a service host
introduction
A host is the infrastructure required to run an Internet service. There are many ways of hosting an Internet service. The oldest and cheapest type is shared web hosting. The newest is cloud hosting.
An organization that provides hosting is a hosting service provider.
what it is
A host is the infrastructure required to run an Internet service. The original idea was one computer acting as one host running many services. Now a host may be one bit of a computer or many computers.
a hosting service
The service in "hosting service" refers to the service an enterprise provides to its customers, not to an Internet service. There are four popular kinds of service that a customer can use to get a host.
- Dedicated hosting service, also called managed hosting service
- Virtual private server
- Colocation service
- Cloud hosting service, also called on-demand hosting.
This kind of hosting works at the hardware level. Further up the stack, at the application level, is application hosting. Web hosting is a way of reselling a host - the web service is split into many virtual hosts and rented out.
a hosting service provider
An enterprise that provides hosts for running Internet services is known as a hosting service provider.
A dedicated hosting service provider owns and manages the hardware and network. The customer rents the machine and has full control over its software. The customer may also pay for provider for monitoring, backups, patching and technical support.
Virtual private server technology splits one machine into many virtual machines. Xen is an open source application and VMware is a closed source one. The customer gets a cheaper dedicated hosting service and the provider makes better use of their resources.
A colocation provider provide just the Internet connection, uninterruptible power and climate control, but let the client do his own system administration; the most expensive
A cloud hosting provider charges like a public utility. The customer pays for the processing done and storage used, rather than a fixed monthly fee. Capacity can be quickly scaled up or down as computing requirements change. The mainframe owners of the 1960s used to charge using time-sharing. The scaling ability is also called elasticity. Scaling is handy for scientific calculations and web site traffic spikes.
a hosting service customer
A few examples of a customer
- A hobbyist rents shared web hosting for his service. He only cares about the application level. This is the cheapest form of outsourced hosting.
- A small business builds its own hosts and ships them off to an ISP to look after. This is co-location, a form of outsourced hosting.
- The large enterprise maintains many services using more in-house teams. This is insourced hosting. The enterprise is slowly replacing its expensive insourced hosting with cheaper outsourced cloud hosting.
application hosting
These services can all be provided using the web.
- Web hosting service
- E-mail hosting service
- DNS hosting service
- Game servers
- Wiki farms
