As the proprietor of an online business, you will have to make some important choices about your web hosting service. Your web hosting service controls the server where your website is located, and the right one can mean the difference between an attention-grabbing, traffic-driving website and one that's just one of the crowd. One of the issues you will have to decide is how much of the server you wish to use.
Dedicated Servers vs. Shared Servers
A dedicated server is one in which the entire server is dedicated to your web pages. This means there will be no other users draining your resources. It also means you will pay a considerable monthly sum, since you are taking up a whole server. A shared server setup is much cheaper, but as the name implies, you will be sharing the server and its resources with many others using the company's web hosting services.
The Advantage of Virtual Private Servers (VPS)
The virtual private server is the happy medium between the two alternatives. The server is partitioned and your company is afforded an entire one of the partitions. Since you are not using up the entire server yourself, the expense is not as great. However, since the server is partitioned, other users on the server do not affect you in the same way as they might on a shared server.
Sandboxes and Honeypots
Another feature of the VPS is the ability to create sandboxes and honeypots. These are methods of testing software updates and features while keeping the main site secure. Your company uses one of its VPS partitions for its main site and another one as a backup. When new software updates are to be added, they are tested in the sandbox, and then transferred to the main server after having sufficiently proved themselves. If there is a suspected security breach, the second server can be used as "bait." It resembles the real site, but without sensitive information. If someone hacks the second site, the company can see how it was done and trace it back without any threats to their main files.
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