What A VPS Is And Why You Need One?

• May 8, 2011 09:34
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You are getting ready to buy hosting for your new website and everyone keeps telling you that your best choice is going to be a VPS. But immediately two questions pop into your head. First, what is a VPS? And second, why do you need one? Let me explain it to you and you will understand why all of those people telling you to get a VPS are right.

What does VPS stand for?

VPS stands for virtual private server. Virtual private servers have been around for a few years now, but are still the new kids on the block when it comes to website hosting. A web hosting company takes a dedicated server and divides it into a finite number of partitions. Each one of these partitions will be a virtual private server. Each of these virtual private servers will share equally in the resources that are available.

So now that you know,

what a virtual private server is, why do you need one?

When it comes to hosting your website, it used to be that you really only had two choices. You either had to choose shared hosting or you had to purchase your own dedicated server. For most businesses, neither of these was really a good choice. Shared hosting is usually comprised of a web hosting company shoving as many websites as they possibly can onto a single server. All of these websites are stuck sharing the available resources.

There could be thousands of sites all fighting over the limited processing power, RAM, and bandwidth that is available to that server. If your business had a highly trafficked site it would either be down a significant portion of the time due to lack of resources or your hosting company would cancel your account for using up too many resources.

The other choice that was available to you was a dedicated server. That sounds like a great idea because it would give you control of all of the resources without having to share them. The major problem with the dedicated server, especially for new businesses or businesses with a low cash flow, is that a dedicated server is a very expensive endeavor.

This is where a Virtual private server comes in. In essence, is a hybrid of the two previous choices. It eliminates the struggle for your site to get the resources that it needs by limiting the number of users on a single server and guaranteeing a minimum resource amount. For example, if a web hosting company divides a dedicated server into four partitions and creates for virtual private servers, then each of those will have, at all times, access to a minimum of one fourth of the processing power, RAM, and bandwidth available to that server even during the busiest times. If the other virtual private servers are not consuming any resources at the time it is even possible for your VPS to make use of 100% of the available resources for a limited time if necessary.

Because hosting companies usually divide servers into four or eight partitions the pricing can be kept low. In essence you are sharing a dedicated server and splitting the cost with others, but those others have no access to your files or system. It is like being able to purchase one eighth or one quarter of a dedicated server instead of the whole thing therefore the pricing is very comparable to shared hosting. You are basically getting dedicated server quality hosting for shared hosting prices. That is why a Virtual private server is the best choice for hosting your business website.