In 2012 the bandwidth used worldwide is worth growing, because users who access the Web are growing in number and data center service providers, as well as ISPs providing connections to homes and businesses are faced with an ever increasing demand for bandwidth output from their servers.

The bandwidth, which we will cover in this article as a monthly traffic, is surely one of the parameters of interest when one talks of a webhosting solution. Whether it’s a shared hosting solution or a dedicated server, your ISP gives value to bandwidth, which indicates the speed at which our website may provide content to the outside users, and a value of traffic per month , Instead it indicates how many gigabytes does our site use every month. These two values are in fact relevant, in fact if we multiply the bandwidth available to us for the month of use we get exactly the maximum monthly traffic that we use for our web site.

Many customers, when choosing a solution for a new web site, or already launched website, find it difficult to estimate how much bandwidth is needed for their site, and therefore rely on solutions that are often not suitable. In this article we see, briefly, how you can get an idea of bandwidth consumption and how to predict the increase in the short term.

The traffic monitoring carried out by our web site is crucial for several reasons. The most obvious is that many hosting solutions charge the cost as per additional GB over the threshold limit. If our plan includes 20 GB of monthly traffic, and the use is 25 GB in a month, then we will have to pay extra amount to the provider in excess of that 5 GB bandwidth.

The same applies to the VPS and dedicated solutions where the charging is often even   more stringent. Monitoring of the traffic allows us to understand the days with more visits and requests from users, and may be the wake-up call to see if the traffic generated is not entirely “normal“, but produced from attacks on our web site (DDOS Attack) or by search engine bots or other organizations that require our pages all the time.

The speed will change significantly if the bandwidth is completely used: In this case, the provider does not provide us with tools to understand how much bandwidth we are using in real time, except in the case of dedicated servers and VPS. Many shared hosting accounts have such a dedicated bandwidth of 512 kbit / s or 1 Mbit / s, while other vendors prefer not to expose this value.

As previously mentioned, the value of bandwidth is a parameter connected to the monthly traffic, however, it has a greater importance in some cases because it allows to understand exactly how many visitors we can accommodate simultaneously online, with a continuous request for content from our account or server. Take, for example to the streaming services, or to services providing multimedia content, in this case it is essential to have a value guaranteed bandwidth.

If our website is already online, the first thing to do is have an idea of the current consumption that we are producing. In this case we take a look at the statistics of the web server, and more importantly, we cannot use tools like Google Analytics, which do not provide information about the use of bandwidth.

Two tools that we can take into account are AWStats and Webalizer. These two statistics software are installed by almost all hosting providers which allow you to check the bandwidth usage on a monthly, daily and even hourly basis.

Many hosting providers, especially in the case of dedicated servers and VPS, from their control panels provide the ability to monitor the traffic used to be able to get an idea of monthly consumption. The control panels such as Plesk and cPanel provide the ability to monitor the bandwidth usage per web site, on a monthly basis. Once we have a clear idea of the consumption of our website we can certainly provide the best future growth even and especially to move towards a web hosting solution that can guarantee the traffic without any problem.

Now that we have seen that we can use statistics to get an idea of the consumption of our web site, the question is trivial, as we do in the event of a new website. First we must understand what we talk about in detail: a website that was launched with much content online without any promotion on dedicated channels, it is hard to see thousands of visitors on the website daily.

Unfortunately in this case we do not have technical data: Study the impact of an online site meets several qualitative questions. If we plan an advertising campaign on multiple channels, we can now estimate a high number of visits (proportional to the number of channels and the channels chosen for ad), and if our web site relies solely on organic traffic and search engine traffic, we cannot get 2000 daily visits.

We can try to understand the consumer as well for visits: It is easy to “measure” the content. First we make our web pages and do an average of their weight. Today, a page can easily get a weight of 400/500 Kb: we know that in this case if you open it 10 times, we used 4 MB of traffic, if they are opened 100 times, 40 MB is used and so on.

With an estimate of the traffic generated from our website, on a given day, we must consider a number of additional variables: the majority of websites have days during the week where the traffic is higher, these are usually working days, but this pattern may change depending on the website. Like, the night of the Web sites are those where less traffic ever recorded. Once our website has been online for a few weeks we will have a clearer idea of the days with higher consumption and hours in which there is a spike in visits.

If we talk about solutions such as VPS and dedicated servers, then it is evident that the monthly traffic and bandwidth are values that need to be taken into strong consideration: providers set limits in terms of guaranteed bandwidth, such as 10 Mbit / s, and in terms of band burst, ie the quantity of excess bandwidth that can be used for a limited period of time.

If our server has dedicated 10 Mbit / s guaranteed bandwidth and 15 Mbit / s burst of bandwidth, means that for a certain period of time in the day we get to use the value of 15 Mbit / s.

Currently there are dedicated servers and VPS packages which are activated with flat rate, where they also have several terabytes of traffic including: in this case it is useful to understand what is the guaranteed minimum speed for use thereof.

In the case of shared hosting solutions: Nowadays many hosting providers do nothing but place the value of “unlimited” bandwidth that can be delivered out, a practice that may mislead customers as unlimited resources do not exist. This choice is due to the fact that most shared hosting customers have an average consumption of the infrastructure of the hosting provider. This does not mean that our web site can really accommodate millions of visitors, usually the contract of service raises this issue clearly and frees the provider from liability for the suspension of the service if excessive traffic is carried.

I was wrong. I thought that the “trend” is always to buy a VPS (Virtual Private Server, also called Virtual Machine, VM) was over and yet I cannot help but noticed that there are still a lot of people who  still speak so much of the goodness of these solutions to shared hosting when it is no longer enough .

The VPS are nothing more than virtual machines created with different technologies, depending on the needs and the provider you choose, but from the point of view “operations” are real and their dedicated servers are only different in the eyes of the user in name, but with all issues involving the management of a server on the network, from its management.

Users have begun to compare VPS hosting plans with shared and reseller for some time: this led to these solutions because they offer to acquire the ability to manage more domains, to have a control panel other than the one we have seen in most other offers shared hosting and why it usually has a “full customization.” The “merit” is a lot of offers, not managed, they did seem really easy to manage your VPS, if not for the fact that these require knowledge and a management of shared hosting, even professional level, obviously not required. I try to clarify once and for all and then with a series of points about what gives a VPS and shared hosting one thing, trying to emphasize a line of confrontation between the two products:

VPS :

• SSH access to the system
• Operating system chosen by the customer, to be managed in a common server updates
• Ability to host multiple Web sites without limits since the machine is at the customer
• Control Panel of your choice
• Need to perform periodic updates, safety and management system
• Monitoring and optimization of resources by the customer
• Useful for personalization and Web sites that require dedicated resources
• Backup by the client, preferably on the external server (additional cost)
• Shared Hosting / Reseller
• Full management by the web hosting provider
• Optimized for the use of web pages
• Control Panel chosen by the provider
• No specific knowledge required to manage the system

Also suitable to absorb peak loads and important if it is a professional solution with high level.

• Ability to host multiple domains in the case of a product or multi-domain reseller
• Inability to change the system and components supply
• Backup almost always included and automated
• Suitable for any type of website that does not require customization side ‘system, changing the price range.
• ALS determined by contract with the provider
• Shared environment, you still have a breakdown of the machine hw resources

I hope I was able to focus on what are the salient features of the two offers and why a VPS is a solution that is more complex to manage, justifiable only if the customer really needs.

Today, I will speak only of some advice on how you can make a better server backup of your own dedicated server or VPS. There is talk of unmanaged server, where the server is put online without any assistance and with a backup policy to be implemented completely at home.

Backup, really needed?

If your server contains only the files of little importance, websites of which you have made changes in years and years, then the answer is no. If you have websites and important files, then you must immediately count the cost of the server that must be added with a backup solution. The budget may be commensurate with real needs, and also varies depending on the frequency with which we want to backup.

The first step, I repeat, is to become aware that without a back up, our service should not go online. In the case of data loss we will not give any chance to get back online in many cases and many have to remain offline for a long time.

What kind of backup?

Run up the data on the same server that provides the service does not make sense , and in fact it is only useful if that backup is then immediately exported elsewhere, on other media. The best choice is to back up your server on another machine or even better on a service dedicated solely to the backup, which in turn has an adequate technical data protection.

If our business is important, it is better to start now to think of the redundant backup across multiple media: an online backup service at a special (sending via FTP or rsync) or through the placement of data on external media such as DVD or our hard drives in the office.

Usually other dedicated servers are chosen to back up several machines online, virtual and physical properties: it is not entirely the best solution, at least not until it is combined with other solutions (media). Better then to think of a dedicated external backup service, to another provider or directly online through one of the many services worldwide that offer backup space. The advantage is that in fact these services in turn provide data security systems and reduce the risk of loss or damage to the integrity of the data.

How often to backup?

Daily, weekly, biweekly or monthly?

All these options have a different charge, as do a daily backup actually means keeping multiple copies of data. Usually a daily backup is very useful for database and dynamic web sites that are updated daily, but of no use if our data is not updated frequently. The weekly backup is usually the intermediate solution, the one chosen most often for web sites and servers that contain a good number of GB of data and must be backed up with a cost, however small.

Cloud computing is the buzzword of the moment, but what does it mean? This is really ready for prime time, or you want to stay with VPS?

First, some definitions:

Head in the Clouds?

In a sense, cloud computing, is a grid computing that borrow the overall computing resources for application processing rather than local servers or user devices. This is an updated model of a supercomputer for the IT company of the people, promising trillions of calculations per second for financial services, personal data and a huge, immerse gaming network.

Cloud computing brings together a group of servers using (mostly) low-cost, consumer-level components of a PC on the network, the distribution of data crunching cleaning. Virtualization techniques can maximize Cloud computing power. Standards for the PC and network connectivity, and software do all the work. Now, cloud computing has become the hot thing, and its potential for accessing and sharing of computing power as a virtual resource, security and a scalable way, makes it attractive for large corporate data centers. It’s all pretty vague and uncertain, though, and early adopters need courage, as well as expanding budgets.

VPS, Tried and Trusted

VPS means virtual private servers, which is created on a special physical server in a data center. VPS essentially stand-alone server hardware sharing a single physical server, something like a dedicated server with its own memory, disk space, as well as the IP address. Since you can manually restart the VPS and operate as a separate server that can run your own applications. It is similar to dedicated servers, but closer to the cost of hosting plan, VPS servers can process requests for secondary business sites easily.

Each VPS account on the server, have its own partition, which allows them access to their own roots and bandwidth. This improves performance and allows users to run their own applications. VPS works like a dedicated server, in many respects, except when it comes to paying for them, since they are much cheaper in comparison.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is definitely the hot thing and there are couple of cloud hosting providers in India. Nevertheless, many experts believe that the term is a multitasking buzzword used to describe the confusing array of different technologies. Cloud computing term is used to refer to utility computing, network computing, software as a service “model, Internet applications, remote processing, autonomic computing and peer-to-peer computing.

There are people who believe that the term cloud computing is another key word used to describe too much technology, which makes it confusing for many. Cloud computing term is used to describe grid computing, utility computing, software as a service, Internet-based applications, autonomic computing, peer-to-peer computers and remote processing. When most people use the term, they can have one of these ideas in mind, but the listener can think of something else.

Real Comparison

User forums filled with people who have a number of high-traffic Web sites with 10000 hits per day range, but if there is not high traffic, it is sufficient demand to justify the preparation of solid, capable VPS or Dedicated server. Some of these claims involved a huge cost savings from the cloud, but they show that there are usually standard monthly payments over the utility billing. It is obvious that at present the regular forms of hosting is cheaper to scale to enter a formula, then the lines will intersect and cloud computing will be a less expensive alternative.

The problem, of course is that, there is a lack of awareness. Some clouds providers have developed online price estimate tools like cost calculators, which will be considered with estimated bandwidth and storage needs that can crank out a monthly bill. That’s all you can do to get a cost comparison at the moment.

Cloud Hosting and VPS Hosting, both are Best…

Only factor matters is the Requirement….