A Beginner’s Guide to VPS Web Hosting

• February 22, 2011 18:27
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Shared web hosting is good for someone who is starting out on the web just to have an online presence. Such hosting service is enough to contain the minimal traffic of less known sites.

However, things start getting trickier when a site’s traffic increases substantially in a way to exceed the resource quota assigned to the hosting account. You should seriously consider moving to a VPS (virtual private server) hosting, if your website consumes more monthly bandwidth transfer and disk space than what your shared web host assigned to your account.

A VPS offers more control and flexibility than shared hosting and yet, cheaper than dedicated hosting. In fact, VPS hosting offers clients almost all the features of dedicated server hosting, without paying the high cost associated with it.

VPS hosting is a type of web hosting service whereby a single server is virtually partitioned by using virtualization technologies and software, to give it the semblance of multiple servers. The Parallels Virtuozzo software is the most commonly used virtualization web application in the VPS web hosting industry. A VPS is totally independent of other virtual private machines that reside on the same physical server, and each virtual server can be rebooted independently of the other ones. This means that the happenings on one VPS environment do not have any effect on other virtual environments on the same physical server.

Typically a VPS client is allowed by the hosting company to select the hardware, such as memory modules, CPU (central processing unit) and even the OS (operating system) to be installed on the assigned virtual server. You can install any software of your choice in your own virtual environment and configure it whichever way you deem fit. Each VPS plan allots a specific monthly bandwidth transfer limit and disk space, which is generally far larger than shared hosting offers, to an account.

Generally VPS hosting offers more freedom, control, security and reliability than shared web hosting. Virtual private server hosting totally isolates a client’s files from other accounts on the physical server, unlike shared hosting service where an unscrupulous client can easily run a malicious script that can cause some damages. With VPS, you do not need to worry about another client pulling the entire server, including your site, down by just running some runaway scripts.

Another good reason why you should get a VPS hosting is its enhanced speed, owing to the fact that you’re assigned dedicated server resources. This effectively translates to faster loading of web pages, since your virtual machine is guaranteed a specific amount of RAM for its usage. In addition to that, some VPS plans have access to a burstable RAM feature – which is basically memory reserved for expected future use and its usage easily starts when the need be, such as during load spikes. In essence, it means that far more memory resources are available on a virtual server than what is guaranteed by the web host. This memory is readily available for your usage, whenever your site experiences unexpected and temporary traffic surges over your guaranteed amount of resources. The burstable RAM allotment is not a part of a client’s memory resource guarantee, and hence, burst resources cannot be utilized constantly. In the event whereby a virtual machine constantly requires more resources than what the plan guarantees, than it’s time to upgrade to a higher VPS package or even a dedicated server hosting package.

Flexibility and control are among the main reasons why people choose VPS hosting. It gives the client the administrative/root access to his/her account, which in turn allows total control over the virtual server. The server can simply be restarted through the account’s control panel. You don’t need to request for permission from your host before installing any software on your virtual environment. You have the right to create other accounts within your environment and add other users.

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