Virtual hosting: the web hosting

Virtual hosting is the using a distant hosting service provider to data, applications host websites and/or services. Virtual hosting allows a myriad of IT services and solutions that can be hosted and carry out from a remote server or computing facility, where the provider completely manages the backend infrastructure. Virtual hosting is well known as Web hosting.

Virtual hosting is a method for hosting multiple domain names by separate handling of each name on a single or pool of servers. This allows the server to share its resources such as memory and processor cycles, without requiring all services provided to utilize the same host name. The name virtual hosting is usually used in reference to web servers but the principles carry over to other internet services.

One broadly used application is shared web hosting. Also Shared web hosting prices are lower than a keen web server because lots of customers can be hosted on a single server. It is also very normal for a single entity to use multiple names on the same machine so that the names can reflect services offered rather than where this service is to be hosted.

 There are two types of virtual hosting:

1) Name-based

2) IP-based.

Name-based virtual hosting utilizes the host name presented by the client. This step saves IP addresses and the associated administrative overhead but the protocol being served must provide the host name at an appropriate point. In particular, there are major problems using name-based virtual hosting with SSL/TLS.

For each host name a separate IP address is used by IP-based virtual hosting and it can be performed with any protocol but needs a dedicated IP address per domain name served. Port-based virtual hosting is feasible in principle but is rarely used in practice because it is unfriendly to users.

Name-based and IP-based virtual hosting can be combined. A server might have multiple IP addresses and serve multiple names on some or all of those IP addresses. This technique can be helpful when using SSL/TLS by wildcard certificates.

Uses

Virtual web hosting is regularly used on large scale in companies whose business model is to give low cost website hosting for customers. The large bulk of web hosting service customer websites worldwide are hosted on shared servers, using virtual hosting technology.

Many businesses uses virtual servers for internal purposes, where there is an administrative or technological reason to operate several separate websites, such as an employee extranet, internal intranet, customer extranet website and intranets for different departments.

If there are no security concerns in the website architectures, they can be fused into a single server using virtual hosting technology, that will administrative overhead and reduce management and the number of separate servers that are required to support the business.