you use, a cloud server can actually save you money over other time.

Content Delivery Network (CDN): A CDN pre-loads static content (e.g., non-interactive page elements, images and text that are changed only occasionally or not at all, logos, etc.) to speed up your site's load time for visitors. Many cloud hosting providers rely on a CDN as a basic part of their file management system, since pre-loading also speeds up application elements and their own internal pages.

Get an overview of how companies can benefit from using cloud computing in the shifting online marketplace:

How to Set up Cloud Hosting

Setting up a hosting account is a fairly uniform process, regardless of level or plan type.

The first step is to find a host with the features you need, at a price your budget will support. Your needs are unique, and this process can take some time as you narrow down your choices. Remember, publishers' or providers' ideas of what matters often differ from the specific features, support options, and configuration you want and need.

Remember, too, that because most cloud hosting packages are pay-as-you-go, you'll want to have a good idea of the approximate resources your site will need each month, plus a "cushion" for surges in bandwidth and processing power.

After finding a host that suits your needs, it's simply a matter of signing up with your new provider, linking your domain name to your new account, and then uploading or building your website.

How to Choose Cloud Hosting

You probably know of at least a few hosting providers, either through advertising or from friends and associates. A quick Internet search for "Cloud Hosting," "Cloud Servers" and the like can quickly turn up dozens of additional choices.

Most cloud hosting providers list their features in easy-to-navigate tables on their sites. This simplifies evaluating plans, comparing features, and toting up your estimated hosting costs. Find a few options that have the features you want and need, then pick the one that provides the most bang for your buck.

Once you've decided on a host, it's simply a matter of signing up for their service, and paying the fee. Unlike shared, dedicated and VPS plans, cloud hosting plans are usually based on usage, so it may take you a few months to find your average usage, especially if your business is growing rapidly.

Benefits of Cloud Hosting

Choosing a cloud hosting plan gives you:

• More advanced features and tools than shared or traditional Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting
• Guaranteed server resources (including CPU, RAM, and bandwidth)
• No single point of failure; fully redundant data storage means additional protection against downtime
• Flexibility and scalability to meet increased resource demands
• Lower prices than traditional dedicated hosting options
• The ability to create sites ranging from basic blogs to powerful eCommerce or Web reseller hosting sites

Cloud hosting may also save you money in the long run because you don't have to purchase or upgrade any of the hardware, software, or infrastructure necessary to maintain your server (although usage fees can stack up quickly if your site experiences extended traffic surges).

Managed Hosting

Due to its decentralized nature, cloud hosting often comes with managed hosting built into the plan. Managed hosting shifts responsibility for software and hardware maintenance to the host, including:

• Software updates
• Firewall maintenance and management
• Backup and disaster recovery services
• Traffic monitoring and intrusion detection

Since your Web server is technically stored on an array of machines throughout the cloud, you won't need to worry about physical upgrades. However, managed hosting frees you (or your tech staff) up to attend to more pressing matters, like site development or running your business. Some cloud hosting plans include additional security and storage options (at the same per-use rate, or, for applications and monitoring, a flat additional fee) and more robust support options (e.g., 24/7 phone support, a dedicated support representative for your account, etc.).

Cloud Hosting Limitations

Leveraging its power and flexibility across multiple machines, cloud hosting provides advanced features at lower prices. But it does have a few limitations:

• External security—While cloud hosting does provide an isolated instance for your site, applications, and data, since you have no local information storage, you have to place a lot of trust in both your provider and any third parties providing storage or data and application management services. Also, depending on the structure of the cloud your host uses, security vulnerabilities may exist at points of public data transfer, like uploads from a browser-based control panel.
• Downtime—Cloud computing's greatest strength—an always-on, redundant design—is also a vulnerability. If the data connection to your host fails at key points, your site can go dead just as quickly as it would if it were hosted on a physical or virtual machine at your host's data center. Redundancy minimizes this risk, but does not eliminate it. Also, because data is spread across the cloud instead of in a single machine, updates to site content or applications may take a little longer to refresh than they would with traditional hosting platforms.
• Changing providers—Cloud technology is still relatively new, and standards are much more variable than with nuts-and-bolts physical hosting. If you experience "vendor lock" due to your provider's proprietary systems or applications, you may have genuine difficulty moving your site to another provider.
• Limited control over server configuration—Many hosts rely on a specific system to manage their cloud hosting accounts. And because there is no single physical server for your site, you may have limited (or no) control over components in the operating system (OS) or other configuration options. And depending upon your provider, you may have limited control over installation and application management options in your hosting control panel. This can be especially true if your provider's OS, cloud management application, or Content Delivery Network (CDN) reserves certain services to the host, rather than the client.

With per-use rates, on-the-fly upgrades, and built-in redundancy, cloud hosting plans are a popular choice for many small to medium-sized businesses. They're especially attractive to those on a budget who find they need more power than their shared hosting plan can provide. However, cloud hosting requires a lot of faith in the technical acumen and reliability of a fairly long chain of vendors and providers, so it behooves you to research all your options carefully. And be sure to read the fine print and understand your provider's usage rates before you choose a plan.

Tags: Web Hosting / Web Server

VPS Hosting

- 32 Comments

What is VPS Hosting?
Most types of hosting entail storing files and data on a server, an actual piece of hardware housed in a datacenter. On one end of the hosting spectrum, you have shared hosting, where your site lives on a server with thousands of other sites, and they all share resources.

On the other end, you have dedicated hosting, where your site is the only one housed on a single server, and all resources are dedicated to your site alone. Virtual private server (VPS) hosting falls in between those two extremes.

To fully understand what VPS hosting is and how it works, you must first understand what a virtual private server is. Broken down into sections, you have:

• Virtual - Not physical, but in this case, created by or related to software.
• Private - Restricted to your use alone.
• Server - The location where files and data will be stored.

The private part is self-explanatory. But when you put virtual and server together, it should become clearer that rather than a physical server, a virtual server is a server-type environment created by software.

How Does VPS Hosting Work?
This software-created emulation allows a virtual server to exist within a physical server, giving you a private space among the other sites on that server. The virtual private server runs on its own operating system, separate from that upon which the physical server runs. This is also sometimes called partitioning.

So while technically, your site is still on a shared server, the virtual private environment gives you some of the benefits of a dedicated server. If shared hosting is like living in an apartment, then VPS hosting is like having an apartment building all to yourself. Other residents still occupy spaces throughout the complex, but you have more privacy, more space, and more resources reserved solely for your use. Your space has been partitioned from the rest of the larger space and its residents. VPS hosting can be the best of both worlds, depending on your site's needs.

How to Set up VPS Hosting
First, you must decide whether VPS hosting is your ideal option. You must also choose whether you want or need managed or unmanaged hosting, as these options are often available with VPS hosting plans. Once those decisions are made, and you've found the hosting provider you want to use, setting up VPS hosting is simply a matter of signing up and paying in advance for whatever hosting period you choose, usually one year at a minimum.

Once your VPS hosting account is up and running, you'll connect your domain to the account, and your site will be ready for you to install a content management system, or program it by hand, if you have that capability and desire.

How to Choose VPS Hosting
Aside from standard features offered with VPS hosting plans, your selection may simply come down to cost, particularly if you opt for managed hosting, which can add substantial costs, depending on the hosting provider you choose. Make sure you're getting your money's worth, but at the same time, you don't want pay for features or resources you don't really need.

VPS hosting may be a better choice than shared hosting if you plan to build a medium- to large-sized site, or you need to move an existing medium- to large-sized site to a new host. VPS hosting will give your site more storage space for more data, and will allow it to run more quickly and efficiently. This can be especially important for e-commerce sites, or any type of site that sees a high volume of traffic.

Very large enterprise-level sites will usually benefit from dedicated server hosting. Depending on the growth rate of your site, you may opt for that with the thought that your site will "grow into" the vast space and features dedicated hosting offers. However, be careful because it will not be cost-effective to spend more on dedicated hosting you don't really need yet when you can use VPS hosting as an intermediate step.

Do your due diligence to ensure you understand what you need, know what you can afford, and are aware of what you're getting. Also, make use of the hosting provider's sales team to ask questions and gather information before making your choice.

VPS Hosting Benefits
Depending on the hosting provider, you may still get some of the affordability and cost-effectiveness of shared hosting, while also getting features more often available with dedicated hosting.

Some of the benefits of VPS hosting include, but aren't limited to:

• A higher level of security and privacy than that offered by shared hosting
• The ability to reboot your virtual private server when necessary, without affecting other sites housed on the physical server
• Maintained uptime should other sites on the virtual private server go down; unlike a shared server, their failure will not affect your site
• The ability to access the server to upload and install software
• The hosting provider performs all maintenance on the hardware
• You can choose the operating system you want to use
• The ability to host multiple sites on the same virtual private server
• The ability to customize firewall configurations

Note: Although the hosting provider will maintain the hardware, you may need a dedicated system administrator to manage the server and ensure its consistent and efficient functioning.

For additional costs, you may also be able to add features such as more disk space, bandwidth, or RAM, if the hosting provider offers them as separate features. These additional features may also be available in the form of plan upgrades.

If your host offers more than one VPS hosting plan, be sure to choose the one that's going to offer you the most benefit for your site as it currently exists, and as you anticipate your site to be in the near future, say, six months to a year. This gives you a little room to grow.

If you underestimate your site's growth or needs, you can always upgrade to a higher hosting plan should it become necessary sooner than you anticipate.

VPS Hosting Limitations
Although you have your own virtual private space, because of the fact that your site is still housed on a shared physical server, and thousands of other sites are also hosted on that server, resources may still be limited to a certain degree.
A virtual private server may experience limited*:
» RAM
» Processor Time
» Disk Space (Storage)
» Bandwidth

Again, some of these limitations may be alleviated by paying for additions to your hosting account. In addition, some applications and software may not perform well - or run on your site at all - if they're not compatible with virtualized environments. If you know ahead of time what programs, applications, and software you'll need to install and run, double check with your hosting provider to ensure compatibility.

*It's not uncommon for hosting providers to offer "unlimited" features - email accounts, disk space, bandwidth, etc. However, these features are only unlimited insofar as your usage does not put an unreasonable burden on shared resources, and you do not abuse these "unlimited" features.

One word of caution: Be wary of hosting providers that offer VPS hosting at roughly the same prices as shared hosting. While it's still a cost-effective option, and not as expensive as dedicated server hosting, VPS hosting should still cost a bit more than shared hosting. Its pricing should fall somewhere between the costs of shared and dedicated hosting. If it doesn't, the hosting provider may not offer enough features to make it worthwhile, or may be intentionally failing to disclose that lack of features. Always do your research when selecting a hosting provider.

If you're ready to go beyond shared hosting, but maybe you're not quite ready for the power and cost of dedicated server hosting, consider VPS hosting as an interim solution. Depending on the type of site you have, you may even find it's the ideal option for your site now, and for the foreseeable future.

Tags: Web Hosting

Types of Web Hosting

- 126 Comments

Web hosting services work by storing your website files in high-powered computers (web servers) connected to a very fast network. When someone types in your web address (such as www.popcorn-it.com), the Internet connects to the web server holding your website files and then transfers your website information back to their computer. From there they can surf and view the pages of your website.

Anything related to managing these servers and its software, security, support, bandwidth, speed and so much more, is what we are all about! Because we provide web hosting services to over a million websites, we have special data centers that are built from the ground up to serve the purpose of web hosting.

Types of Web Hosting
As technology has progressed different types of web hosting have appeared to meet the different needs of websites and customers:
» Shared Web Hosting
» Website Builder
» Cloud Hosting
» Dedicated Hosting

Shared Web Hosting

Shared web hosting is the most common type of web hosting, and is also the easiest to start out on. Shared hosting is a service where one server is shared between many customers. This typically offers the following advantages and disadvantages:

• It's cheaper – you don't need to pay for the whole server upfront.
• It's easier to use – the server is reconfigured with the most popular options and your hosting company will take care of any maintenance and security updates for you.
• You share the server resources with your neighbors – if one site becomes really busy it may affect (and slow down) all other sites on that server.
• It can be less flexible – like living in a shared apartment block your neighbors need to be considered. Similar to exclusions on keeping pets or throwing wild parties (but less fun), you probably won't be able to block a specific port or modify a core component.

Because shared web hosting is the most common type of web hosting, most hosting companies simply refer to it as web hosting or website hosting. POPCORN IT shared web hosting comes with the most preferred operating system: Linux website hosting.

Website Builder

Our website builder is the easiest way to build a website and get online. The site builder provides hundreds of professionally designed templates that can be completely customized to make your website exactly they way you want it; no prior experience necessary. The website builder includes a free domain name and a web hosting account that is setup automatically.

The website builder solution has the following advantages and disadvantages:

• Easiest way to get online – With no additional learning required and hundreds of included templates, you’ll be online in no time.
• Professional results at a low cost – Paying a good web designer to create a website you’re proud to share can cost a lot of money, especially if a mobile site is included; the POPCORN IT Website Builder gives you all that for a low monthly cost and gives you the opportunity to edit your site anytime.
• Large ecommerce websites are tricky – Although you can sell products and services with the website builder, it can get tricky if you have hundreds of products in which you are selling online.
• Highly custom website functionality is hard – Although you have the ability to embed code and change the code for your website, it can be hard to do highly custom stuff with scrolling, HTML5, image display, etc. If you don’t know how to do it now, then it won’t be a problem when you use the online website builder software.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is essentially a meeting place half way between shared hosting and dedicated hosting, yet has some pretty cool advantages as well. Cloud servers still share the physical server hardware with other cloud servers, but special virtualization technology partitions, or splits-up, the physical hardware so that each cloud server has its own dedicated resources and can be configured almost like a fully dedicated server.

VPS customers still share the physical server hardware with other VPS customers, but special virtualization technology partitions the server so that each partition has its own dedicated resources and can be configured almost like a full dedicated server.

This typically offers the following advantages and disadvantages:

• Get the most flexibility - cloud servers provide the most flexible environment available in the hosting sphere. The cloud adapts to physical hardware problems and puts your site in a reliable location automatically. It also offers a fast and seamless upgrade option for those times when website traffic gets high.
• Your website will have dedicated resources – with dedicated bandwidth, CPU and memory. So even though you are sharing server equipment with your neighbors, you are not sharing the resources that you purchased. That way, those high traffic neighbors sharing the same equipment won’t be stealing your server resources when you need them for your business.
• Fewer websites occupy the same server – your website will have more resources at its disposal than shared web hosting.
• Freedom to configure your server – the virtualization software provides much more freedom to make your server they way you want it; but it also assumes a higher level of technical experience.

POPCORN IT provides cloud servers that are fully managed and optimized to perform at peak levels to handle the extra traffic your website brings. Using the latest cloud hosting technology your site will thank you when it’s in the cloud.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated server hosting is the meat of hosting. Just like it sounds, you get your own server and all its resources, dedicated to you for your use and no one else. It’s the difference between living in an apartment building and sharing that building with others, compared to living in your own mansion. Dedicated hosting typically offers the following advantages and disadvantages.

• Flexiblility & customization – you can choose the exact hardware and software specifications of the server to meet your needs.
• Dedicated resources and guaranteed performance – you don't share your server resources with anyone else.
• Full control – you have full root access to your dedicated servers and can configure and tweak your setup to meet your needs.
• Prior technical knowledge is required – it will be your responsibility to manage and configure the server.
• More expensive – the cost of the server isn't shared with any other customers.

POPCORN IT  offers a full range of dedicated server hosting from cheap servers for low level lifting to top of the range high performance unmanaged hosting. Check out the specs now.