Recently, David Berlind wrote (http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2637) about four different web hosting options, one of them a distinct vendor solution. Below is part of that post reproduced. Looking for more thoughts on the pros and cons of each along with personal experiences…
1. Insource the Web server – in other words, find a box, install an operating system and the Web serving software, hook it up to some decent bandwidth and start building the Web site. The problem with this option is that I’m already doing that for the family Web server and I’m not very happy with the choice. Too many headaches go along with running my own Web server day in and day out and I’m constantly worrying about what I’ll do if the server crashes. From Mashup Camp’s perspective, or from any small business person’s perspective, only two fingers (the thumb and forefinger) are needed to authoritatively answer the question of how many hours and minutes should be spent on systems administration versus the event or the business itself. If you’re a small or medium business owner, you have to ask whether your time and that of your employees is better spent tinkering with systems or working with customers. This question takes on new meaning when you realize how economical it is to hand this job over to a decent Web hosting or co-location outfit. Which leads me to the next option?
2. Outsource to a Web hoster – there are lots of companies that offer Web hosting services for very little money. Most charge by the month and some are very specific in terms of their platform. Some are very Microsoft-centric, offering Internet Information Server(IIS)-based Web serving. Others use Apache’s open source Web serving software and run it on top of Linux or Unix. Still others offer a choice. In addition, some Web hosters offer some other services that compliment Web hosting. For example, a Web hosting outfit that I once used (it was Microsoft-based) allowed customers to connect their instances of IIS to an ODBC-based data source. In my case it was an Excel spreadsheet and I just stored it in one of the Web servers directories that I had FTP access to. Some Web hosters will turn on a database server for you if one is required (while also offering some standard scripting capabilities such as PHP and/or Perl). Another benefit of going to a Web hoster is that most of the headaches of systems administration become someone else’s headaches. If the hardware goes down, that’s their problem. When backups need to be done, that’s their problem. Internet connectivity? Their problem.
3. Dedicated Server hosting – Google “dedicated server hosting” and you’ll get pages upon pages of links to services that will dedicate an entire server to you. As opposed to Web hosting where you don’t have access to the underlying operating system and therefore can’t install your own software to run side-by-side with your Web serving software, with dedicated server hosting, you get all the benefits of having your own machine running on your premises, but instead of running under your roof, it runs under the hoster’s.
There are several shades of grey when it comes to dedicated server hosting. To you, it may look like you have your own physical server with its own IP address. But on the hoster’s side of the equation, your server may be running in a virtual machine, side-by-side with tens or hundreds of other virtual machines. Does it make a difference? Maybe. Whereas some dedicated server hosters give you your own physical machine (and even list the machine’s specifications in their online literature) in a way that you’re guaranteed to always have all of that machine’s resources at your disposal, the virtual machine scenario makes it difficult for the Web hoster to guarantee that other customers’ loads won’t somehow affect the performance of your system. For example, since dedicated server hosting often means operating system-level control and access, what if one of the other “tenants” on your box loads some new software that requires a lot of I/O. Sure, the virtual machine software allows the hoster to set aside a certain percentage of processor bandwidth and storage for each VM, but the computer’s bus is a little harder to carve up. That said, dedicated server hosting providers are generally pretty good if they see a problem with the loads on one box. But it’s largely very reactionary. By the time they notice the problem, you or your Web site’s visitors may have already suffered.
Another shade of grey of this is managed hosting (which has its own shades of grey). Just what exactly is included in “managed hosting” may vary from one managed hosting provider to another. Some will coddle your server for you, tending after its every need. Others may handle some basic services such as nightly backup. As a rule of thumb though, the more managed a service is, the less flexible the service may be. For example, if they guarantee to keep a close watch on your web, database, and application server, they may limit you to which ones you can use since their staff members have to have intimate knowledge of the software in order to manage it. Prices also vary wildly in this category. When I first started looking for a hosting outfit that could host mashupcamp.com, I went to a company that I was familiar with: RackSpace. The company has clearly grown since the last time I checked in with them. It’s now one of those companies that doesn’t need to publish pricing data on its Web site. Instead, within in moments of getting there, a chat window pops up and you’re invited into a sales conversation. No thanks. Just give me the prices. Several people who were familiar with my quest mentioned DreamHost. Upon further inspection, DreamHost’s rates for dedicated physical systems ($99/month gets you a P4 running Debian Linux with 30GB of storage) are about half the going rate for the same thing at many other hosters. This page on DreamHost’s site also show some of the vary degrees to which hosters can manage your servers for you.