Cloud hosting has expanded what companies can do online with a limited technology budget. A VPS, or virtual private server, expands the scope of off-site hosting even further, so that companies can take control of their server operations and ensure the reliability of their sites without the expense of renting a dedicated server.
What is VPS?
A virtual private server is a semi-private hosting option. It’s not the same as a dedicated server, on which your site or sites are hosted alone, but it does go a step beyond typical shared hosting. With a VPS, technically you share a server with other customers, just as you do in shared hosting, but that server is partitioned so that you get a set amount of space on the server, a set amount of memory and a set amount of bandwidth.
Resources
With shared hosting, your site takes from the resource pool on the server on which it is hosted. While that means that, hypothetically, you have unlimited server resources, so does every other site hosted on the server. What’s happening on someone else’s website may affect yours. A study by the Department of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst also found that shared hosting servers are frequently overbooked, which means those “unlimited” resources are actually scarce, and it comes down to survival of the fittest.
With VPS, your partition is yours, so no matter what happens elsewhere on the server, your site functions the same.
Cloud VPS
Cloud VPS melds the shared and VPS platforms in a way that offers the best of both hosting options to clients. With cloud VPS, the resources available to you are not dependent on a single server alone, but on the full network of servers that make up the cloud storage for a hosting company. Unlike shared hosting, where the “unlimited” resources aren’t really unlimited, and, unlike single-server VPS, where you are limited to the resources available in your partition, cloud VPS provides you with the same dedicated resources of VPS, while also giving you access to the truly unlimited resources beyond your own partition.
Let’s say you have a VPS account with 256MB of memory, for instance, and you run a program that normally runs within that range, but occasionally jumps above 256MB. You are guaranteed your 256MB of memory, but the system also accommodates those occasional memory spikes by borrowing resources from the rest of the cloud.
This ability to borrow allows you to keep operations running smoothly, even when you need some extra resources, without having to overextend your technology budget on a bigger hosting plan you don’t really need.
Operations
When you host your sites on a shared server, those sites are left to the whims of your hosting company. It’s in a company’s best interest, of course, to keep servers fully operational and client’s sites up-and-running, but it’s still out of your hands as a business owner.
With cloud VPS, your hosting package comes with some control over server operations. For starters, you get to choose the amount of memory, storage space and bandwidth in your hosting package and can also upgrade your dedicated space at any time, so your VPS grows as your company grows, giving you the resources you need without overextending your budget.
The big boon to hands-on entrepreneurs, though, is control over the server itself. If things are running slow, or you can’t get a program to install, you don’t have to wait for a reboot of the entire server, according to Art of Blog. You can reboot your part of the system yourself.
Savings
If you don’t want to share resources and want more control over server operation, why would you opt for VPS over a dedicated server?
One word. Cost.
The most popular cloud hosting companies offer dedicated servers starting out around $100 per month and shooting skyward into the upper-hundreds or low-thousands for premium services. The same companies offer VPS at prices starting at $20 or less per month, with prices topping out hundreds of dollars lower than the top dedicated server packages.
The VPS cloud-hosting platform changes the playing field when it comes to expanding a small business online. You don’t have to have the financial resources of the big players to start taking control of your site’s reliability. Since a VPS is largely in your control, the upgrade to cloud VPS gives your company an advantage over competitors who are using shared hosting services that throttle their resources. Since VPS is also cheaper than a dedicated server, opting for VPS allows you to keep your budget in check, ensuring less of your profits go toward keeping your site operational and more of your profits go toward the expansion of your business.
