Each and every PC or web server is run by an Operating System - the low-level program which interacts with the hardware, including peripherals such as a mouse and a printer, and any applications that are present on your system. Any program input through a command line or a Graphical User Interface (GUI) is processed by sending an Application Program Interface (API) request to the Operating System. On a web server, each app runs within the parameters specified by the OS as well - priority, physical memory, processing time, etcetera. This is valid for both standard site scripts and server-side software such as a media server. When a virtual server is generated on a physical one, there can be two different Operating Systems, referred to as guest OS and host OS, which means that you will be able to set up a different software environment on the very same machine.
Multiple OS in Dedicated Servers Hosting
We offer three Operating Systems with our dedicated server plans - CentOS, Ubuntu and Debian. They're all different Linux distributions and we offer them not only because they are freely available and they won't increase the cost of your new web hosting server, but also because they are extremely secure and stable. Each of them is backed up by a big community of web developers, so you'll be given the option to choose from a large number software packages that you may install on your server in case the app that you would like to work with has specific requirements. The Operating System will also determine what hosting Control Panel you can use because the Control Panels that we offer are compatible with particular OSs only and since we want to give you as much freedom as possible, we offer a couple of OSs and multiple Control Panels. If you choose a server with a certain OS, we will change it upon request in the event that it turns out that you need a different one. We will also keep your OS updated on a weekly basis as part of our additional Managed Services upgrade.