File hosting service

A file hosting service, online file storage service, or online media center is an Internet hosting service specifically designed to host static content, typically large files that are not web pages. Typically they allow web and FTP access. They can be optimized for serving many users (as is implied by the term "hosting") or be optimized for single-user storage (as is implied by the term "storage"). Related services are video sharing, virtual storage and remote backup.

Uses

[edit] Software file hosting

Authors of Shareware, Freeware and Open Source/Free software often use file hosting services to serve their software. The inherent problem with free downloads is the huge bandwidth cost. These hosts also offer additional services to the authors such as statistics or other marketing features.

[edit] Personal file storage

Personal file storage services are aimed at private individuals, offering a sort of "network storage" for personal backup, file access, or file distribution. Users can upload their files and share them publicly or keep them password-protected.

Prior to the advent of personal file storage services, off-site backup services were not typically affordable for individual and small office computer users.

Sometimes people prefer hosting their files on a publicly accessible HTTP server. In this case, they generally choose paid hosting, and use their hosting for this purpose. Many free hosting providers do not allow the storage of files for non-website-related use.

[edit] Content caching

Content providers who potentially encounter bandwidth congestion issues may use services specialized in distributing cached or static content. It is the case for companies with a major Internet presence.^[1]

[edit] Storage

Most online file storage services offer space on a per-gigabyte basis, and sometimes include a bandwidth cost component as well. Usually these will be charged monthly or yearly. Some companies do offer the service for free, relying on advertising revenue. Some hosting services do not place any limit on how much space your account can consume. Some services require a software download which makes files only available on computers which have that software installed, others allow users to retrieve files through any web browser. With the increased inbox space offered by webmail services, many users have started using their webmail service as an online drive. Some sites offer free unlimited file storage but have a limit on the file size.

Increasingly, organizations are recognizing the benefits of co-locating their mission-critical equipment within a data centre. Colocation is becoming increasingly popular because of the time and cost savings a company can realize as a result of using shared data centre infrastructure. Significant benefits of scale (large power and mechanical systems) result in large colocation facilities, typically 5,000-10,000 m² (50,000 to 100,000 square feet). With IT and communications facilities in safe, secure hands, telecommunications, Internet, ASP and content providers, as well as enterprises, enjoy less latency and the freedom to focus on their core business.

Additionally, customers reduce their traffic back-haul costs and free up their internal networks for other uses. Moreover, by outsourcing network traffic to a colocation service provider with greater bandwidth capacity, web site access speeds should improve considerably.

Major types of colocation customers are:

• Web commerce companies, who use the facilities for a safe environment and cost-effective, redundant connections to the Internet
• Major enterprises, who use the facility for disaster avoidance, offsite data backup and business continuity
• Telecommunication companies, who use the facilities to interexchange traffic with other telecommunications companies and access to potential clients

Most network access point facilities provide colocation.

[edit] Services offered

Most colocation centres offer different types of services to customers ranging from dedicated suites/rooms or cages to smaller racks or partial racks. Some colocation centres also offer some degree of service level agreements to support a wide range of computer and network related services, for example, server reboots, hardware replacements and software updates.

There are a few key differences between a dedicated server and colocation servers. Dedicated servers tend to be owned and rented out, while a colocation server is one that the client owns.

Some colocation centres feature a "meet-me-room" where the different carriers housed in the centre can efficiently exchange data. Most peering points sit in colocation centres. These sites are often used for web hosting. Most colocation centres have high levels of physical security and multiple redundant power and humidity/air-conditioning systems.

Confusingly, one company can operate a colocation centre, another can provide the bandwidth, whereas a third company would rent a cage inside the centre, renting out racks to hosting providers which would rent the servers themselves to actual clients. Any and all of those companies will claim ownership of the facility and will feature photos and descriptions of it on their web sites. At the actual physical location various ID cards with various logos will be present, including those of the company that built/rents/owns the actual building.

[edit] File mirroring

In 2006, Sharebee started a new type of file hosting site, known as a file mirror, file distribution or file spreading engine. These services allow users to upload their file to the hosting servers. The user's file is then distributed to multiple web hosts without using the user's bandwidth. For more information, see Mirror (computing).

[edit] One-click hosting

One-click hosting generally describes web services that allow internet users to easily upload one or more files from their hard drives (or from a remote location) onto the one-click host's server free of charge.

Most such services simply return a URL which can be given to other people, who can then fetch the file later on. As of 2005 these sites have drastically increased in popularity, and subsequently, many of the smaller, less efficient sites have failed. Many internet forums exist in order to share such links; this type of file sharing has, to a degree, taken over from P2P filesharing services^[2].

The sites make money through advertising or charging for premium services such as increased downloading capacity, removing any wait restrictions the site may have or prolonging how long uploaded files remain on the site. Some sites implement a CAPTCHA to prevent automated downloading.

[edit] Comparison of notable file hosting services

The table below presents a comparison of notable file hosting services used for file sharing.

Web Host	Language	Storage size	Max. file size	Direct access[3]	Traffic/bandwidth limit	File expiration[4]	Misc. notes	Remote Uploading?	Ability to delete files?	Table-entries (Added or Revised) Date (YYYY-MM-DD)
ADrive	EN	50 GB (free), 50 GB - 1+ TB (paid)	2 GB	No, Both unpaid and free trial of paid services enforces download of a html page before file download.	none for paid users, 1 TB sharing limit + max 10 concurrent downloads per file for free accounts	No expiration for paid accounts, Public file expiration (url changes) after 14 days for free accounts-resharing possible	Offers ADrive Desktop client for PC, Mac, Linux for automatic backups. FTP/WebDAV access, geographically diverse backup. No Ads for Paid users.	Yes	Yes	2009-07-29
Amazon S3	EN	Unlimited -uses Amazon S3	5GB file size per bucket in S3, some vendors such as SecoBackup support over 5GB files	Yes	Amazon S3 limits	None, pay for storage each month		No	Yes	2009-01-27
Badongo	EN, DE, FR, IT,...	Unlimited	1 GB	No, CAPTCHA, wait 45 s (15 s with free registration)	Traffic limit, no parallel downloads (non-paying users), unlimited downloads (premium users)	90 days of inactivity for free users, none (premium users)		Partial Only for premium users	Yes	2009-05-29
Box.net	EN	1 GB (free), 5-15 GB (paid)	&0000000000000025.00000025 MB (free), 1GB (paid)	Yes	10 GB (free), Unlimited (paid)	120 days of inactivity (free), none (paid)	1 GB (free), 5GB-15GB+ (paid)	?	Yes	?
Dropbox	EN	&0000000000000002.0000002 GB (free)	Unlimited (via client application), 350 MB (via web interface)	Yes	?	?	Primarily as backupservice but websharing possible.	Yes	Yes	2008-10-30
Drop.io	EN	&0000000000000100.000000100 Mb (free)	100Mb	Yes	none	User chosen, 1 Day to 1 Year from now/after last view	Provides conferencing abilities, unique phone number(Records voice messages), fax number and email address	Yes	Yes	2009-03-11
FileFront[5]	EN	Unlimited	600 MB	Yes	none	?	Premium advert-free service available via FastPass. Limited to video gaming files.	?	Yes	2009-06-12
Files.Mail.ru	EN	&0000000000001000.0000001,000 MB	100 MB without registration; 10 GB for registered users	Yes	none	30 days	Storage size is 10GB per user after sign up.	No	Yes	2008-09-17
Infinit	EN	1 GB offered and Unlimited by contributing unused local storage	none	Yes	none	none		Yes	Yes	2009-08-03
Live Mesh	EN	&0000000000000005.0000005 Gb (free)	unlimited	Yes	none	none	Synchronizes files between PC, Mac (not 10.6 Snow Leopard ), and Mobile devices. Developer platform in CTP will allow sync for any feed based data across user devices via REST/Atom protocol.	Yes	Yes	2008-12-4
MagicVortex	EN	2 GB	2 GB (subscription)	Yes	none	7 or 14 days based on subscription	Peer-to-peer file transfer service; offers free Windows desktop client with resumption of interrupted transfers, transfer pausing, & live data streaming	Yes	Yes	2009-03-09
MediaFire	EN	Unlimited	100 MB (free), 10 GB (paid)[6]	Yes	none	No expiration for paid accounts. 60 days of inactivity (i.e. no login to your account) / 30 days of inactivity (i.e. files accessed)[7]	Resuming of interrupted downloads possible.	Partial Only for pro users	Yes	2009-08-23
Megaupload	EN, DE, FR, IT,...	200 GB (free account), Unlimited (paid account)	500 MB without account, 2048 MB with free account, no size limit with paid account	No, CAPTCHA	Traffic limit, parallel downloads allowed (non-paying users), Unlimited downloads (premium users)	21 days of inactivity without account, 90 days with free account, none with paid account	Resuming of interrupted downloads possible.[8]	Partial Only for premium users	Yes	2009-09-13
RapidShare (.com)	EN	250 Gb (free account), Unlimited (premium users)	&0000000000000200.000000200 MB (non-paying users), 2000 MB (premium users)	No, waiting time 30 to 134 seconds, depending on file size	bandwidth limited to 500 kbit/s (non-paying users), only 10 downloads for files without account, a premium account allows the download of 5 GB per day	90 days of inactivity for non-paying users, none for premium users	No captchas anymore for non-paying users, but severely limited bandwidth. Resuming of interrupted downloads only for premium users.	Yes up to 300 jobs, 5 at a time, for premium users[9]	Yes	2009-09-13
SendSpace	EN	-	&0000000000000300.000000300 MB (free), 1.5 GB (premium)	Yes	?	30 days of inactivity (free) none (premium)	?	Yes SendSpace Wizard	Yes	?
Skydrive	EN	25 GB	50mb per file	Yes	none	none	Known as Windows Live SkyDrive	Yes	Yes	2009-06-27
SteekR	EN, FR, DE, IT, BR	&0000000000000001.0000001 GB (free)	?	Yes	none	none	Total storage space limited to 1 GB for non-paying users.	Yes SteekR DriveDrive	Yes	?
TrueShare.com	EN	3 - 10 GB single user 5 - 200 GB unlimited user	2 GB	Yes	Size x 10	none	2 mo free with annual, unlimited users, windows app for sync	Yes	Yes	?
Wuala	EN/DE/PT/FR...	1 GB	none	Yes	none	"You will need to run the client periodically...[or] your files will not be maintained"[10]	You can get up to 100 GB free by trading storage. Uses Social Networking, and has file sharing features similar to Bittorrent.	Yes	Yes	2009-10-01
YouSendIt	EN	up to 6 GB (non free)	&0000000000000100.000000100 MB (free)	Yes	100 downloads per file for free registered (YouSendIt Lite) users. 3 downloads for unregistered users.	7 days	?	?	?	?
Web Host	Language	Storage size	Max. file size	Direct access	Traffic/bandwidth limit	File expiration	Misc. notes	Remote Uploading?	Ability to delete files?	Table-entries (Added or Revised) Date (YYYY-MM-DD)

Colocation centre

A colocation centre (collocation center) ("colo") or carrier hotel is a type of data centre where multiple customers locate network, server and storage gear and interconnect to a variety of telecommunications and other network service provider(s) with a minimum of cost and complexity. Most network access point facilities provide colocation.

Benefits

Increasingly, organizations are recognizing the benefits of colocating their mission-critical equipment within a data centre. Colocation is becoming popular because of the time and cost savings a company can realize as result of using shared data centre infrastructure. Significant benefits of scale (large power and mechanical systems) result in large colocation facilities, typically 4500 to 9500 square metres (roughly 50000 to 100000 square feet). With IT and communications facilities in safe, secure hands, telecommunications, internet, ASP and content providers, as well as enterprises, enjoy less latency and the freedom to focus on their core business.

Additionally, customers reduce their traffic back-haul costs and free up their internal networks for other uses. Moreover, by outsourcing network traffic to a colocation service provider with greater bandwidth capacity, web site access speeds should improve considerably.

Major types of colocation customers are:

• Web commerce companies, who use the facilities for a safe environment and cost-effective, redundant connections to the Internet
• Major enterprises, who use the facility for disaster avoidance, offsite data backup and business continuity
• Telecommunication companies, who use the facilities to interexchange traffic with other telecommunications companies and access to potential clients

[edit] Building features

Buildings with data centers inside them are often easy to recognize due to the amount of cooling equipment located outside or on the roof^[1]. There are a lot of other special characteristics to a colocation center as well:

A room in the Telecity colocation centre in Aubervilliers, a suburb of Paris

A typical server rack, commonly seen in colocation.

• Fire protection systems, including passive and active design elements, as well as implementation of fire prevention programmes in operations. Smoke detectors are usually installed to provide early warning of a developing fire by detecting particles generated by smoldering components prior to the development of flame. This allows investigation, interruption of power, and manual fire suppression using hand held fire extinguishers before the fire grows to a large size. A fire sprinkler system is often provided to control a full scale fire if it develops. Clean agent fire suppression gaseous systems are sometimes installed to suppress a fire earlier than the fire sprinkler system. Passive fire protection elements include the installation of fire walls around the space, so a fire can be restricted to a portion of the facility for a limited time in the event of the failure of the active fire protection systems, or if they are not installed.
• 19-inch racks for data equipment and servers, 23-inch racks for telecom equipment.
• Cabinets and cages for physical access control over tenants' equipment.
• Overhead cable rack (tray) and fibreguide, power cables usually on separate rack from data.
• Air conditioning is used to control the temperature and humidity in the space. ASHRAE recommends a temperature range of 20–25 °C and humidity range of 40–60% as optimal for electronic equipment conditions.^{[citation needed]} The electrical power used by the electronic equipment is converted to heat, which is rejected to the ambient air in the data centre space. Unless the heat is removed, the ambient temperature will rise, resulting in electronic equipment malfunction. By controlling the space air temperature, the server components at the board level are kept within the manufacturer's specified temperature/humidity range. Air conditioning systems help control space humidity within acceptable parameters by cooling the return space air below the dew point. Too much humidity and water may begin to condense on internal components. In case of a dry atmosphere, ancillary humidification systems may add water vapor to the space if the space humidity is too low, which can result in static electricity discharge problems which may damage components.
• Low-impedance electrical ground.
• Few, if any, windows.

Colocation data centers are often certified to prove that they live up to certain standards and levels of reliability, most common used is SAS 70 and the tier system by the Uptime Institute.

[edit] Physical security

Most colocation centres have high levels of physical security, and may be guarded continuously. They may employ CCTV.

Some colocation facilities require that employees escort customers, especially if there are not individual locked cages/cabinets for each customer. In other facilities, a PIN code or proximity card access system may allow customers access into the building, and individual cages/cabinets have locks. Biometric security measures, such as fingerprint recognition, voice recognition and "weight matching", are also becoming more commonplace in modern facilities.

[edit] Power

Colocation facilities generally have generators that start automatically when utility power fails, usually running on diesel fuel. These generators may have varying levels of redundancy, depending on how the facility is built.

Generators do not start instantaneously, so colocation facilities usually have battery backup systems. In many facilities, the operator of the facility provides large inverters to provide AC power from the batteries. In other cases, the customers may install smaller UPSes in their racks.

Some customers choose to use equipment that is powered directly by 48VDC (nominal) battery banks. This may provide better energy efficiency, and may reduce the number of parts that can fail.

An alternative to batteries is a motor generator connected to a flywheel and diesel engine.

Many colocation facilities can provide A and B power feeds to customer equipment, and high end servers and telecommunications equipment often can have two power supplies installed.

Colocation facilities are sometimes connected to multiple sections of the utility power grid for additional reliability.

[edit] Cooling

The operator of a colocation facility generally provides air conditioning for the computer and telecommunications equipment in the building. The cooling system generally includes some degree of redundancy

In older facilities, the cooling system capacity often limits the amount of equipment that can operate in the building, more so than the available square footage.

[edit] Internal connections

Colocation facility owners have differing rules regarding cross connects between their customers. These rules may allow customers to run such connections at no charge, or allow customers to order such connections for a significant monthly fee. They may allow customers to order cross connects to carriers, but not to other customers.

Some colocation centres feature a "meet-me-room" where the different carriers housed in the centre can efficiently exchange data.

Most peering points sit in colocation centres.

Because of the high concentration of servers inside larger colocation centres, most carriers will be interested in bringing direct connections to such buildings.

In many cases there will be a larger Internet Exchange hosted inside a colocation centre, where customers can connect for peering.

[edit] External connections

Colocation facilities generally have multiple locations for fiber optic cables to enter the building, to provide redundancy so that communications can continue if one bundle of cables is damaged. Some also have wireless backup connections, for example via satellite.

FFmpeg hosting service

FFmpeg hosting is a term that is used to refer to any "assortment of software which is available free, which helps in recording, converting and streaming a digital video or an audio", and to those domain registrars and web hosting companies which provide the above assortment of software to video hosting services. It is known as FFmpeg hosting due to the usage by several video hosting services of the FFmpeg software library in the server-side conversion of files with variously-encoded video and audio formats into a single preferred video or audio format that is both playable from the video hosting service and embeddable into any offsite webpage. As of 2008, the preferred format for the presentation of converted video is the .flv format.

FFmpeg-friendly webhosting

While there are thousands of web hosting services on the World Wide Web, only a tiny, but growing minority of these webhosts are willing to allow or accommodate video and audio hosting services, due to the rapid takeup of both bandwidth and disk space by user-uploaded video . The creation of video hosting services which sprung up in the years since the 2005 founding of YouTube, however, has created a demand for video-hosting friendly web hosts.

[edit] Basic needs from FFmpeg hosts

Most video hosting services need a dedicated or semi-dedicated server from the FFmpeg host, with shared bandwidth and virtual servers being sub-optimal solutions.

Virtual private server

A virtual private server (VPS, also referred to as Virtual Dedicated Server or VDS) is a method of partitioning a physical server computer into multiple servers such that each has the appearance and capabilities of running on its own dedicated machine. Each virtual server can run its own full-fledged operating system, and each server can be independently rebooted.

The practice of partitioning a single server so that it appears as multiple servers has long been common practice in mainframe computers, but has seen a resurgence lately with the development of virtualization software and technologies for other architectures.

Overview

This section requires expansion.

The physical server boots normally. It then runs a program that boots each virtual server within a virtualization environment (similar to an emulator). The virtual servers have no direct access to hardware and are usually booted from a disk image.

There are two kinds of virtualizations: software based and hardware based. In a software based virtualization environment, the virtual machines share the same kernel and actually require the main node's resources. This kind of virtualization normally has many benefits in a web hosting environment because of quota incrementing and decrementing in real time with no need of restarting the node. The main examples are Xen, Virtuozzo, Vserver, and OpenVZ (which is the open source and development version of Parallels Virtuozzo Containers).

In a hardware based virtualization, the virtualization mechanism partitions the real hardware resources. In typical implementations, no burst and/or realtime quota modification is possible; the limits are hard and can only be modified by restarting a virtual machine instance^{[citation needed]}. This kind of environment is potentially more secure in the sense that it is less subject to "Quality of Service crosstalk" between VM instances^{[citation needed]}; on the other hand, its security is typically dependent on the correctness of a larger and more complicated Trusted Computing Base^{[citation needed]}. It is more commonly used in enterprise/commercial deployments^{[citation needed]}. Examples include Microsoft Virtual Server, VMware ESX Server, and Xen.

[edit] Uses

Virtual private servers bridge the gap between shared web hosting services and dedicated hosting services, giving independence from other customers of the VPS service in software terms but at less cost than a physical dedicated server. As a VPS runs its own copy of its operating system, customers have superuser-level access to that operating system instance, and can install almost any software that runs on the OS. Certain software does not run well in a virtualized environment, including firewalls, anti-virus clients, and indeed virtualizers themselves; some VPS providers place further restrictions, but they are generally lax compared to those in shared hosting environments. Due to the number of virtualization clients typically running on a single machine, a VPS generally has limited processor time, RAM, and disk space.

Due to their isolated nature, VPSs have become common sandboxes for possibly-insecure public services or update testing. For example, a single physical server might have two virtual private servers running: one hosting the production-level (live) website, and a second which houses a copy of it. When updates to crucial parts of software need to be made, they can be tested in the second VPS, allowing for detailed testing to be conducted without requiring several physical servers.

Virtual private servers are also sometimes employed as honeypots, allowing a machine to deliberately run software with known security flaws without endangering the rest of the server. Multiple honeypots can be quickly set up via VPSs in this fashion.^[1]

[edit] Virtual private server hosting

A growing number of companies offer virtual private server hosting, or virtual dedicated server hosting as an extension for Web hosting services. Some web hosting companies call a Virtual Private Server a Virtual Dedicated Server/Dynamic Dedicated Server or the other way around.

[edit] Managed Hosting

The hosting provider takes an active role in monitoring and administering your hosting services.

[edit] Unmanaged Hosting

The customer is left to monitor and administer their own server.

[edit] Unmetered Hosting

Similar to unmanaged hosting but a fixed bitrate is offered so that it is not possible to exceed a monthly budget.

[edit] Virtualization software

For some of the software packages commonly used to provide platform virtualization, see comparison of platform virtual machines

Clustered hosting

Clustered hosting is a type of web hosting that spreads the load of hosting across multiple physical machines ("nodes"), increasing availability and decreasing the chances of one service (for example FTP, or email) affecting another - for example web or database (e.g. MySQL). Many large websites run on clustered hosting solutions, for example, large discussion forums will tend to run using multiple front-end webservers with multiple back-end database servers.

Typically, most hosting infrastructures are based on the paradigm of using a single physical machine to host multiple hosted services, including web, database, email, FTP and others. A single physical machine is not only a single point of failure, but also has finite capacity for traffic, that in practice can be troublesome for a busy website or for a website that is experiencing transient bursts in traffic.

By clustering services across multiple hardware machines, and using load balancing you can eliminate single points of failure increasing availability of your website and other web services beyond that of ordinary single server hosting. A single server can require periodic reboots for software upgrades and the like, whereas in a clustered platform you can stagger the restarts such that the service is still available whilst still upgrading all necessary machines in the cluster.

Clustered hosting is similar to cloud hosting, in that the resources of many machines are available for a website to utilize on demand, making scalability a large advantage to a clustered hosting solution.

Reseller web hosting

Reseller hosting is a form of web hosting wherein the account owner has the ability to use his/her allotted hard drive space and bandwidth to host websites on behalf of third parties. The reseller purchases the host's services wholesale and then sells them to customers for a profit. A certain portion of hard drive and bandwidth is allocated to the reseller account. The reseller may rent a dedicated server from a hosting company, or resell shared hosting services. In the latter case, the reseller is simply given the permission to sell a certain amount of disk space and bandwidth to his own customers without renting a server from a web hosting company he signed for a reseller account with.

The typical web hosting reseller might be a web design firm, web developer or systems integrator who offers web hosting as an add-on service. Reseller hosting is also an inexpensive way for web hosting entrepreneurs to start a company. Most reseller hosting plans allow resellers to create their own service plans and choose their own pricing structure. In many cases, resellers are able to establish their own branding via customized control panels and name servers.

Reseller hosting does not require extensive knowledge of the technical aspects of web hosting. Usually, the data center operator is responsible for maintaining network infrastructure and hardware, and the dedicated server owner configures, secures, and updates the server. A reseller is responsible for interfacing with his/her own customer base, but any hardware, software and connectivity problems are typically forwarded to the server provider from whom the reseller plan was purchased. It should be noted that being a profitable reseller firm usually involves extensive advertising to get customers. While the monthly fees with major hosts are only a few dollars a month, it's a low margin business, and resellers must devote large advertising budgets to compete with established competitors. However, web hosting is one of the biggest online businesses, because every website needs hosting.

Resellers can set up and manage customer accounts via a web interface, usually point and click "Control Panels."

Well-known Control Panels List:

• Cortex Provisioning System (Windows)
• WHM/cPanel (Unix)(Windows version coming soon)
• Reseller Hosting (Unix)
• Plesk (Windows/Unix)
• DirectAdmin
• Webmin (Unix)
• Ensim Pro (Windows/Unix)
• Helm (Windows)
• Hsphere (A Complete single Control Panel for Linux & Windows)

Dedicated hosting service

A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting service is a type of Internet hosting in which the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have full control over the server(s), including choice of operating system, hardware, etc. Server administration can usually be provided by the hosting company as an add-on service. In some cases a dedicated server can offer less overhead and a larger return on investment. Dedicated servers are most often housed in data centers, similar to colocation facilities, providing redundant power sources and HVAC systems. In contrast to colocation, the server hardware is owned by the provider and in some cases they will provide support for your operating system or applications.

Operating system support

Availability, price and employee familiarity often determines which operating systems are offered on dedicated servers. Variations of Linux (open source operating systems) are often included at no charge to the customer. Commercial operating systems include Microsoft Windows Server, provided through a special program called Microsoft SPLA. Red Hat Enterprise is a commercial version of Linux offered to hosting providers on a monthly fee basis. The monthly fee provides OS updates through the Red Hat Network using an application called yum. Other operating systems are available from the open source community at no charge. These include CentOS, Fedora Core, Debian, and many other Linux distributions or BSD systems FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD.

Support for any of these operating systems typically depends on the level of management offered with a particular dedicated server plan. Operating system support may include updates to the core system in order to acquire the latest security fixes, patches, and system-wide vulnerability resolutions. Updates to core operating systems include kernel upgrades, service packs, application updates, and security patches that keep server secure and safe. Operating system updates and support relieves the burden of server management from the dedicated server owner.

[edit] Bandwidth and connectivity

Bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate or the amount of data that can be carried from one point to another in a given time period (usually a second) and is often represented in bits (of data) per second (bit/s). For example, visitors to your server, web site, or applications utilize bandwidth as the traffic moves from your server to the Internet and vice versa. Connectivity refers to the “access providers” that supply bandwidth, or data transfer rate, through various connection points across a network or footprint to one or multiple data centers where dedicated servers are housed.

Bandwidth measurements are defined (per telecom standards) as the following:

• First – 95th (measured using average bits and speed of transfer)
• Second – Unmetered (measured in speed or bits)
• Third – Total Transfer (measured in bytes transferred)

95th Method: line speed, billed on the 95th percentile, average or peak usage, refers to the speed in which data flows from the server or device. Line speed is measured in bits per second (or kilobits per second, megabits per second or gigabits per second).

Unmetered Method: The second bandwidth measurement is unmetered service where providers cap or control the “top line” speed for a server. Top line speed in unmetered bandwidth is the total Mbit/s allocated to the server and configured on the switch level. For example, if you purchase 10 Mbit/s unmetered bandwidth, the top line speed would be 10 Mbit/s. 10 Mbit/s would result in the provider controlling the speed transfers take place while providing the ability for the dedicated server owner to not be charged with bandwidth overages. Unmetered bandwidth services usually incur an additional charge.

Total Transfer Method: Some providers will calculate the Total Transfer, the measurement of actual data leaving and arriving, measured in bytes. Measurement between providers varies, though it is either the total traffic in, the total traffic out, whichever is the greater or the sum of the two.

One of the reasons for choosing to outsource dedicated servers is the availability of high powered networks from multiple providers. As dedicated server providers utilize massive amounts of bandwidth, they are able to secure lower volume based pricing to include a multi-provider blend of bandwidth. To achieve the same type of network without a multi-provider blend of bandwidth, a large investment in core routers, long term contracts, and expensive monthly bills would need to be in place. The expenses needed to develop a network without a multi-provider blend of bandwidth does not make sense economically for hosting providers.

Many dedicated server providers include a service level agreement based on network uptime. Some dedicated server hosting providers offer a 100% uptime guarantee on their network. By securing multiple vendors for connectivity and using redundant hardware, providers are able to guarantee higher uptimes; usually between 99-100% uptime if they are a higher quality provider. One aspect of higher quality providers is they are most likely to be multi-homed across multiple quality uplink providers, which in turn, provides significant redundancy in the event one goes down in addition to potentially improved routes to destinations.

Bandwidth consumption over the last several years has shifted from a per megabit usage model to a per gigabyte usage model. Bandwidth was traditionally measured in line speed access that included the ability to purchase needed megabits at a given monthly cost. As the shared hosting model developed, the trend towards gigabyte or total bytes transferred, replaced the megabit line speed model so dedicated server providers started offering per gigabyte.

Prominent players in the dedicated server market offer large amounts of bandwidth ranging from 500 gigabytes to 3000 gigabytes using the “overselling” model. It is not uncommon for major players to provide dedicated servers with 1Terabyte (TB) of bandwidth or higher. Usage models based on the byte level measurement usually include a given amount of bandwidth with each server and a price per gigabyte after a certain threshold has been reached. Expect to pay additional fees for bandwidth overage usage. For example, if a dedicated server has been given 3000 gigabytes of bandwidth per month and the customer uses 5000 gigabytes of bandwidth within the billing period, the additional 2000 gigabytes of bandwidth will be invoiced as bandwidth overage. Each provider has a different model for billing. As of yet, no industry standards have been set.

[edit] Management

Main article: Managed dedicated server

To date, no industry standards have been set to clearly define the management role of dedicated server providers. What this means is that each provider will use industry standard terms, but each provider will define them differently. For some dedicated server providers, fully managed is defined as having a web based control panel while other providers define it as having dedicated system engineers readily available to handle all server and network related functions of the dedicated server provider.

Server management can include some or all of the following:

• Operating system updates
• Application updates
• Server monitoring
• SNMP hardware monitoring
• Application monitoring
• Application management
• Technical support
• Firewall services
• Antivirus updates
• Security audits
• DDoS protection and mitigation
• Intrusion detection
• Backups and restoration
• Disaster recovery
• DNS hosting service
• Load balancing
• Database administration
• Performance tuning
• Software installation and configuration
• User management
• Programming consultation

Dedicated hosting server providers define their level of management based on the services they provide. In comparison, fully managed could equal self managed from provider to provider.

Administrative maintenance of the operating system, often including upgrades, security patches, and sometimes even daemon updates are included. Differing levels of management may include adding users, domains, daemon configuration, or even custom programming.

Dedicated server hosting providers may provide the following types of server managed support:

• Fully Managed - Includes monitoring, software updates, reboots, security patches and operating system upgrades. Customers are completely hands-off.
• Managed - Includes medium level of management, monitoring, updates, and a limited amount of support. Customers may perform specific tasks.
• Self Managed - Includes regular monitoring and some maintenance. Customers provide most operations and tasks on dedicated server.
• Unmanaged - Little to no involvement from service provider. Customers provide all maintenance, upgrades, patches, and security.

Note: The provider will continue to maintain security on the network regardless of support level.

[edit] Security

Dedicated hosting server providers utilize extreme security measures to ensure the safety of data stored on their network of servers. Providers will often deploy various software programs for scanning systems and networks for obtrusive invaders, spammers, hackers, and other harmful problems such as Trojans, worms, eggdrops and crashers (Sending multiple connections). Linux and Windows use different software for security protection.

[edit] Software

Providers often bill for dedicated servers on a fixed monthly price to include specific software packages. Over the years, software vendors realized the significant market opportunity to bundle their software with dedicated servers. They have since started introducing pricing models that allow dedicated hosting providers the ability to purchase and resell software based on reduced monthly fees.

Microsoft offers software licenses through a program called the Service Provider License Agreement. The SPLA model provides use of Microsoft products through a monthly user or processor based fee. SPLA software includes the Windows Operating System, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SharePoint and shoutcast hosting, and many other server based products.

Dedicated Server Providers usually offer the ability to select the software you want installed on a dedicated server. Depending on the overall usage of the server, this will include your choice of operating system, database, and specific applications. Servers can be customized and tailored specific to the customer’s needs and requirements.

Other software applications available are specialized web hosting specific programs called control panels. Control panel software is an all inclusive set of software applications, server applications, and automation tools that can be installed on a dedicated server. Control panels include integration into web servers, database applications, programming languages, application deployment, server administration tasks, and include the ability to automate tasks via a web based front end.

Most dedicated servers are packaged with a control panel. Control panels are often confused with management tools, but these control panels are actually web based automation tools created to help automate the process of web site creation and server management. Control panels should not be confused with a full server management solution by a dedicated hosting provider.

Limitations

Many providers do not allow IRC (bots, clients or daemons). This is due to rogue IRC users triggering DDoS attacks against the provider, which may overwhelm their networks, lowering service quality for all customers.

• Adult content is disallowed by many providers as it may either be of questionable legality or consume large amounts of bandwidth.
• Copyright violation Hosting copyrighted material of which you do not own the copyright to is almost always against the terms of service of all hosting companies.