When the Internet was young and needs were humble, many were the tribes that dwelt peacefully side-by-side on the servers.
However, like all of mankind’s wars throughout history, struggles arose as the population expanded and resources began to get more scarce.
Metaphors aside, the original servers were what we call “shared servers”. Multiple partitions of the server keep the data distinct, each with its own connection to the outside world. There are still many examples of shared servers, as it is the most economical method of web hosting and therefore suits the needs of many for whom more exclusive web hosting options would be superfluous.
These shared servers can range from the name-based servers (one server under which all partitions derive the web address) to the much more secure and robust IP-based shared servers. Both are often referred to as “virtual hosting”, to distinguish shared servers from true dedicated hosts.
However, there is an intermediate level, more accurately referred to as “virtual private servers”, which offer many of the benefits of a private server while only occupying a portion of the hardware server. Unlike true shared servers, the virtual private server can run separate operating systems and access the hardware right down to the “root”, which gives the user more hands-on flexibility and a certain amount of extra security, while still costing less than a dedicated server.
These dedicated servers are more expensive but offer true isolation — i.e., your company has its own server (though you may or may not own the hardware). You never need to worry about security issues from others sharing your server, and you never need to worry about running out of space on that server (you’ll still need to consider space limits, but those are generally hardware limits rather than encroachment issues).
As space needs tend to grow exponentially, scalability becomes more and more of a concern. Web hosting involving more than one physical server has become the next logical step, and various approaches have been developed to make use of this potential. We’ll examine that on our next page.