There are several type of hosting services offered, and there is always a hosting service for one or all of your needs. There are E-mail hosting, DNS hosting, Game server hosting, Remote backup service, File hosting, Application specific hosting, FFmpeg hosting, Reseller hosting, Clustered hosting, Shared hosting, Free hosting, and the three full-featured hosting services: Virtual private server, Dedicated hosting and Colocation center. Sometimes they come with no strings and hassles but sometimes they have both the pros and cons embedded within the service.

E-mail hosting: It exists only for the sole purpose of running as an email server. “Is E-mail hosting different from webmail services provided by Gmail, Yahoo, and hotmail?“. Yes, it is. Not to also mention there is no free email-hosting service, in other words payment is always involved. However, you get what you pay for with email-hosting service. You get what you call premium email deal which includes your own domain name email, advanced email authentication customized to a full extent to prevent others from sending emails as you, and the hosting on dedicated email platforms that ensures your emails to be backed up and server to be running at all times with very minimized downtime. “Should you buy hosting service that always come with basic POP mail service instead of email-hosting?“.  It depends on your business plan: to send emails only as in legit email marketing or to also have a website to begin with. If you want to setup a website as well, hosting service is the way to go but keep in mind all the advanced email setting you will received via support with email-hosting will have to be done by you or your hired server admin. Here’s a slogan I came across one day: “Almost all the hosting providers can provide basic email service, but not all the email-hosting providers provide hosting”.

DNS hosting: It consists of running Domain Name System servers. You may not need to go with DNS hosting unless your domain registrar does not offer or offer for free the DNS service and your hosting do not come with it as a basic package.  In that case, depending on the intention, it will be cheaper and/or better to go with DNS hosting or with upgrades through your registrar and web hosting provider. If you choose to go with DNS hosting, that is what you can manage through it: A, MX, CNAME, TXT and NS records of the domain zone. There are free (with upgrade option) and paid DNS hosting services as well, along with Dynamic DNS Service by third-party DNS services. Most of the DNS hosting are shared because it is not necessary to give each single web site management a server.

Game Server Hosting: As obvious it is with the hosting name, it is required when you want to remotely or locally run a game server with many game clients to play multiplayer games. Most games on the net are through the game servers, and the only differences between them are quality and quantity of the servers. Most of the time, Gaming clans (the group of players forming a guild) will come together to lease for gaming server from the Game Service Providers. if you go for the legit Game Server Provider,the staffs will help you setup and configure the server for you along with giving you permission to modify the game being leased.  There are two types: listen servers and dedicated servers.

Listen server is where a player can both host and participate in the game and the downside of it is that when the client is terminated by some reason, the game itself will get terminated (ex: playing over LAN). In contrast, with dedicated servers, the server is hosted at a datacenter with the best hardwares and bandwidth and it can be running 24/7. Players can log in and off without disrupting the game flow, no fear of termination because there is no “player host” (of course high memory load and bandwidth usage will interrupt it!).

Remote backup service: The service is useful if you have many crucial files on your computer and you want to backup and store coputer files online. usually how it works is, the remote backup server will come with a software, which will schedule a backup daily. Almost all client software collects, compresses, encrypts, and transfer the data to the remote backup servers. However there are both pros and cons with remote backup services and this is what have been gathered:

Advantages:

• Remote backup does not require user intervention. The user does not have to change tapes, label CDs or perform other manual steps.
• Remote backup maintains data offsite. Perhaps the most important aspect of backing up is that backups are stored in a different location from the original data. Traditional backup requires manually taking the backup media offsite.
• Unlimited data retentions
• Data storage abroad could be an advantage too.
• Some remote backup services will work continuously, backing up files as they are changed.
• Most remote backup services will maintain a list of versions of your files.
• Most remote backup services will use a 128 – 448 bit encryption to send data over unsecured links (ie internet)
• A few remote backup services can reduce backup by only transmitting changed binary data bits

Disadvantages:

• Depending on the available network bandwidth, the restoration of data can be slow. Because data is stored offsite, the data must be recovered either via the Internet or via tape or disk shipped from the online backup service provider.
• Some backup service providers have no guarantee that stored data will be kept private – for example, from employees. As such, most recommend that files be encrypted before storing or automate this this process.
• It is possible that a remote backup service provider could go out of business or be purchased, which may affect the accessibility of one’s data or the cost to continue using the service.
• If encryption password is lost, no more data recovery will be possible. However with managed services this should not be a problem.

Thank you for reading this far. I will be explaining the other services in upcoming Part II. Stay tuned!

By: Kaung

Part III>>>