Shared Web Servers - Things To Think About

By Author: unknownmem
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You may often get a substantial discount off website hosting fees by utilizing a shared server. Or, you might have multiple sites of your own on one server. But, just as sharing a condo can have pros and cons, so too with a server.

One factor is availability. Shared servers get re-booted more frequently than dedicated servers. That can happen for multiple reasons. Another web site's programs could cause an issue or make a change that requires a re-boot. While that's less common on Unix-based systems than on Windows, it still occurs. Be prepared for more scheduled and unplanned outages when you have shared hosting.

Load is the next, and more serious, factor. One pickup truck can only carry so much weight. If the truck is already loaded with someone else's cargo, it can not carry yours as effectively.

Most sites are fairly static. A reader hits a page, then spends some time reading it before visiting another. During that time, the server has the capacity to satisfy additional requests without impacting you. All the shared resources - CPU, memory, disks, network and other components - can easily support several ...
... users (up to a point).

But all servers have inherent capacity limits. The piece of hardware that executes software instructions (the CPU) can only do so much. Most large servers will have several (some as many as 16), but there are still limits to what they can do. The more requests they receive, the busier they are. At a certain point, your software request (such as accessing a website page) has to wait a bit.

RAM on a server functions in a similar way. It's a shared resource on the web server and there is a limited amount. As it gets used up, the system lets one process use some, then another, in turn. But sharing that resource causes delays. The more requests there are, the longer the delays. You may encounter that as waiting for a page to load in the browser or a file to download.

Bottlenecks can appear in other places outside, but connected to, the web server itself. Network hardware gets shared with many users as does everything else. And, as with those others, the more requests there are (and the longer they tie them up) the longer the delays you encounter.

The only way to get an objective look at whether a web server and the connected network have enough capacity is to measure and test. All systems are capable of reporting how much of what is being used.

Most can compile that data into some form of statistical report. Reviewing that data allows for a rational assessment of how much capacity is being utilized and how much is still available. It also allows a knowledgeable person to make judgments of how much more sharing is available with what level of impact.

With that report you can make a cost-benefit decision based on facts.
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