Virtual Private Server: Dedicated web hosting features on a budget

This is a sponsored post by InMotion Hosting, Inc.

If you're a small to mid-sized business dependent on your website for generating income or you're an avid blogger looking to make it big, a shared web hosting plan is definitely not suitable for supporting such dynamic content or potentially heavy traffic. However, the option of having a fully dedicated server isn't quite necessary just yet or may not be within reach with it's high price. Then a great option to consider is Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting.

Virtual private servers bridge the gap between shared web hosting services and dedicated hosting services, giving independence from other customers of the VPS service in software terms but at less cost than a physical dedicated server. You get the great benefits of having a dedicated server, such as an independent operating system and dedicated resources like RAM and disk space, with just one of the few shared aspects being CPU. This is made possible with virtualization technology.

A Virtual Private Server is created by splitting a physical server into a number of virtual servers, each capable of running its own full-fledged operating system, and each server can be independently rebooted. As a VPS runs its own copy of its operating system, customers have superuser-level access to that operating system instance, and can install almost any software that runs on the OS.

Beneficial features of Virtual Private Servers:

1. You Need Root Access/SSH – This is one of the typical reasons why you should try to get off the shared hosting bandwagon. In other words, you get “server-level customization,” which was previously only available with dedicated hosting due to security reasons. In addition, you can utilize the command line access and have the option of operating as the root user if you've got the experience to do so.
2. You're Growing/You Need Scalability – For a websites just starting off, shared hosting is usually a sufficient choice. However, since the goal of many website owners is to grow or improve by either adding other sites or increasing traffic, there's a big possibility of growing more than expected. VPS hosting can provide scalability that allows you to add more resources (RAM, disk space, etc.) for the room needed for growth.
3. You have Unpredictable Traffic Spikes – With a hosting plan that doesn't have the resources to meet your needs, a blogger’s idea of heaven can quickly turn into a nightmare. If you're on a shared server and you get a link to your site from a much larger site (like Digg), the inadequacies will instantly be evident. But on a VPS, this wouldn't be much of a problem with the availability of “burstable memory,” which is a pool of reserved memory that's available when needed, such as in times of very high traffic.
4. You're Using Your Site For E-Commerce – If you're website's a source of income using e-commerce with product-filled databases, it wouldn't be a good idea to count on shared hosting to handle the heavy load since many of your resources are shared. In that case, you never know when someone else on the server may use up a large portion of the resources, so you're at risk of your site not functioning time to time. With a VPS, since your site doesn't rely on the same resources as others, you can rest assure of encountering this problem.
5. You Have A Budget – Not only is VPS hosting an attractive alternative because of the beneficial things it offers, but also the price tag to it, especially when compared with dedicated servers. Now you can get the best features out there without costing you a fortune.

A VPS is, however, essentially still a shared sever. The hardware resources of the physical web server are shared by the many websites that use the server. As such, you will not be able to enjoy all benefits you get from dedicated hosting, but that’s a trade-off you made between feature and price.

Some of the drawbacks of shared hosting still apply to VPS hosting, albeit to a lesser extent. Due to the number of virtualization clients typically running on a single machine, a VPS generally has limited processor time, RAM, and disk space. VPS providers often place restrictions on use of RAM, central processing time, and server disk space but they are generally lax compared to those in shared hosting environments.

The biggest advantage though, as already mentioned, is scalability. RAM, disk space and CPU time can be upgraded when your website grows, something which is not possible with shared hosting, and still significantly cheaper than dedicated hosting.

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