Colocation Hosting

Web hosting is the process of hosting data on the World Wide Web. Web hosting providers lease out space on their servers for these files. In lieu of the space provided, they charge a monthly rental.

In fact, web hosting can be comparable to the real estate business. If someone wants to open an office, a location is rented that is provided by the real estate owner for a monthly lease amount. Similarly to have a website one needs space on the World Wide Web. This data is in the form of files that is stored on the server. A server is nothing but a very powerful computer. The web hosting company for a fixed rental provides this space. Some people prefer to own their own servers to store the data. This is an expensive and time-consuming process. This can be compared to buying the office building. Hence leasing space for web hosting is becoming popular.

The web-hosting provider concentrates on the technical maintenance of the servers and connections. The client can focus all the attention on the business activity instead of worrying about myriad technological issues.

Based on the ownership of the servers there are two types of web hosting. They are: -

What is Co-location?
This is when the client owns the hardware and the installed software. The web-hosting providers just connect the client servers to the Internet. They also monitor the data on the server. The client thus gets to choose the complete configuration of the hosting. The entire key decisions like the server configuration, operating system, software installed etc are taken by the client itself. Companies on a critical project prefer this type of hosting. They wish to control the entire hosting operation. The servers are placed at the web service provider’s data centers. However, the hassle of maintaining the server still rests with the web-hosting provider. The pricing for co-location hosting is different. The key factors are: -

Rent: - these are the actual costs involved in keeping the servers at the web hosting provider’s data center. The rental depends upon the size of the servers. This can vary from 1U to a full rack.

Connection cost: - this is the cost of data transfer taking place. The connection costs are not charged on the actual number of bytes transferred. In fact, an average of the data transfer in the whole month is considered. One way of doing is by taking the total amount of bandwidth used in the month. This is divided by the number of seconds in the month to arrive at the average figure. The 95-percentile method on the other hand, takes the bandwidth measurement every 5 seconds. At the end of the month the top 5% of the bandwidth are discarded. The client is billed on the highest remaining reading.

Co-location hosting is ideal for extremely critical and important businesses.

In co-location hosting the clients, expensive machines are placed in the hands of another company. Hence, it is advisable to do a detailed survey of the web-hosting provider. The main factors to be taken care of are as follows: -

Safety and security
The servers are expensive machines. In addition, they contain priceless data. Hence, there should be stringent safety measures applied. The servers need to be protected from natural disasters, theft, undue access and vandalism. The access to the data center must be restricted to avoid unauthorized entry. In addition, the privacy of the data has to be maintained. Hence, it is vital to closely examine the place where the servers and the inherent data will reside.

Good services
This is necessary for a hassle free maintenance of the server. The web-hosting provider must provide good facilities like bandwidth and multiple IPs. The support staff must be knowledgeable and helpful. They must guarantee full uptime because downtime means loss of business.

Cross Connection
The server is co-located with one web hosting provider and the Internet connection is providing by another in this advanced option. This facility should be available.

Dedicated hosting
This is when the web hosting company itself owns the servers.

Shared hosting
In this type of hosting a single server is shared amongst many companies. Clients get their own domain name. A portion of the server is allotted to each client.