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Your Web Server Memory and
Operating System Options

What Is "Memory"?

When talking about computers, people often talk about memory.  They'll also say RAM which basically means the same thing.

For your interest - RAM stands for Random Access Memory.

Now, you could consider a hard disk "permanent memory" since whatever you put on it is remembered even after you've turned off the computer.

However, you can consider RAM the computer's work space.  The more RAM it has the more space it has to work effectively.

But - the computer only remembers what's in RAM while it's on.  If you turn the computer off and then on again, everything in RAM is lost.

If we once again take the QS-1 example at Pair.com - as I write this that dedicated web server has 256MB (megabytes) of RAM.

That's pretty good and that would work perfectly well.

Once again, there's no need to waste money, and only as you NEED more capacity for your server would you need to upgrade to more RAM and a faster CPU.

Now if we take the QS-3 server - that has 1GB of RAM (1,024 MB) which is substantial.

If your web server has an awful lot of traffic or needs a lot of "workspace" for whatever it does, that 1GB will come in handy.

I have 256MB of RAM in my QS-0 and that serves me perfectly well.

Once again though with a shared server, if you're on that server with 100 other people, you generally only get 1% of the RAM, so a shared server will need a lot of RAM to work effectively.

Now, let's look at something very important.  The Operating System or OS...

What's The "Operating System"?

Now I'm going to keep saying "As I write This" because technology changes quickly.  BUT - "as I write this" there's three main operating systems in the web hosting market.

However, first of all let's answer - what is an Operating System?

Well, you've got your CPU which is the brains of the web server.

You've got your RAM which is your web server's work space.

You've got your hard disk which is where your web server stores permanently available data.

BUT - without an Operating System your web server is nothing.

It doesn't know what to do with itself.  An Operating System tells your web server how to "Operate".

The Operating System (OS) is the first thing a computer looks for when starting up.  If it can't find one, it generally does nothing.  Because it doesn't know how to do anything.

Think of a typical home computer running Windows.  You turn on the computer and the first thing the computer does is look for Windows.

As soon as it finds it, the computer reads Windows in to RAM and behaves according to the instructions in Windows.

A web server works the same way, but just for a slightly different purpose.

The web server OS is usually designed, not for easy of use so you can move your mouse around and create documents...etc.

But it's designed to keep on running round the clock, serving web pages to people who visit your site.

There's three main operating systems for web servers:

Let's start with Windows - you probably already know about Windows.  As well as running home computers Windows can also be used to run web servers.

If on your web server you're running software that needs Windows, a web server with a Windows OS could work well for you.

However, I'm going to say something which is my opinion but which is also shared by many others:

I want my web server to be available 24/7.  I want it to happily remain available to web surfers around the clock.  Because it's my shop front on the internet, and if my shop front closes for any period of time, I lose customers.

Windows is not a particularly stable operating system.  Just think of Windows on your computer at home and how many times it has problems.

If you want a stable web server, I don't recommend Windows.

One other thing worth noting about Windows is it's very "resource hungry".  What that means is to run effectively it needs lots of RAM and a powerful CPU.  This means increased costs for you.

Let's move onto the Operating System called Linux.

Linux is proven to be stable and reliable, and many web servers run on Linux.

Another benefit of Linux is it makes very efficient use of the computer's resources.  What this means is it doesn't need that much RAM or a very powerful CPU to run very effectively.

This saves you money, and means you don't need to keep upgrading your web server hardware.  Linux is free too, since it's Open Source Software.

The third and final OS is FreeBSD.

This operating system is Open Source too and is probably the most stable web server operating system around.

I have FreeBSD installed on my dedicated server and it serves me very well.  It's also not resource intensive like Windows which means you can quite happily run it on a lower spec machine which keeps your costs down.

However, it's important to mention that with shared hosting you generally don't need to know how the operating system works to have your own web site since on shared hosting accounts the hosting company will usually have an easy to use control panel you can manage things with.

Even on a dedicated server, you may have a control panel you can control things through.  This will be covered in more depth later in the report, especially as it relates to managed vs. unmanaged dedicated hosting.

Now, I'll like to briefly return to talking about hard drive's, and specifically...

What Are The Different Types Of Hard Drives?

I'm briefly going to talk about the two main types of hard drive.  Their differences are useful to know.

There's IDE hard drives and there's SCSI hard drives.

IDE hard drives are the standard kind you get in most home computers.  They're cheaper than SCSI hard dives but are less reliable and not as quick.  In other words, they lose data and crash entirely more often than SCSI hard drives and aren't as quick to access data.

However, they generally work perfectly fine and if you're on a dedicated machine do the job very well.

So let's focus initially on an IDE hard drive on a dedicated server.  That's what I have - an IDE drive which is 30 GB in size.

However, because of some occasional reliability issues with IDE hard drives, if you really don't want to lose any data at all, and don't want any downtime at all if your hard drive fails, you can have a second IDE hard drive in the same machine.

Often in such a set up all the data is copied from your main IDE hard drive to the backup IDE hard drive several times throughout the day so if the main drive fails for any reason, the backup drive can quickly take over and you might at most lose two hours of data.

Pair.com call such a set up a "Shadow Drive".  If you'd like a Shadow Drive in your web server you have to pay them $50 a month extra for that peace of mind.

Now, let's talk about SCSI drives...

As mentioned SCSI drives are both faster and more reliable than IDE hard drives, but they're also more expensive.

One really nice feature of SCSI is you can set up what's known as RAID:

A "RAID Array" of SCSI drives.

This means you can have two or more SCSI drives working together, mirroring the data constantly.  This allows for faster access to the data as well as much more reliability.  But as mentioned, such speed and reliability do come at a price.

Okay, so now I'm going to talk about a concept vital to web hosting.  And that's Bandwidth ...

Part 1 - An Introduction

Part 2 - What Exactly Is a Web Server?

Part 3 - Your Web Server Memory and Operating System Options

Part 4 - Bandwidth, and Backups

Part 5 - More About Backups, And How To Monitor Your Sites Automatically

Part 6 - Databases, Unmanaged Hosting, and More...