Best Unlimited & Cheap SSD Shared Hosting Companies - Reviewed

• Hot Topics
• Best SSD Hosting Providers
• Types of Hosting Services
• Technical Assessment
• SSD's vs HDD's Comparison
• Explaining the Difference

In this article, we shall highlight the ongoing need for keeping abreast of developing technology insofar as communication hardware is concerned. Today, the ongoing need for the latest reliable hardware is critical in order to keep up with the need to faster and more secure hi-tech transport and dissemination of data.

For those of us who are not familiar with the term HDD, it is generally a mechanical hard disk drive whilst an SSD is a solid-state hard disk drive, both do a similar job and you will find them in all computers whether personal or industrial. Before we can look into the pros and cons of either for hosting, it is important that we know exactly what type of hosting we are talking about.

Types of Hosting Services

Normal Shared Hosting - When you are hosting a website which sits on a server with hundreds or maybe thousands of other websites. Collectively these websites (or domains) have the same physical arrangement, i.e. RAM (random access memory available) and CPU's (central processing units). The CPU is the workhorse or the brain which makes everything work correctly. A small or one-man business even a household would possibly make use of this type of hosting.

Dedicated Server Hosting - This affords the user (renter) with many advantages, i.e. the server is rented by you and is for your exclusive use. You can control the security system right through to the OS (operating system) It is usually a better option but needs to be operated by an IT professional. It is a high traffic volume server and good for moving large files around, even to the "cloud'.

Cloud Hosting - Yet another type of hosting where high efficiency is required. Speed is essential giving access to the fast movement of bulk data. Normally space on these servers is rented out and bulk data stored and moved around at will necessitating high-speed hardware. You would not have to register a domain name on a cloud server but simply use it for storage and more importantly, backing up your data.

Managed Hosting - Usually an online system where all the features are managed by the hosting service, technical or otherwise. This service can be used for corporate FAQ' s (frequently asked questions), service notes, technical support etc. in other words easy to set up and easy to manage. The program chosen for this service is more often than not WordPress, an easy-to-use web creation tool. It should be mentioned that WordPress can be installed on a normal shared hosting service but it does need to be administered and the hosting company is likely to charge for this service.

Colocation Hosting - This service is an often-preferred service to having your own server in your office. This service offers rented out computer hardware at a third-party data centre and one has to accept responsibility for the maintenance etc. of the equipment.

Basically, this type of hosting service offers the floor space, electrical power, high-speed internet connections, aircon and everything needed for direct connections to other servers and ISP's for example. This service, often referred to as an ISP or internet service provider has clients such as stock exchange trading services, online traffic management with fast, online data continually transmitted. It is essentially a third-party datacenter.

Virtual Private Server or VPS Hosting - If you should want more control over your equipment or website then a Virtual private server is the best option here. This option is well suited to clients who lack the technical knowledge to set up a server.

Basically, a VPS will mimic a dedicated server however, it is contained in a shared hosting environment and is more cost-effective than investing in a dedicated server. A dedicated server would require an IT professional to set it up from top to bottom. You will not get any benefits like SSD drives or vast amounts of RAM however it is more cost effective.

Technical Assessment

Now that we have looked at the various types of hosting services available today it is time to consider the equipment specifications these various services offer and require to ensure their businesses run correctly. At this point, we come back to our SSD's and normal HDD's.

There are many technologically important considerations to be taken into account when looking at SSD's vs Enterprise HDD's for hosting purposes as well as general purpose uses, the plusses and minuses so to speak. It is, therefore, the intention of this article to examine these considerations in depth and to advise on the type of SSD to be used depending upon the application. There are various courses of action that can be implemented and one needs to know, going forward, the type of drive best suited to a particular application.

Initial Important Considerations

In today's technologically advancing world, we all expect that a solid-state device will outperform a mechanical one. Why is this? Well, essentially any device with moving components is subject to wear and tear however carefully it is manufactured and maintained, so a device that has no moving components is theoretically, said to outperform the former. This has been proven many times by the introduction of solid-state timers etc. and a host of general SS consumer devices.

SSD's Compared to HDD's – A Comparison

Going all the way back to the early 2000s when SSDs hit the market they were considered expensive. More so than the HDD's especially when comparing the storage capacity in GB or TB's. By then many major web hosting companies had invested fairly heavily in their hardware so to change was not that essential. However, as the price of SSD technology gradually decreased many hosting companies were forced to make changes to their hardware. They certainly needed to upgrade every 2-3 years in any event.

There are still many providers who use HDDs for lower speed traffic, re-route this traffic to the slower HDD servers and off-site storage containing bulk data for downloading. There is still one problem with this. HDD's had a much higher failure rate than SSDs and gradually this is taking its toll on these companies when replacing hardware.

Let's consider the production environment. Notably, these environments mostly used rack-mounted servers with HDDs which were not subjected to physical handling such as is the experience with laptops etc. however, it should be remembered that these servers run for 24 hours/day. When these industrial mechanized manufacturing lines grew and became more complex, there was a need for more inputs and outputs and so speed became important. Eventually, these servers also fell prey to the fitting of SSDs which could handle I/O's at 20 x faster than the speed of HDDs.

There were yet other considerations. When benchmark tested, HDDs vs SSDs the failure rate expressed as a percentage was 3.5% to 0.5 %, a decided advantage.

Backing up these software programs running automated manufacturing lines was also a problem for data centres. Many used bi-level RAID arrays a system of multiple HDD drives each storing a part of a program to put it into layman's terms. (each HDD stored a bit of a byte and were considered failsafe as; in the event of an HDD failure it could be replaced and the system would rebuild the bits previously stored on the old HDD).

These arrays were used for mirroring the customer's programs in the event of failure. They are still used today although the cost of these arrays has become prohibitive and there were also some security concerns. An SSD was a far better storage device as far as cost was concerned eventually.

Consider the Options for SSD's

Having said that there are two basic options using different types of SSD's, the SATA SSD and the PCIe SSD. There is also the higher spec of SATA HDD and that is the Enterprise HDD, certainly better for consumer hosting. For normal high-speed transfer, the SATA SSD at 6 Gb/s (750MB/s) outperforms normal SATA HDD's. It is really fast and can transfer the contents of a CD for example in one second. There are some physical constraints however as there is a need to encode any data prior to transfer.

We, therefore, end up with about 4.8 Gb/s (600MB/s), still extremely fast. But, if there is a need for a faster option still, then the PCIe SSD is even faster.

Explaining the Difference

Technically the HDD connects to a PC SATA port on a server and the other, the PCIe (PCI express) is fitted to a PCIe slot on the actual motherboard of the PC.

When we consider an HDD for consumer applications you would hardly notice, if at all, the difference between a SATA SSD and a PCIe SSD. Web browsing and electronic mail applications rarely call for very high-speed large transactions. In the unlikely event of large files being moved around, you would probably choose a standard hosting service that makes use of SATA HDD's.

One service that deems it necessary for higher transfer speeds is 'Cloud Hosting'. Cloud Hosting is just a fancy term used to describe an expensive sophisticated storage platform by someone's servers on the internet. These servers are equipped with plenty of memory and high-speed drives, normally PCIe SSD's.

This enables large files or bulk data to be transferred with a minimum of delay. Normally you would find PCIe connections to the drives rather than SATA as it allows for faster bandwidth.

Another issue with SATA interfaces is that they have more overhead than that of a PCIe 3.0. At least 20% of bandwidth is lost due to the encoding whilst the PCIe 3.0, also needing encoding, allows for at least 25% more bandwidth.

Today's Market Considerations

As we now have suitably enhanced communication mediums such as satellite and fibre cable systems available to consumers as well as small business users at realistic prices, there is a definite increase in the number of participants using the internet today. Previously, only large enterprises and corporates used hi-tech platforms to interface with consumers. Nowadays, even the corner shop has electronic mail and some enterprises such as Internet cafés offer services such as the high-speed transfer of bulk data. They are also able to analyze your business requirements and compare them to other similar operations with correct advice.

The mobile phone service providers have increased their need for the transfer of more data bundles as mobile handset manufacturers themselves increase the power of the cellphone. All this put together means the need for increasingly higher-speed communications.

So where does all this lead to? Higher speed drives. SSDs play an important role and we should see more ISP's and data centres fitting SSDs to servers for almost any hosting service. Because SSDs have the ability to move greater amounts of data faster, mobile service operators dictate the need for these faster services. No doubt there is an increased cost implication however, this can be generally offset by acquiring more consumers.

In Conclusion

The purpose of this article has been to highlight the advantages of SSDs generally however there are still more considerations when making a choice. The power consumption of SSDs is low when we consider that the HDD or even the Enterprise HDD consumes 15x times the power of an SSD. This does not sound important until you consider that around 35% of the power consumed by data centres in the US today is used by their web servers. Multiplying this by hundreds or thousands of drives and you have a power consumption bill in excess of US $18 billion+ in 2016 just for these centres.

Also, referring to our previously stated failure rate of HDDs vs SSDs, this has to account for some healthy cost reduction (where solid-state drives offer a 0.5% failure over a 3 to 5-year period) Failures found in HDDs are mainly dependent on the manufacturer, the RPM speed of the drives and the bus type used on a web server. Overall, the majority of shared hosting plans offered and running on Windows and Linux platforms, all operate on SSD drives. They have been found to reduce downtime and offer less maintenance.

Recently, shared hosting services were able to obtain a notable subscription increase by moving clients to faster servers which make use of SSD drives. An increased number of hosting services are thus moving to SATA and PCIe SSD drives.

Lastly, storing your data on microchips or solid-state drives offers 20x times the performance. The read and write times and the opening of large files for SSDs are far faster than storing data on mechanical drives and you are likely to have fewer errors in day-to-day operations.