To better illustrate the demands of a smaller website needing more resources and dedicated server hardware, please read the following article, excerpted from Apache.com.

The topic of VPS offerings, or Virtual Private Servers, is not a new one, at least not to any seasoned web guru. For those new to the web industry, the realization that a shared hosting plan may not be the end-all for web hosting often comes as a harsh dose of reality after a quick burst of growth. The scaling from a shared hosting plan, to a virtual private server (vps), sometimes followed by a physically dedicated server (dedicated hosting) depending on the site’s traffic and server load, is generally unknown to a beginner webmaster.

To help illustrate the demands of a website on the traditional web server (cloud and clusters are beyond the scope of this article, we’ll talk those later), I present the example of a resource hungry application running on your home computer. In this scenario, imagine your computer running Windows Media Player, while you have Outlook running to respond to an email, Internet Explorer or Firefox is open with a few tabs displaying the day’s news, and maybe AIM or MSN messenger, or a variety of other programs and utilities. These programs are running quickly and efficiently, there is no negative impact on performance. Their resource footprint is modest, and they can exist peacefully in a “shared” environment.

Now, suddenly you open another program and it immediately bogs the system down, it is affecting the performance of the whole computer, taking up 100% of the CPU usage, and using a large chunk of the system’s RAM or Disk I/O capabilities. You can see how one application (website) bogging down the whole computer would affect the speed of the other programs on the system as well the overall performance of the computer itself. This can also happen on a shared web hosting server.

When a website begins demanding more system resources and cannot be sustained peacefully in shared environment, it’s time to begin examining your website’s needs and reevaluate the environment in which it is hosted.

To give a better overview of the different types of hosting, here is a brief explanation of each, along with a simple upgrade path.

Shared Hosting

In a shared environment, many websites exist on a shared physical server. Several hundreds, even thousands, of websites can be hosted on a single server or IP. As long as your website does not require a large amount of system resources, or experience large bursts of traffic, a shared hosting plan will usually be sufficient. This generally applies to the average personal or small business website.

Virtual Private Servers
A step up from the shared environment. Several virtual containers, or VPS systems, are run on a powerful physical server. This allows you to buy only the resources you need for your website and scale to your needs. For example, if you only need 256mb of committed RAM for your website’s database needs, why pay for 2GB and the extra overhead of a dedicated server?

Dedicated Servers
Dedicated servers are just that, a dedicated physical server for your website’s needs. Generally the most robust solution, a dedicated server or server cluster is often necessary for high-demand websites that experience a large volume of concurrent connections (simultaneous connections), serve large amounts of files, or otherwise heavily tax a shared or virtual plan. As your website’s needs grow, and it requires more dedicated resources, at some point it may be cheaper to invest in a physical server instead of paying for a high-spec VPS plan.

We will discuss Cloud Hosting and Server Clusters in greater detail in a later article.

From early 2004 until 2007, Fridays at Aubergine proved to be the event that put Dtown on the map. For almost 4 years Dtown successfully promoted a weekly Friday night, something not many production companies can lay claim to. From there Dtown has promoted parties at every venue in the city including weekly parties at Confidential, Stingaree, On Broadway, and currently Fridays at Voyeur.

Led by Kevin Brown and currently run by event mastermind Aaron Wellman, Dtown has continued to grow into the full scale production company that it is today.

This project consisted of a custom WordPress theme with dynamic home page.

Curbscape has been serving San Diego County since 1987, enhancing landscapes with beautiful concrete borders for residential and commercial properties. We are dedicated and take great pride in providing you with landscape borders that not only add a distinct custom look to your landscaping, but helps in maintaining, weed control, planter and grass separation as well.