Grid hosting draws from the full potential of your hosting service whatever your company needs for its online presence. With grid hosting, your web site is not housed on one server, but is shared on a web of “virtual space” which is hosted on a server cluster or “grid.” It creates its own parallel infrastructure. Single machine hosting leaves you vulnerable to a website crash when your site’s hosting needs are greater than your site’s hosting resources. With shared hosting, resources must be divvied up between all the other hosted sites on the box. Grid hosting will permit your website to draw resources from wherever it needs. When one grid node fails, another server will take up the slack. When dedicated or shared hosting is down your whole website is closed for business.
Grid hosting grows with a company. It enables your website to reach resources you hadn’t anticipated, resources that would normally be beyond it. There is no need for the standard upgrades required, for resources available within the grid hosting platform; the resources are there when they are needed. As with shared hosting, a web company can add as many domains as their account allows. What will a business’ hosting needs be a year from now? Will a site explode into incredible success or will it need to scale back? No one can say. No matter the answer to those questions, grid hosting covers all possibilities. Not only is grid hosting more reliable, it’s also much more scalable. When the resources of a shared host are overextended, a website slows down until it is not even reachable. With the loss of one server, very little of the grid hosting resources would be lost. This will make the website much more dependable for everyone.
Due to the differences in grid hosting, there are a few drawbacks as compared to shared hosting. Access Databases aren’t currently supported. Software applications may need to adapt to this system, as now many vendors require individual licenses for different services if you’re in business, but that vendor flexibility is already happening. Beyond that, grid hosting is much the same as shared hosting.
No server administration experience is required. It’s as easy to setup and maintain as shared hosting. The website hosting comes with a control panel for administration purposes that is very comparable to shared hosting control panels. There you will have control over DNS, the ability to add all your domains, the ability to manage domains, the capacity to install scripts with such auto-install applications, and the power to manage databases and files. Any website will have all the other components, features and controls of shared hosting platforms.
Capacity can be added by putting additional servers on the grid. It’s also vendor-neutral. It’s entirely compatible with all the operating systems, Web apps, and middleware that already exists. A server on a Windows platform can share resources with a Solaris or Linux server.
A company can truly spread its wings at a very affordable cost, while leaving all options open to the future.