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What is Virtual Private Server (VPS)?

The technology is ever growing and the needs are growing along with it. Many website hosts may like to see some hosting concept that offers the goods of both dedicated and shared hosting techniques. The perfect mix of them is offered by the concept of Virtual Private Server (VPS) made possible by the advancements in the software and hardware. No more does one need to fret over paying thousands of dollars for an established server that offers a great deal of control over the website.

Virtual Private Server – the evolutionary solution

The concept of Virtual Private server is one where a single server, mostly a powerful and high end server, that in turn is split in to number of servers within itself. This split or separation is done virtually at the hardware or software level. The main server actually runs a single kernel but on top of this single efficient kernel (the Operating system) runs many different operating systems acting as separate servers. Thus the actual server you are going to buy is just a virtual one running atop a single operating system.

The advantages

The advantages obtained by having the virtual private servers are manifold. In certain hosting services like shared hosting, if one client needs to restart a server it necessitates the restart of the whole server along with other shared hosts, this is indeed a great drawback. But in the case of VPS we actually need to restart the virtual kernel alone and the other such servers are completely unharmed. The layer of the server that provides the service is autonomous and very much customizable to each party’s requirements, on the software level. So the user has the full software control that is mostly associated with dedicated servers, at a cost comparable to shred hosting services.

The lesser drawbacks

Though VPS offers a perfect solution to most hosts, it does so with some limitations. The main limitation associated with the VPS service is that the computational power associated with the virtual server is actually a subset of the original one, so if your sites have extremely high requirement of server side computations like scripting and CGI based calculations, then the limited power of the servers show up. This is due to the fact that the server actually runs as a part of a underlying kernel which actually allocates only certain amount of processor and RAM space to the virtual server.

The considerations

As we see the specifics of a Virtual Private Server, it is quite obvious that we should not fall for any server without proper considerations of the abilities of the VPS and the quality of service that a VPS scheme is capable of. See whether the VPS service offers sufficient computation power, bandwidth and uptime before deciding upon a service. Other aspects like the software used for virtualization (in case of software virtualizations) and techniques used, in case of hardware supported virtualizations are to be carefully looked upon before your decision.

Thus on an overall note, the VPS becomes the best hosting service if you want a controlled server at a less cost, and has also associated with a number of advantages when it comes to software control, with a slight percent of side effects associated with it. Nevertheless, it becomes the best suited choice in many aspects.