What is a VPS and how to choose it? Is a VPS for you?

Are you hesitating between shared hosting and a dedicated server? You don’t quite know what a VPS server is, how it works and will this solution pay off for you? Then find out if a virtual private server will help you solve your problem.

A VPS (Virtual Private Server) is a virtual private server. What does the word “virtual” mean? It means that this server imitates a separate physical server. Its software separates your resources from the resources of other system clients, providing you with much more computing power and a minimum of hosting sharing constraints.

A VPS virtual server is usually created by large, efficient and powerful physical servers divided into several smaller virtual servers with completely separated resources – i.e. with separate: RAM, disk space, operating system, resource allocation, separate file system, or separate IPv6 and IPv4 addresses.

As part of the virtual server service, you gain root (administrator access) and thus receive an almost completely free hand in managing, administering and configuring the VPS.

In other words: with a VPS server, you are independent from other shared hosting users and can manage your virtual server freely. However, you still share your space on the physical server with other hosting company clients. However, you are completely isolated from them.

Check it out: What kind of traffic will my server handle?

Is the VPS server the right solution for you?

Virtual private servers are most often used by entities running larger online stores, extended portals and services. You can also use VPS to create a mail and game server or to learn or create web development projects. On a VPS server you can quickly and efficiently set up an operating system (e.g. Linux), development environment, any services and web environments (e.g. NodeJS or NGINX) or designed staging applications.

Will a dedicated virtual server be the optimal solution in your case? It depends.

Before choosing any hosting, VPS server or physical dedicated server, carefully analyze your needs, specify your goals and think about your expectations. Besides, consider if you will be able to configure and manage your VPS server – remember that our support will always be happy to help you. Besides, we offer access to an intuitive administration panel, which allows you to easily configure and manage your server.

When choosing a VPS server, the issue of its subsequent scalability is also important. Virtual private servers provide great freedom and potential to scale their parameters with the growing needs of projects. Therefore, they can be a shot in the arm if you plan to install software, system or environment on them, which will grow along with your business.

VPS also allows you to create a redundant, high availability environment that provides Business Continuity. However, the server user must create the architecture and implement mechanisms to ensure redundancy and availability of the implemented services.

The key advantages of VPSs are their autonomy, higher performance and, above all, greater freedom in managing the server thanks to root access. In the case of shared hosting, the possibilities to manage hardware resources are much more limited. Therefore, a virtual private server is an ideal solution for implementing more demanding and complex projects that require the creation of their own system software sets and no restrictions on user permissions.

Remember that with more freedom and better performance VPS servers are more expensive than shared hosting. Therefore, think about whether the investment in a virtual private server will be consistent with your business assumptions and budget. The most affordable VPS server in our offer is the vTC-11 NVMe SSD, which costs only 29 PLN per month. Check the full offer of our VPS servers.

A VPS server will be a good solution in case:

• Mail servers and game servers,
• web applications and scripts,
• own development environments and services,
• extensive online stores and e‑commerce solutions,
• large portals, services and sites.

When will the VPS pay off for you?

The VPS server provides guaranteed resources, much more security and performance than shared hosting.

Remember, however, that a virtual private server also means greater responsibility and the need to configure the operating system, web servers, e‑mail, FTP and mail, or provide their services with appropriate security mechanisms and technologies. Of course, you don’t have to do it all yourself. You can use the services of a server administrator, but this will involve higher costs of server maintenance.

And here we come to the heart of the profitability of the VPS server.

A VPS server will pay off when you plan projects with slightly higher performance and hardware requirements, as well as when you want to provide yourself with much more freedom in managing the disk space you are granted and at the same time you are ready to incur higher investment costs.

How to choose a VPS server well?

When choosing a VPS server, you need to take into account several important technical parameters and technological solutions that the server is equipped with and compare them with the current and future needs of your projects.

Type of VPS server and its availability

Hosting companies offer their clients VPS servers in many technological variants. Virtual private servers can take the form of single servers, virtualized clusters or dedicated resources on the cloud platform.\

While the first, physical solution in case of failure automatically disables your services, the VPS server in the cloud or virtualized clusters provide the possibility of migration to another node while maintaining constant service availability. This infrastructure will provide you with much greater availability of services at the hardware level.

Read it too: What is high server or website availability?

Type of virtualization

Another key factor when choosing a private virtual server is the type of its virtualization. There are 2 types of virtualization – paravirtualization and full virtualization.

Paravirtualization of the VPS server comes down to running the virtual machine in isolated containers, which they share with the host kernel (kernel) of the system. In other words, VPS virtualization is done at the operating system level. Among the most popular solutions of this type are Virtuozoo and OpenVZ.

Full virtualization comes down to server virtualization on hardware level. This approach provides much better isolation of individual servers and more efficient distribution of the physical resources they use. Examples of such solutions include VMware and KVM.

The type of server virtualization also entails the issue of overselling, i.e. the sale by hosting companies of more hardware resources than they actually have. This is explained by the fact that few VPS users use 100% of leased resources. Full virtualization marginalizes the phenomenon of overselling.

Server parameters

Machine parameters determine its performance, power, speed and disk space. The key parameters of VPS servers are primarily:

• processor (number of cores and clocking),
• RAM,
• The disk space and type of drives used (SSD, NVMe or HDD),
• monthly transfer limit,
• throughput.

Usually hosting companies offer several variants of VPS server configuration, thanks to which each of them will adjust server parameters to their own needs.

Management

The scope of server management is also important. The market is dominated by VPSs, which are offered with root access allowing almost unlimited server management in terms of installation of libraries, user accounts, permissions etc. It is worth noting whether the hosting company provides an administration panel, which facilitates server management.

There are also managed servers on the market. These types of solutions provide an intuitive administration panel, and the servers are managed in the most important issues by the operator, limiting the freedom of action for the client. However, such a solution is quite convenient and willingly chosen by people who do not need a root.

Security

When managing a VPS, you must take care of the implementation of mechanisms to protect your data and continuity of services. This does not mean, however, that the VPS is left to the service providers’ own devices. Usually operators on their side provide anti-DDoS protection and the possibility of snapshots and data backups. It is important to pay attention to the scope of protection provided by the service provider.