What is Web Hosting
The provision of access to websites and storage space to individuals and companies who owns websites is known as web hosting. This Internet Hosting service enables organizations and individuals to make the sites that they own accessible on the World Wide Web. The service also allows organizations and individuals to serve content on their web sites. A company that provides space on a server is called a Web hosts. This host may own or lease the server to provide website space as well as to provide internet connectivity such as a data centre. Web hosts also practices colocation, this is where they provide data center space within their data center in addition to connectivity to the Internet for servers that they do not own.
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Typically a company will provide basic hosting services, however in recent times bundled packages have been made available to subscribers. Therefore, in addition to offering the basic web hosting services, a company may also offer Domain Name System (DNS) hosting, this is a service that would be included in a domain name registration offer. The company may also offer e-mail hosting service in its bundled packages.
By uploading through the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a web interface, a web host will be able to provide basic services such as small-scale file and Web page hosting. With this service there is little or no modification to the files that is delivered to the web, it is usually uploaded as is with little or no processing. The basic service is usually offered for free by the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to subscribers. But subscribers also have the option of accessing web page hosting from other service providers if they so choose. While a complex site, such as one that will provide database support and application development platforms, will require more comprehensive web hosting packages, like ColdFusion, Java, Ruby on Rails, ASP.Net and PHP, personal web pages only requires single page hosting.
Upstream
The direction that data can be transferred to, from a client to a server, and the speed at which it takes to upload information is known as upstream. Whilst upstream speeds are usually faster as they are required by web server applications and similar processes to send critical data at a fast speed. Downstream speed is usually required by the average home user of the internet to download information and is usually not required to be fast. Except for the peer to peer software, which is the applications that allows computers to network or communicate without any stable host in the middle. This application which now drives the social networks and facilitates file sharing systems, requires speed in downloading information.
Uptime
The amount of time a user has access to the internet is known as uptime. Most providers aim for three quarters of an hour of down time in a month or less, in other words their aim is for approximately 99.9% of uptime. Of course there is always the planned or unplanned maintenance time that may occur in any hosting environment. This disruption of the internet user's time online may not be included in the stated uptime promise, of the host provider's Service Level Agreement (SLA). Fortunately some providers will include in their Service Level Agreement a guarantee of a certain amount of uptime, which will include refunding of money or a reduced cost if the promised guaranteed uptime aim is not achieved.
Types of hosting
There are many different types of web hosting services that are provided by different companies, for example, there is the Shared, Managed, Cloud, Colocation, Free, Grid, Clustered and The home server hosting. Host service providers have been known to provide specific services such as file, service, image, video, blog and one-click hosting. In addition they have also been known to offer the pastebin shopping cart software and e-mail hosting services. Another type of hosting service that is quite common is the reselling of webhosting. This allows clients to also take on the role of a web hosts, a virtual Dedicated Server or a Virtual Private Server (VPS).
How to access Hosting
Should a customer decide to access Web hosting, they would have to first consider what they will be requiring of an application, in order to determine, what type of hosting would be best for them. The customer will need to consider software such as scripting software, database server software and the operating system that will be used. The Linux based web hosting operating system which offers a wide range of software is the most popular amongst web hosting providers. The Linux, Apache, MySQL are the typical configuration for a Linux server in addition to Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP), Perl and the Python script languages, which may also be used with the Windows hosting platform. With the Windows platform the hosts gets to also use the Classic ASP or ASP.Net which allows the web host to install or write application for blogs, content management, forums and e-commerce. It is also critical that the security of the subscriber's data is assured and hence it is highly recommended that for e-commerce application the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is used to protect the information that is being communicated over the web.
Cost of Hosting
Other services that may be required by web hosting client's maybe multi-media services for streaming media and email for their business domain. Even though web hosting is usually part of a bundled internet access plan, there are many providers who offer this service free of charge as well as there are some that charges for the service. Personal website hosting is usually free of cost, if a fee is charged; it usually tends to be minimal. More often where the service is provided for free, the providers who host these sites may recoup the cost from sponsored advertisements on the site. It should be noted that the hosting of business web sites is where hosting providers make majority of their income especially where they specialize in particular software like e-commerce.
Microsoft Azure is now popularly known as Windows Azure, the cloud computing platform that is developed by Microsoft for building, managing and deploying the applications and the services through the network of Microsoft data centers. It offers IaaS and PaaS services and supports various programming languages, frameworks and tools, including the third-party and Microsoft-specific software and systems.
Characteristics
Azure is the Microsoft's cloud application platform. Recently in 2012, Azure came up with the following features:
• The websites allow the developers to build the sites by using PHP, ASP.NET, Python or Node.js, and can be distributed by using Git, FTP or Mercurial Server.
• The virtual machines allow the developers to travel from the infrastructure without changing the code, and thus can run the Linux machines and the Windows Server. Cloud services also support the automated deployments and multi-tier scenarios. Microsoft's Platform Service is used in order to create extensive applications and services.
Data Management
The SQL Database, which was previously well-known as the SQL Azure Database, works to scale and extend applications in the cloud by using SQL server technology.
Media Services
Paas can be used for content protection, encoding, and streaming or analytics. The Microsoft Azure Platform offers an API built on the HTTP, REST and XML which allows the developer to connect with the services which is offered by Azure. Moreover, it also integrates with Git, Eclipse and Microsoft Visual Studio. It also provides the managed library class which epitomizes the functions of connecting with the services.
Other Services
Websites
It helps in the hosting of websites. The customers create the sites in ASP.NET, PHP, Python or Node.js and you can also select from various open source applications available in the gallery in order to deploy. This consists of an aspect of Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings for the Azure.
Virtual Machines
The Azure virtual machines consist of Infrastructure as the service providing from Microsoft to the public cloud. As the preview, these machines supported the Windows Server 2008 and 2012 systems and distributors of Linux. The customers can also create the Virtual Machines, which they have control in order to run the Data Centers.
Cloud Services
The cloud computing services are the containers of the hosted applications. The applications are usually public web applications, like e-commerce solutions or websites. Developers write code, mainly for the cloud services in different programming languages. They can also be used in the private processing engines for some other work, like processing orders or the analyzing data. However, some of the software development kits are commenced by Microsoft for Java, Python and NET. The other languages support through the open source projects.
Implementation
Azure uses the specialized operating system known as Microsoft Azure in order to run "fabric layer", which is hosted at Microsoft's data centers, which manages the storage and computing resources of the computers and the provisions of the resources to the application running on the of Azure. Reliability and Scaling are controlled by the Azure Fabric Controller. The Microsoft Azure is described as the "cloud layer" on the Server Systems that use Windows Server 2008 and also the customized version of the Hyper-V, popularly known as the Azure Hypervisor in order to provide virtualization of the services. So, the environment and the services don't crash if the server crashes within the data center and offers the management of the user's web security engineering application, such as the load balancing and the memory resources.
Privacy
Microsoft Azure has stated, according to the USA Patriot Act, the US government has the access to the data ven though the hosted company is not American and the data resides outside the USA. Azure is a compliant with E.U. data Protection Directive. In order to manage the Security and Privacy related concerns, Microsoft has created the Microsoft Trust Center.