I understand the basic premise of web servers, but have never quite wrapped my head around what the hell a virtual host is or means, please ELI5!
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It means that instead of your own metal box to run a web-server on your just get a piece of software that pretends to be a metal box.
This technique called virtualization has a number of benefits. You can have one actual physical computer pretend to be several virtual ones and the software running on those virtual computers will all think they have a physical computer to themselves.
This is cheaper since instead of having to buy one physical server and using it for one thing or renting it out once, you can rent the same physical box out to different people simultaneously.
Soft of like a time-share home, but instead of every part owner having it for a few days a year, it switches back and forth many, many times a second and each individual doesn’t even notice that they are sharing most of the time.
This sort of virtualization also has a lot of other benefits such as a much easier time of adding resources to virtual hosts.
It also allows for the virtual computer to be easily moved back and forth between different physical computers while it is running without anyone noticing.
The creates a sort of flexibility that you wouldn’t have with physical boxes.
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