Webmentor's How To Guides

Webmentor's How To Guides are written in plain english so that ordinary business folk can understand important stuff about their websites.

Your consent to the use of Cookies

Your consent to the use of cookies on this site is determined by your current browser settings. Learn about the cookies we use here.

Webmentor's Webhosting Tables

Compare Irish Web Hosts in an easy to read table. Vote and leave a comment, or read what others have to say. Take me to the Webhosting Tables.

What is a Virtual Private Server (VPS)?

Virtual Private ServerDiag 1. One Physical Server, many Virtual Machines

In webhosting terms - a Virtual Private Server, or VPS, is a level up from a shared web hosting service. One reason why many people upgrade to a VPS is because their sites are getting popular and they're regularly exceeding the monthly bandwidth cap on their shared web hosting server.

A VPS is a better, bigger, faster service that is far more secure than a shared web host. Despite the price tag though, there are usually no uptime guarantees.

Understanding what a VPS is

The trick to understanding a VPS is the V in Virtual. In computer terminology Virtual means simulated. So you’re getting a simulation of an entire Linux or Windows server to yourself.  Actually, you’re still sharing the server. Your share is called a Virtual Machine or VM. (Learn more about Virtual Machines)

Each Virtual Machine has its own operating system which can be independently started/shut down. It also has its own copy of the server software necessary for web hosting. Each Virtual Machine is entirely separate from every other Virtual Machine (VM) making a VPS much more secure than shared web hosting. But each VM still has to share the physical resources of the server – processing power, storage space and memory – so you’ll see those specs when you sign up. (If you really wanted the entire server to yourself and all the physical resources you’d need to upgrade to a Dedicated Server. That means the box is all yours.)

Advantages of VPS over Shared Web Hosting

  • Security – each VM independent of other VMs 
  • Control of operating system and server software
  • Your own allocation of RAM (memory), Hard Disk space and CPU (processing power)

Managed VPS or Unmanaged VPS?

VPS's come in 2 flavours: managed and unmanaged. Both options have tech support but read the fine print before you sign up.

Managed VPS

A Managed VPS could cost as much per month as shared webhosting does in a year, however all the tricky jobs like backing up the VM, allocating memory to programs, software patching, load balancing, port monitoring and other security issues are managed for you. All this is reflected in the price tag which could be as high as €150/mo.

Unmanaged VPS

An Unmanaged VPS is significantly cheaper, with starter prices around €20/mo. You are now the Captain of your own Boat which means a steep learning curve if you're not already an experienced Linux/Windows server administrator. You'll need to read the T&C to find out what's your responsibility and what's theirs. This can vary quite a lot between providers.

Traditional VPS vs Cloud VPS

It’s going to get harder and harder to find a traditional VPS – that’s where you’d have between 10-50 Virtual Machines on an actual physical server. So is a cloud VPS any better? Actually, yes. Because the cloud is distributed network of computers, it overcomes the limitations of a single physical server.

Unlike a traditional VPS, a cloud VPS is almost instantly expandable. You can re-configure your VM in a matter of minutes. Expecting a traffic spike at the weekend? Reconfigure to a bigger instance. You pay a higher price/hour for the weekend but after the weekend, you can reconfigure back down and pay your usual price. Cloud VPS offerings (eg from your local webhost/whoever) are mostly being resold/repackaged from either Amazon EC2 or the venerable and much more user-friendly Rackspace (hint: look for managed cloud solutions).

Is it true that Bandwidth is unlimited on a VPS?

A Cloud VPS is unlimited - and it's the single biggest advantage in that you can reconfigure your VM (in minutes) to handle bursts and pay by the hour until the burst is over.

Traditional VPS's aren't unlimited. On a traditional (physical) VPS you can opt for a metered or unmetered data connection. On a metered connection you get an upper bandwidth allowance, after which you pay per GB bandwidth. On an unmetered connection you are unlimited in that you'll never pay for exceeding your bandwidth allowance - but that's because they ensure that you can't actually exceed it! An example might help - 

An unmetered connection is like a car whose top speed is 100kph. If you were to drive that car at a 100kph for an entire month the maximum distance you could do is 72000km. A metered connection is like a car that can do a higher top speed like 250kph, giving it a theoretical monthly distance of 180000km. But a metered connection is capped. So if it travels beyond it's monthly cap, eg 50000km, then there will be an additional charge per km levied.

The advantage of a metered connection is that it can handle traffic spikes ("bursts") by speeding when it needs to, but the data cap is usually much lower. An unmetered connection can do as much data as its speed allows, but it is NEVER allowed to accelerate ("burst"). So if there was a big traffic spike, the website on an unmetered connection could easily cause the server to go down because there's more data than the connection can physically handle.

Comments

0 Sherin Thomas says: 10-02-2014
After reading your post I understand about managed or unmanaged vps, both are beneficial, Thank you for this post.
Unmanaged VPS Hosting

Comments are now closed for this entry