Servers Usually Dedicated with Linux Server Hosting

Servers are usually dedicated, meaning they perform their server tasks and no others. While a server is a computer on a network configured to share its resources or run applications for the other computers on the same network the word "server" can refer to both hardware and software, causing confusion. Any computer can be used as a web server. Web servers can use public domain software from Apache or NCSA or commercial software from Microsoft, Netscape and others.

Windows servers are popular due to the powerful end-to-end management, scalability and reliability that make it easy to integrate your business with the Internet. You can have them in-house or contract with a remote provider with 99.99 percent uptime for a fair price. Remote providers give you specified amounts of disk space at predetermined prices, email accounts for your employees, full support and reporting packages

. Linux/Apache Becoming More Popular

Linux server hosting platforms allow you to host websites or use web-based applications. They can take advantage of Apache, the most widely used web server software and provide many features. Linux and Apache are becoming more popular as their open source availability beats the price of the competition every time. Of course Apache has to be configured when you're setting up a Linux server and that comes with a price, whether you're doing it in-house or remotely. In tests comparing the results of a comparison between the Linux server OS and Windows NT servers a static HTML page of 4-8kb showed a difference of less than 10 percent. A second variation had an overall size of one million files that was about twice as large as the 2 GB of main memory. The freeware system was clearly the winner in this test. While NT could barely manage more than 30 requests per second, Linux was able to handle more than 166. With 512 client processes it managed 274 pages per second.

If you are shopping for a web hosting account and these distinctions mean nothing to you, you are not alone. Take the information on face value that there are qualitative differences in server platforms and consult with your web master or IT staff about which choice is best for you.

Many IT professionals recommend the Linux server hosting/Unix server hosting platforms and tell those outside the field that the introduction of control interfaces is making it easier for non-professionals to use.