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This blog is meant for the beginners to VPS (Virtual Private Server). There are three aspects that will mainly be discussed in this guide –
• What is VPS?
• Why and when do businesses need them?
• When is the right time to upgrade?
Server, as we all know, is a powerful computer that helps in saving data as well as files of a website. When a person searches for your website then it is the server that serves the data as well as different files of the site to the user in a presentable and user friendly manner. There are mainly two kinds of servers.
• One is machine server, as seen in case of shared servers or dedicated servers.
• The other kind of server is the virtualised ones, where specialized software was used for
creating virtual spaces. This is what VPS is. Virtual servers are created within machine servers and each of these VPSs act as individual units, providing users dedicated-environment like experience. Here, the resources of each VPS are dedicated for particular businesses or individuals. The only thing that is shared in VPS is the underlying hardware of the machine server. Multiple Virtual Servers are present in machine servers and each VPS is completely separated virtually from the other by using software. Whether it is the CPU, RAM, or disk space, all the server resources of a single VPS are dedicated for a particular user or business entity only.
Why and when do businesses need VPSs?
VPS is generally preferred by medium sized businesses or even start-ups with robust growth potential. The basic reason of such presence rests upon two aspects –
1. The first aspect is definitely the fact that each VPS in a machine server acts like a dedicated server by providing a particular user with dedicated disk space, RAM, and CPU.
2. Another reason why small to medium sized businesses opt for VPS is because of the fact that they cost significantly less than the dedicated servers.
Comparing VPS with Other Most Common Forms of Hosting Solutions
To get a comprehensive picture of the hosting solutions are very important so that all the hosting solutions can be compared with VPS. Let’s start with the most popular and the cheapest hosting solution and it is the shared hosting solution in India.
• Shared Hosting
In this kind of hosting solution, the server resources are shared by the users along with the IP address. Whether it is RAM, CPU, bandwidth, or disk space, all are shared by multiple users or website owners. One of the major advantages of such arrangement is that they are highly affordable because of the fact that the cost of maintenance of the server is being shared by multiple users, thereby driving down price of shared hosting plan of each user. It is similar to the concept of living in dormitory arrangements in rest houses or hotels. That’s why shared hosting plans are available at highly affordable prices. However, these plans are disadvantageous for fast growing small businesses or even the medium sized businesses because spike in one website’s traffic suddenly will adversely affect the proper functioning of other websites. Website owners have least control on shared server resources.
Dedicated hosting is dedicatedly used by a single business entity. Therefore, all the resources, right from hardware, CPU, RAM, bandwidth, and disk space of a dedicated server are used by a single business organisation only. That’s why the price of dedicated hosting is also significantly high. When it comes to control over server resources, dedicated server hosting types provide customers with the best hosting solution. This solution is best for large companies whose sites get loads of traffic on a daily basis.
• VPS Hosting
VPS fills up the yawning gap between shared server and dedicated server. It provides small to medium sized companies affordable hosting solution, thereby providing dedicated hosting-like experience at best price, much lower than that of dedicated servers but higher than shared servers. The only thing that is shared in VPS hosting solution is the hardware of the machine server in which the VPS is located. What you will not get here when compared with dedicated server are Root Access to MySQL Server and isolated CPU. To put it in simple words, it can be said that VPS provides dedicated hosting like experience but at affordable cost. VPS’s cost is double than the shared hosting solution. But its cost is around 1/10th of the dedicated server.
When is the right time to upgrade?
If you are still using a shared server for your fast growing website then you may need upgrade only if
• you are worrying about security of data
• your site starts getting high volume of traffic
• you site is experiencing downtime repeatedly and also running slowly than normal
• you have a ecommerce website
• you require to install customised software, other than that offered by the shared server generally
• you start getting server errors frequently
These are the factors when a website owner should contemplate about upgrading the server from shared to VPS hosting.
Interesting Topic:
Who is the Best VPS Provider Considering Quality and Price?
