Know Your Server Options

By John Parks

When it comes to hosting a website or web page, there are a variety of options available. Depending on the exact kind of services required, however, the costs and fees to hosting your website on a remote server can add up very quickly. One option that many people do not consider is hosting your site on one of the many virtual private servers available today.

A virtual private server is actually a shared network - though it doesn't seem that way. Each user on the network is allocated a certain amount of system resources; and there is no way for any one user to go over this amount (as is the case with other, similar network setups). But there are a number of advantages to using shared virtual private servers - and this article examines just a few of these reasons.

You may think that by sharing a virtual private server will make your website vulnerable to even more web attacks than it already is. However, this is not at all the case. Each user is effectively blocked from one another, so nobody has access to files that belong to another. Because of this, web attacks affecting one particular website on the network will not affect your website at all. As previously stated, there is no way of telling what other websites are sharing your virtual private server - internet hackers and malicious web users cannot tell, either. In this sense, most virtual private servers are even more secure than a dedicated web server because the file systems can vary greatly from one website to another.

Another advantage to sharing a virtual private server is that users can typically install their own applications and web services onto your server. Again, this does not affect any other websites on the virtual private server, and is a great way to add extra functionality to your website that isn't already offered by your virtual private server host.

But the biggest advantage to sharing a virtual private server with other websites is the cost. Because one server can be used to accommodate many different users, costs can be kept at a minimum. Companies will not have to purchase quite as many different servers, and they will save money on their electricity bills, as well. This savings of course all gets passed down to the consumer, and results in cash savings for everybody involved.

If you are considering hosting your own website, sharing a virtual private server is a very viable option. You will want to make sure that you are fully aware of any server side restrictions, such as maximum amount of CPU and network resources available, but many virtual private server hosts provide more than enough for nearly any website. There are a variety of different webhosting companies that offer virtual private servers - if you are in need of this type of service, you should have no problem whatsoever finding a great company on the World Wide Web. A quick internet search will yield thousands of potential results for you to choose from, allowing you to pick the one that is best for you.

For more information on virtual private servers, visit http://www.sharedvirtualprivateserver.com/