Choosing the right web hosting is critical for your website’s performance, security, and scalability. But with so many options—Shared Hosting, VPS, and Dedicated Servers—it can get confusing. This guide breaks down what each hosting type means, their pros and cons, and which is best suited for your needs.
1. Shared Hosting
What it is: Multiple websites share the same physical server and its resources (CPU, RAM, bandwidth).
Pros:
Very affordable — ideal for beginners and small websites.
Managed by the hosting provider — no server management needed.
Easy to set up with control panels like cPanel.
Cons:
Limited resources since you share with others.
Performance can be affected by other sites (noisy neighbors).
Less control over server configuration and security.
Best for: Small blogs, personal sites, portfolios, or low-traffic websites.
2. VPS (Virtual Private Server)
What it is: A physical server is divided into multiple virtual servers, each isolated with dedicated resources.
Pros:
More resources and better performance than shared hosting.
Greater control with root access to configure the server.
Scalable — you can upgrade CPU, RAM, and storage as needed.
Enhanced security due to isolation from other VPS users.
Cons:
Requires some server management knowledge.
More expensive than shared hosting but less than dedicated servers.
Best for: Growing businesses, eCommerce sites, and apps that need more power and control.
3. Dedicated Server
What it is: You rent an entire physical server dedicated solely to your website or application.
Pros:
Full control over server hardware and software.
Maximum performance and reliability.
Highest level of security and customization.
No resource sharing — all server resources belong to you.
Cons:
Most expensive hosting option.
Requires advanced technical skills to manage or a dedicated sysadmin.
Setup and maintenance can be complex.
Best for: Large enterprises, high-traffic websites, resource-intensive applications, or when compliance/security is a priority.
Summary Table
Feature
Shared Hosting
VPS
Dedicated Server
Resource Sharing
Yes
Virtual isolation
No
Control Level
Limited
Root access
Full control
Performance
Variable
High
Very High
Cost
Low
Medium
High
Technical Knowledge
Minimal
Moderate
Advanced
Security
Basic
Improved
Maximum
Which One Should You Choose?
Start small? Go with Shared Hosting to keep costs low and management easy.
Need more control and power? A VPS offers a great balance for growing projects.
Require top performance and customization? Choose a Dedicated Server.
How VavenCloud Can Help
VavenCloud offers flexible hosting solutions, including Managed VPS with automation and AI-powered tools — giving you performance, security, and ease of use in one platform. No matter your hosting choice, VavenCloud simplifies setup, scaling, and management.
Load balancing is a method of distributing traffic among all other running servers equally and helps to optimize application availability. Basically, a load balancer work as a traffic balancer sitting in front of your servers and distributing all client end request to each server equally. Modern applications have high-end traffic and millions of users who receive correct data, text, and information from every user. To handle this type of traffic request there are a number of severe running with duplicate data present in them so, a load balancer helps to distribute the traffic coming from the client to each running server and ensure that every resource is used equally.
How Load Balancing Work?
Load Balancing can be used in two different ways one is Hardware load balancing that are physically installed and maintained on-premises other one is Software load balancing which is software installed on a standard server or a virtual machine.
Load Balancer basically helps to direct the incoming traffic and distribute it among the pool of servers according to the chosen algorithm.
The load balancer also checks the health of back-end servers if one of the servers does not work load balancer will not send traffic to that server that is not able to fulfill the request.
Benefits of load balancing
Scalability
Load balancer helps you to predict the incoming traffic so it helps you to add or remove a server and also use it to direct application traffic to multiple servers.
Availability
Load balancer helps in fault tolerance i.e. automatically detects the problem of the server and directs the traffic to the running server so that application doesn’t crash.
Performance
Load balancer helps you to increase your application response time by reducing the network latency by redirecting the client request to the closest server present. Also, help by distributing traffic equally to each server to increase performance.
Security
Load balancers include SSL encryption, MFA, and web application Firewalls which help your application’s security
Load Balancing Algorithms.
How a load balancer distributes the traffic across the server is defined by this algorithm these are the set of rules that a load balancer follows to distribute traffic. fall into two categories
Static load balancing
Dynamic load balancing
Static load balancing
Static load balancing algorithms are independent of the current server state and follow fixed rules some of the algorithms are below
Round-robin method
forward the traffic to each server turn by turn One of the simplest methods to distribute traffic
Weighted round-robin method
Similar to round-robin but different a numeric weight is defined for the server according to the performance of the server
IP Hash method
Work on IP and Hask key, an algorithm that uses source IP and destination IP of client and Server to generate a hash key
Dynamic Load balancing
Dynamic load balancing examines the current state of servers before distribution traffic to the server’s algorithm is defined below
last connection methods
Traffic is distributed to the least number of connection that is active at the time of client request received.
Weighted least connection method
This maintains a list of the weighted application servers with their active number of connections. uses more computation times than the least connection algorithm.
Least response time method
It collects the response time of the call made to the server and on that information instance will be picked to receive the traffic.
Resource-based method
This algorithm distributes the incoming traffic on the basis of load on the server.
Types of load balancing
Application Load Balancing
Network Load balancing
Gateway Load Balancing
Classic Load Balnacing
Application Load Balancing
Application load balancing works with applications with HTTP and HTTPS traffic. It works on the Application layer of the OSI model. It enables a flexible feature set for your web application. This load-balancing technique distributes all incoming application traffic across multiple servers. This will help you to increase the availability of the application
Network Load Balancing
Network Load Balancer focuses on high-speed, low-latency traffic handling mainly focusing on TCP, TLS, and UPD protocols. It works on the network layers of the OSI model. when you need ultra-high performance, TLS offloading at scale, centralized certificate deployment, support for UDP, and static IP addresses for your application.
How to configure the load balancer?
If you have an AWS account then log in to your account, if not then you have to create your AWS account to access the services of AWS. You can create your AWS account by using the link given below.( https://portal.aws.amazon.com/)
In your EC2 dashboard on the left side scroll down and you will find an option for Load Balancing.
The first step is to create two EC2 instances with different availability zones that contain your application.
Note
If you want to check your load balancing is working you need to apply changes on your application which means both instances contain the same application with different outputs so that you can further identify which server is running.
Creating Target Groups
Before creating a load balancer you have to create a Target group that contains the instance which you want to target. This target group helps you to route requests to one or more registered targets.
Click on the Target group under the load balancing option you will find an option to create target groups.
In target groups, you will find the basic configuration in which you have to select the target i.e. instance, IP address, Lambda function, and Application load balancer.
Select an option on which you want to create a load balancer in our case we are using instances.
In the next step you need to give a name to your target group after that select a protocol and port number and also select an IPv4/IPv6 address, and also select the VPC in which you have created your instances.
The next step is to select the protocol for your target group, and below that you will find the health check option for your protocol you can also configure additional settings for your health check.
If you want to give tags to your target group then click on the tags option and then click on the Next button.
In the next step, you have to select your targets. Select those targets on which you want to distribute your targets, and click on include as pending below option.
Just below in review targets, you will see your target select and then click on create target groups.
Go to the target group dashboard you will see your target created check the health of your target groups if it shows healthy go to the next step.
Creating Load Balancer
On the left side of the EC2 dashboard, you will find an option for load balancing click on that.
You will find an option to create load balancing by clicking on the create load balancer option.
3 options are provided to you for creating load-balancing we will create by using application load balancing click on create below application load balancing.
Give a name to your load balancer just below that you have two options one for request from the internet and the other one from the internal network.
The internet facing requires a public subnet and route request from the client over the internet to the target.
The Internal needs a private subnet and route request internal.
Choose IPv4 if you want to use IPv6 you have an option of dual stack.
The next step is internet mapping in which you need to select VPC and subnets in which you have created your instances.
A load balancer will only work if you have a minimum of 2 instances with different Availability zone .
The next step is to select a security group for your load balancer you can use the existing one or create new one.
After that add a listener and routings, basically listener will help you to check the connection request using the port and protocol you configure.
And select the Target group that you created befor.
If you want to add a tag to your load balancer you can add it and then check the summary and click create load balancer.
After creating you will see your created load balancer on the dashboard. if you want to check that your balancer is working or not, Copy DNS name of your load balancer just shown below .
After copying DNS name open Google tan paste DNS and search will see your website after you refresh for some time you will see it will change as you define in your ec2 instance.
Auto-scaling is a scaling method to scale your ec2 instance up or down according to the workload of an application. you create a collection of instances that come under Auto-scaling groups. So basically Auto scaling group is defined as a group where you can define the minimum number of instances and maximum number of instances and more. Like you have an application that runs on EC2 and suddenly your traffic increases on your application and you want another server to run your application in that case auto-scaling helps you to automatically scale up your instances if the workload increases and scale down when not needed.
The desired number of instance
Auto Scaling Components
Groups
your instances are managed into groups so that they can be treated as a single unit so that they can be scaled or managed. When you create a group you have to define a minimum, maximum, and desired number of instances
Templates
your group uses a launch. template or configure templates for running your ec2 instances. you can specify your EC2 instance configuration.
Types of Auto Scaling
Basically auto-scaling is of two type
Horizontal Auto Scaling
Vertical Auto Scaling
Horizontal Autoscaling
A type of auto-scaling in which you can increase your work efficiency by adding more instances of the same configuration. If the workload increases on your instance then another instance goes up which you define in your group and handles the load with your instance
Vertical Auto Scaling
AWS also provides you an option for scaling your instances vertically i.e. you can increase your instance configuration. For example, if you are using instances with 2GB and 2 core configurations and need more then you can also increase your configuration under this option.
Get started with AutoScaling
If you have an AWS account then log in to your account, if not then you have to create your AWS account to access the services of AWS. You can create your AWS account by using the link given below.( https://portal.aws.amazon.com/)
In your AWS account on the top left search for EC2.
In your EC2 dashboard on the left side scroll down and you will find an option for Auto Scaling And Auto Scaling Group
Click on the Auto Scaling group option and you have to create a group in which you will define your configuration of scaling an instance.
click on Create Autoscaling group and you will see a page to create a group.
Before creating a group you have to create a template in which you will define your instance configuration. you will also create a template from the Launch template option by clicking on Creating a Launch template.
Just like creating an ec2 instance, you have to create your launch template with the required configuration.
After creating the template, Select your created template and click next.
After clicking on next choose your network in which VPC and which subnet you want to run your instance.
You will find an option of instance type requirements in which if you want to override your instance template you can choose to override the launch template by specifying different instance attributes or manually adding instance types. Then click on next.
In the next step, you will find an option for load balancing if you want to load balance your application you can choose one of the options provided. you can attach or create a load balancer.
Below the load balancer, you will find VPC Lattice integration options that help you improve networking capabilities and scalability, and integrate your Auto Scaling group with VPC Lattice. VPC Lattice facilitates communications between AWS services and enables you to connect and manage your applications across compute services in AWS. you will proceed with no VPC Lattice integration option or attach a VPC Lattice integration option you created.
you will find an option for a health check and how much time the process is repeated again last additional option for monitoring and then click Next.
In the next step, you will find an option for Group size in which you can specify the size of the Auto Scaling group by changing the desired capacity. You can also specify minimum and maximum capacity limits. Your desired capacity must be within the limited range
Next, you will find an option for scaling policy in which you will dynamically resize your Auto Scaling group to meet changes in demand.
Instance scale-in protection helps you to protect your newly launched instance from scale-in by default. Click on next for next step.
If you want to send notifications to SNS whenever your instance auto-scaling you can configure it in the notification section. click next for further steps.
If you want to add a tag to your group then add and click next. you will see a page for reviewing your configuration scroll down and click on Create auto-scaling group.
In the auto-scaling group dashboard you will see your group select that group go to instances management and you will see that your instance is ready.
If you go to your ec2 instance dashboard you will see that your instance is created if you delete your terminate your instance it will create a new instance automatically this is because you have defined a desire number of instance that run so it helps you to run desire number of instance.
Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is one of the most well-known services or one of the most used services on Amazon. An EC2 instance is simply a virtual server used for running applications on cloud infrastructure. AWS can serve an unlimited set of EC2. It enables on-demand, scalability, and computing capacity in the AWS cloud.
It is a web Server offered by Amazon and also provides a scalability option to resizable compute service, you can scale up and scale down the total number of instance you are running
EC2 Instance type
There are different types of AWS instances with different configurations, and they are divided into five types these are
General purpose
Compute-optimized
Memory-optimized
Accelerated Computing
Storage optimized
1. General-purpose instances: A general-purpose instance is basically a balanced compute option i.e. a balance of compute, memory, and networking resources. It can be used for handling a wide range of workloads.
2. Compute optimized: Compute-optimized is useful for compute-bound applications that require a large amount of processing power.
They are well suited for :
High-performance web servers
high -performance computing
Batch processing workloads
Dedicated gaming servers.
3. Memory-optimized: A memory-optimized is used for delivering fast performance for workloads that process large datasets in memory. These are ideal for applications that require more memory and less CPU.
4. Accelerated Computing: Accelerated Computing are latest general-purpose instances that help you to provide accelerated performance when the CPU clock rate increases.
5. Storage optimized: Storage optimized is basically designed for workloads that require high read and write access to a very large set of data in local storage. They are optimized for delivering tens of thousands of I/O operations per second to applications.
Amazon EC2 instance Feature
Amazon EC2 provides a wide range of instance choices to match your workload’s needs. Many of the features in Amazon EC2 instances are customizable such as virtual processor, memory, storage, etc. Some features are mentioned below
OS support: EC2 instances support many OS like Linux, Windows, and many more. Amazon also provides its own OS to the users.
Security: AWS EC2 provide the user a security system to create a group of instance as per their requirement
Scalability: AWS provides an option to scale up and down your instance Also provides an option of auto-scaling the running instances.
Persistence storage: AWS provides a feature of block-level storage volume that you will attach to your EC2 instance and can be used as a hard drive for the service named Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS).
Elastic IP addresses: A static IP address designed for dynamic cloud computing. A static IP address is assigned with your EC2 instance or can be moved from instance to instance.
Pricing: Different pricing options are provided by AWS according to the type of application, resource, and database used. Pay-as-you-go pricing options are available
Getting started with Amazon EC2
If you have an AWS account then log in to your account, if not then you have to create your AWS account to access the services of AWS. You can create your AWS account by using the link given below.
In your AWS account on the top left search for EC2 and use the following procedure to create an EC2 Instance.
In the EC2 dashboard, you can see the status of the instances you made like the number of instances running, security groups attached to EC2, Volume attached, and many more
Below resources there is an option for Launch Instance click on Launch Instance.
After that you can write the name of your instance, just below that you have an option to choose Application and OS Image according to your need (Amazon Machine Image) just like I chose Ubuntu as shown below:
Just below that you have an option to choose the Instance type according to your need you can choose the Instance type.
You can choose a key pair to securely connect to your instance. Ensure that you have access to the selected key pair before you launch the instance.
You can use your existing key, or you can create your own key pair. Name your key pair so that you can find You can adjust your network security if you have your own VPC.
You must create Security groups to connect your EC2 to the outer network.
Allow SSH for access to your EC2 instance, Allow HTTPS and HTTP for internet traffic
Finally configure storage for your EC2 instance you can also add new volume to your EC2 by the help of Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS)
If you want to add additional settings to your EC2 like domain name, instance recovery, and many more than configure additional settings.
You can check your configuration summary from the right side and then click on launch instance.
Connect your EC2 instance From terminal
Go to instance and wait for some time until status check is initialized.
yourYou can also check details of your instance below. After that click on instance and in their top click on connect
Open terminal in your physical machine and Write ssh command for connect to your instance.
A VPC stands for Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). It serves as a foundational pillar within the realm of cloud computing infrastructure, a pivotal offering presented by major cloud services providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and others. This essential component empowers organizations to forge their own private, segregated, and tailorable network environments within the expansive cloud landscape. With a focus on AWS VPC, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud facilitates the creation and deployment of AWS resources within a logically segregated virtual network, meticulously crafted to meet your precise specifications. This includes wielding full authority over your virtual networking ecosystem, encompassing the freedom to handpick your IP address range, establish subnets, and configure route tables and network gateways. Furthermore, you gain the capability to enforce multiple layers of security, incorporating security groups and network access control lists, to assert stringent control over access to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances dwelling within each subnet.
VPC Vs On-premises
VPC is a private cloud within a public cloud, it provides a layer of isolation within a public cloud, whereas a private cloud is built in a local environment, or we can say a dedicated cloud environment hosted on-premises.
The below table shows the difference between private cloud and VPC
Feature
On-premises
AWS VPC
Scalability
No need to worry about infrastructure all are maintained by AWS
Highly scalable just need to tell the requirement to the provider
Data Security
Offer less security chances of data loss are more
No need to Worry about infrastructure all are maintained by AWS
Maintenance
Infrastructure maintenance and its cost
Capital cost, maintenance cost
Pricing
No need to worry about infrastructure all are maintained by AWS
Pay-as-you-go pricingCreating AWS VPC
Creating AWS VPC
How Amazon VPC works
As defined above a VPC is a virtual network AWS provides a platform to create VPCs. It is logically isolated from other virtual networks in the AWS cloud. The virtual network that you created resembles a traditional network that you’d operate in your own data center, with the scalable infra of AWS
The above visual represents a VPC and Preview panel showing the created VPC when you create a VPC using the AWS Management console. You can access these visuals on your Resource Map tab. This shows a created VPC with its subnet that you created with your VPC and also shows the Route table attached with your subnet and more info. Regarding your VPC
Key Component
A VPC isolated computing resources available from the other computing resources available in the public cloud. The key uses for this are:
1. Subnets
Each VPC network consists of one or more IP address ranges called Subnets i.e. a Subnet is a range of IP addresses in your VPC. You can create AWS resources, such as EC2 instances, in specific subnets.
There are different types you can configure in routing for your subnets, these are:
Public subnet – A public subnet is a subnet that is associated with a route table that has a route to an Internet Gateway. This route allows access from the public subnet to the internet
Private subnet – A private subnet is a subnet that is associated with a route table that doesn’t have a route to the internet gateway. Resources in public subnets cannot communicate with the public internet.
2. IP Addressing
In VPC IP helps your resources to communicate with each other, and with other resources over the internet. You can assign both IPv4 and IPv6 to your VPCs and subnets. You can also attach your IP GUA (Global Unicast Address) to AWS resources in your VPC such as EC2 instances, and NAT Gateway.
3. Routing
You use Route Table to determine where the network traffic is directed from your subnet or gateway.
4. Gateway and Endpoints
A Gateway in a VPC helps you to connect to another network. For example, use an internet gateway to connect your VPC to the internet. The use of a VPC endpoint helps you to connect to AWS services privately, without the use of NAT devices or an internet gateway.
5. Peering Connections
To route traffic between the resources in two VPCs you use VPC peering connection.
6. Transit gateway
A central hub, to route traffic between your VPCs, AWS Direct Connection, and VPN connection.
7. VPN connection
Help you to connect on-premises networks to your VPCs with the help of AWS VPN ( AWS virtual private network).
Creating AWS VPC
If you have an AWS account then login to your account, if not then you have to create your AWS account to access the services of AWS. You can create your AWS account by using the link given below.
In your AWS account search for VPC and use the following procedure to create a VPC. A VPC must have additional resources such as a subnet, route table, and gateway, before you create AWS resources in the VPC
In the Amazon VPC dashboard choose Create VPC.
You will find two ways to create VPC as shown below either you choose VPC only or you can choose VPC and more options.
VPC and more will provide you an option to configure subnet AZs and more while creating a VPC. we will create using VPC and more.
.In VPC and more Amazon will provide an auto-generated name for your VPC that is suitable for your VPC.
Enter a value for the CIDR block (10.0.0.0/16 in this example) and use the default setting for Tenancy. You can also use IPv6 if you want to.
Creating AWS VPC Now you have to choose the number of AZs in which you want to provision your subnet. Amazon will recommend you to choose at least 2 AZs for high availability.
You can also customize your AZs
Select the number of private subnets and public subnets you want to use for your VPC. You can also customize your subnet CIDR block from here as shown in the picture
Now you have to choose the availability zone in which you want to create a NAT gateway you can choose a single NAT gateway in an AZ or every AZ contains a NAT gateway
Basically, a NAT gateway is a service that helps you connect your instance in a private subnet to a service outside your VPC.
Select the endpoint for your VPC that helps you to reduce NAT gateway charges and improve security by accessing S3 directly from the VPC.
You also have the option to enable or disable DNS hostname and resolution. If you want to add some additional tags to your VPC you can go to the Additional Tags option
You can also preview your VPC as below shown
Click on Create VPC. This will automatically create your subnet route table, subnets, internet gateway, NAT gateway
Now, in your VPC dashboard, you will see your created VPC by clicking in it, you will see the details of your VPC as shown below.
On the left side select the subnets option, and you will see the created Subnets two Public Subnets, and two Private Subnets.
How Amazon VPC works
Here in the public subnet, we create a Bastion Host to connect with resources present in the private subnet
On the left-hand side just below Subnets, you will find the Route table click on Route table and in this Route Table dashboard, you will find the Route table created by the VPC.
Route Table will help your VPC to determine where network traffic will be routed. This table will consist of a security group that will define the subnets to route the traffic When you create a VPC it will create a default route table automatically. When a subnet doesn’t have a route table associated with it the main route table will be used by default.
