When you picture a farm, what comes to mind? Is it vast, sweeping cornfields? Perhaps you picture long straight rows of stocky soybean bushes. Or maybe you're imagining a herd of cattle grazing lazily in a green pasture. Well there is another kind of farm, new examples of which are springing up all over the globe, even in semi-arctic environments. This particular type of farm doesn't produce any food and you'll never see anyone milling about on a tractor. These farms are indoor, and air conditioned. I'm talking, of course, about server farms.
The unbelievable growth of the Internet over the past two decades has created an insatiable demand for web hosting services. Since any and all websites need a server on which to "live," the server farm is a natural response to this demand. These facilities are state of the art, and often house tens of thousands of servers. Each one of those servers resembles a typical PC, insofar as it has hardware components like hard drives and RAM, software, and an operating system. When it comes to choosing the best operating system for your particular web hosting needs, there is certainly no shortage of recommendations on the Internet. For some reason, tech-savvy folks tend to pick one OS and exhibit almost religious devotion to it. Below we'll examine some of the advantages of a hosting server with Windows, as opposed to other operating systems.
When a web server uses the Windows OS, it's not Windows XP, or 7, or any of the other versions commonly used in home PCs and laptops. Specific versions of Windows have been created for server applications, Windows Server 2000, Windows Advanced Server, and Windows Server 2003, to name a few. Although these versions contain server specific elements, the overall mechanics of the OS and the user interface are very similar to regular Windows versions. This brings us to the first reason many webmasters prefer their hosting server Windows equipped: familiarity. Since Windows is almost universally known, there is less of a learning curve for most webmasters - and server administrators as well - compared to alternative operating systems like Linux.
The additional benefits of Windows Server are pretty technical, and they apply to specific website functionality. It's important to keep in mind that if you're a beginner with no intentions of creating unique or advanced functions on your site, the choice of operating system probably won't have a huge effect on your overall experience. But if you do have specific technical requirements, the OS can make or break your website. Specifically, Windows is the only OS that supports Visual Basic and .NET programming, so if you use these languages to build websites, you'll want to go with Windows. If you employ Active Server Pages (ASP), a hosting server with Windows will probably handle that better than the alternatives. Finally, if you build your websites using Microsoft FrontPage, or manage databases with Microsoft Access, they will almost surely run better on Windows Server.
If you are familiar with Windows and you like working with that type of interface, then by all means, go with a Windows-based hosting plan. Remember that for basic, beginner type websites, the operating system won't make much of a difference. But if you have certain technical requirements, Windows may be the only way to go. Whatever OS you choose, check out our plans, we offer a variety of storage and bandwidth options to meet the needs of any webmaster.