A Java Developer's Guide To Web Hosting
 by: David Heffelfinger

You make a living writing enterprise java applications, and you would like to work on your own projects for fun or profit, you would like to create your own web site or you would like to have a place to host your open source project. You look around for hosting providers, and all you see is PHP and PERL support, with very few hosting companies supporting Java, what to do?

Although the number of hosting companies supporting Java is increasing, support varies from nearly non-existent to companies that are deeply committed to their Java support.

There are three types of hosting plans available:

• Shared hosting
• Virtual Private Server hosting
• Dedicated Server hosting.

With a shared hosting plans, several web sites are hosted on the same server, sharing the server's resources and using the same IP address. Virtual Private Server (VPS) plans consist of a server that is split into multiple virtual servers, each virtual server has it's own IP address, some companies call these types of plans Virtual Dedicated Servers. Dedicated servers are the most expensive type of plan, each dedicated server customer gets their own physical server, nice to have, but prohibitively expensive for personal web sites and small operations.

At Ensode.net, we recommend that you find a hosting company that provides Virtual Private Server (VPS) support (some hosting companies call it Virtual Dedicated Server), since they provide a nice balance between price and control. A VPS server is like having your own server, usually with root access, which gives you the freedom to install any application you might need, including version control systems like Subversion or CVS, WebDAV, or anything else you might need. With a VPS plan you will most likely get your own IP address, and your server will be not only your web server, but also your mail and database server.

VPS hosting plans tend to be somewhat more expensive than shared hosting plans, but it is our belief that they are worth the extra cost since they provide much more control and flexibility. If you are a Java developer, chances are you are used to "getting your hands dirty", and working on a server using good old Unix commands. Shared hosting plans tend to have "user friendly" (dumbed down?) interfaces, which might simplify administration, but can also severely limit what you are able to do, for example, let's say a shared hosting company gives you 300 megabytes of disk space to host your web site, and an additional 300 megabytes for your email, if your web site takes 5 megabytes of space, but your email server is getting full, there is no way to allocate more space to store emails and reduce the allocation of web space. In addition to leaving you unable to reallocate resources as needed, you can also forget about installing any applications on your server. Another disadvantage of shared hosting plans is that an IP address is shared among several customers, which could have potential problems. For example, if one of the customers uses their mail server for bulk emailing, the IP address of that mail server may be banned from several systems, in a shared hosting plan environment, this would affect all the customers using the same server.

With few exceptions, shared hosting plans that support Java do so through a shared JVM, which means that you have no way of starting or stopping the JVM, and the same JVM is used to run the Java applications of all the hosting company's clients on the server. With a VPS plan, since you have access to your own (virtual) server, it is a given that you get full control over the JVM.

You can use your favorite search engine to find companies that offer VPS plans. Good luck and may your site become immensely popular.

About The Author David Heffelfinger is a Software Engineer with over 10 years of experience. He is the editor in chief of Ensode.net a technology website providing articles about Java, Linux and other technology topics. He can be reachd via email at dheffelfinger@ensode.net.

Web Hosting Provider, pair Networks, Launches New Virtual Private Server Offering (Marketwire)PITTSBURGH, PA--(Marketwire - June 9, 2009) - pair Networks, a leading web hosting provider , has launched a fully managed virtual private server offering, pairVPS , which provides customers with a limited alternative to pair Networks' powerful QuickServe dedicated hosting solution. Unlike shared web hosting , pairVPS customers will be able to use a portion of the physical server, which will ...

Web Hosting Provider, pair Networks, Launches New Virtual Private Server Offering (Marketwire via Yahoo! Finance)pair Networks, a leading web hosting provider, has launched a fully managed virtual private server offering, pairVPS, which provides customers with a limited alternative to pair Networks' powerful QuickServe dedicated hosting solution.

Differences in Linux hosting options (Linux Today)Handle With Linux: "No doubt you probably want some kind of Linux hosting as there are only very specific circumstances where windows web hosting has benefits. In my humble opinion you would only want windows hosting if you have a web service or application which can only be run on windows(which would be a design flaw)."

Unshrinking Shortened Web Links (Washington Post)Social networking are contributing to an explosion in the number of services that help people convert long URLs into tiny Web links. URL shrinking services are especially useful on sites that place a premium on brevity -- such as Twitter, which limits tweets to 140 characters. But few online communities have made it easy for users to tell where the shortened links will take them, a reality that ...

DiscountASP.NET Named Best ASP.NET Hosting Service (Web Host Directory)ASP.NET hosting and SQL hosting leader, DiscountASP.NET proudly announces receiving prestigious recognition from The Code Project, one of the world?s largest online developer communities.

LitWorks Introduces Custom Web-based Team Training (dBusinessNews.com)Atlanta, GA ? June 9, 2009 - LitWorks?, a DTI Company, the first and most comprehensive organization dedicated to developing and sharing best practices in the litigation support industry, announces the addition of custom Web-based team training to their existing training catalog . The course is offered to both large and small litigation support departments and is custom designed to focus on the ...

Cenzic and Forrester Provide Five Reasons You Need Web Application Security Now (Marketwire via Yahoo! Finance)Cenzic Inc., the leading provider of Web application vulnerability assessment and risk management solutions, announced they will be hosting a Web seminar featuring Dr. Chenxi Wang of Forrester Research titled, "Web Security: A Ticking Time Bomb," on June 11, 2009 at 11:00 am PDT.

Safari 4 Runs Faster and Supports Web Standards (CIO Today)Stepping up the newly revived browser wars, Apple on Monday released the newest version of its Safari browser for Windows PCs as well as Macs. Philip Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said the free Safari 4, which was made available as a beta version in February, offers "blazing-fast speed, innovative features, and support for modern Web standards." 'Advanced ...