While choosing hosting for your website, your server needs may also be on your mind. While you should definitely store your site in another place, “What is a server, how does it work?” You keep looking for answers to your questions. In fact, there are two answers to these questions: the first is the content of your website, and the second is your expectation.
What is Server?
Website owners, in order to broadcast, “What is a server, what does it do?” asks questions. Service providers that share data, resources and files with clients on the network and generally have superior hardware features are called servers. Servers can be used for purposes such as managing a network, sharing files or applications, hosting databases, hosting web pages and e-mail.
The server is actually just like a computer used at home. It includes components such as the processor (CPU), memory (RAM), and hard drive. But of course servers are much more powerful than computers at home. Because they need to process the codes that make up a website in seconds and send them instantly to the people who visit the site at that moment.
In addition, high equipment such as uninterrupted working performance, durability, high service quality and energy efficiency are used in the servers 24/7. Here, in order to publish your website on the Internet, you rent a space or the entire server from a server owner in line with your site’s needs. This service is also called “web hosting”.
Where is the server hosted?
Servers are located in centers called data centers, where there is a very high speed internet connection and high-level security measures. Depending on the size of this center, hundreds or tens of thousands of servers can run at the same time. While small-scale hosting companies serve with only a few web servers; Companies around the world have hundreds of thousands of servers spread across almost every country.
But Which Server Type?
Servers contain customized hardware and applications in accordance with their intended use. For this reason, the intended use determines the target server type. The types of servers commonly used today are as follows:
Physical Server
Some servers are used only for defined tasks. For example, a program server just hosts the website. In other words, network users can run the corresponding computer program without downloading the copy data to their computers. Physical servers called dedicated servers can easily host the site. Since it is especially important for companies, the physical server type should be installed with high-tech, special equipment components.
Physical servers can easily perform many operations on the network they are used, thanks to their software and hardware capacity. Some of those transactions are:
- OS updates
- SNMP hardware monitoring,
- firewall services,
- Anti-spam software
- Antivirus updates
- DDoS protection
- DNS hosting service
- Disaster recovery
- Intrusion detection
- database management
- Backup and restores
- Security controls
VPS Server
VPS server (virtual private server), which stands for “virtual private server”, shows you completely special server features. Usually, a physical server is divided into virtual server parts by virtualization software. Thus, completely independent servers run on a single physical server. Here is one of the servers rented by the website owners.
Since components such as processor and memory belonging to physical servers are clearly shared among website owners, the slowdown experienced in other VPSs will never affect the sites in your VPS. Likewise, it is not possible for other VPS to use the resources reserved for you. If you have a site that needs a lot of resources, you should use the entire server for a single site.
Which sites is the VPS server suitable for?
E-commerce sites that need extra security and resource-intensive social media, finance or business web applications receive considerable traffic. Therefore, they need VPS. If available, multiple sites belonging to the company can be hosted in a single VPS domain. In this regard, different server software (e-mail, IRC, VPN, database, etc.) can be run.
VDS Server
VDS server, which stands for “virtual dedicated server”, is a special server service where the usage savings of the server are under the sole responsibility of the website owner. Each server has its own hardware components separately. Apart from that, it also hosts independent server software and independent operating system.
Which sites is VDS server suitable for?
The amount of RAM and processor assigned to a VDS server cannot be used by other VDSs or VPS in the same physical server. Thanks to this feature, VDS servers always work at higher performance. Corporate websites and other sites with high workloads need a VDS server to work fast because they receive a lot of traffic.
Cloud Server
Cloud server, also called cloud server, cloud hosting or cloud VPS terms, is actually almost similar to VPS. The only difference is that while VPS is a single physical server split into virtual parts; A cloud server is formed by the separation of a network of many physical servers into servers.
Cloud server has been preferred a lot lately because it is more scalable than VPS. For example, if the physical server where your VPS server is located has a total of 32 GB of memory, you cannot make 64 GB, no matter how much you want. However, cloud servers can provide access to much more resources as they are formed with more than one physical computer.
Another advantage of the cloud server is that it is priced according to resource usage, not monthly fixed price. In other words, the bill is determined by the CPU hour used during the month, the storage level and the traffic spent. In some cases, this method, which is cheaper than the flat fee, is still used by software developers for some special purposes, not by website owners.
Which sites is the cloud server suitable for?
From a general customer perspective, there is virtually no difference between a cloud server and a traditional VPS. In fact, many hosting companies prefer to move their VPS to cloud server. So, when a new VPS is leased, a cloud server may actually be leased. This has no downsides for the website.
Other Server Types
To briefly mention other types of servers preferred by users:
- Web server: It allows viewing pages and running applications through web browsers. For example, it is a web server that allows the browsers such as Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox or Yandex to display the page they are connected to and the images on the page.
- E-mail server: E-mail servers are systems that facilitate the sending and receiving of numerous e-mail messages sent to the address every day. If an e-mail client such as Outlook is used, this software must be connected to an IMAP or POP server to download e-mail to the computer; In order to send e-mail, it connects to an SMTP server.
- FTP server: FTP servers are systems that allow files to be transferred with “File Transfer Protocol” tools. In other words, remote access to file transfer servers can be achieved through FTP client programs.
- In fact, there are hundreds of other types of servers that support computer networks. In addition to all these mentioned corporate servers, game servers and chat servers that personal computer users prefer to use more are among the servers that use different types of servers. Therefore, instead of buying a server, it will be much cheaper to rent a server in line with the needs of your website.
