virtual private servers
keituber.com – Learn what a VPS is and how it differs from other types of cloud computing hosting.
What is a VPS?
VPS, or Virtual Private Server, is a type of multi-tenant cloud hosting where virtual dedicated server resources are made available to end users over the Internet through a cloud or hosting provider.
Each VPS is installed on a physical machine, run by a cloud or hosting provider, that runs multiple VPSs. But when VPSs share a hypervisor and underlying hardware, each VPS runs its own operating system (OS) and applications and occupies the machine’s resources (memory, compute, etc.).
virtual private servers
VPS offers levels of performance, flexibility and control between multi-tenant shared hosting and single-tenant domain hosting. While it may seem counterintuitive to call a multi-tenant VPS arrangement ‘private’ – especially when single-tenant options are available – the term ‘VPS’ is commonly used by hosting providers to describe it. Shared hostingwhere host model all of them A physical machine’s hardware and software resources are shared equally across multiple users.
At the other end of the continuum, some cloud providers (including IBM) offer higher levels of hosting (and privacy) than a multi-tenant cloud server. There are two common models Dedicated hosts And Specific examples. In both of these models, the end user is accessing virtual resources and using a managed hypervisor, but doing so on single-tenant hardware.
The following sections provide more detailed comparisons of VPS, shared, and dedicated hosting.
When considering use cases for virtual servers, the differences between vendors can be really significant. For traditional hosting providers, VPS represents a good balance of cost, flexibility, scalability and control between shared and dedicated hosting and is ideal for e-commerce, applications with moderate or high traffic, email servers, CRM, etc.
But, beyond that, virtual servers from the major public cloud providers are very robust and feature-rich—they’re the foundation for much of what’s considered “the cloud” today, and they can handle a wide variety of workloads.
Shared vs. VPS vs. Dedicated hosting
Building on the concept of “tenancy”, the most common analog to the difference between shared, VPS and dedicated hosting is the difference between real estate.
Shared hosting is similar to apartment living, where tenants share amenities like parking, laundry room, swimming pool, etc.
Dedicated hosting is very similar to single-family home ownership, where everything—including the property—is owned and leased to one owner.
VPS hosting is in between – similar to townhouse or condo housing – each resident has many of their own services (laundry, parking, etc.) but still a city green, health club and other extensive, common physical infrastructure.
Shared hosting
Shared hosting is a very basic, cost-effective form of hosting. In shared hosting, the resources of a physical machine are available equally to all tenants. Shared hosting is ideal for basic, personal websites and web applications with little traffic, few technical requirements, and limited performance or security requirements.
In a shared hosting model, since all tenants are allocated a certain amount of individual server capacity, providers do not allow websites to scale beyond their plan limits. However, the shared hosting model is highly susceptible to “noisy neighbors” – tenants whose applications suddenly consume more than their share of resources, causing performance problems for other tenants. For more information about shared hosting, see “What is cloud hosting?” See the and “Web Hosting: An Introduction.”
VPS hosting
As mentioned earlier, VPS hosting is considered a premium alternative to shared hosting. In VPS hosting, shared resources are provided to the end user who has more control over system specifications, guest operating systems and overall software stack than is the case in shared hosting.
It’s important to note that VPS hosting sits between shared and dedicated hosting when it comes to control, cost, and simplicity, the most scalable of the three models, and the closest relative to most publicly offered VMS/virtual servers. Cloud providers.
Hosting provided
Unlike shared and VPS hosting, dedicated hosting offers end users access to all the hardware resources of a single server. Dedicated hosting offers greater privacy, security, performance and control compared to VPS and shared hosting.
Dedicated hosting is the most expensive of the three models due to the level of hardware resources allocated to a single client. It is also somewhat more difficult to scale than a VPS because scaling requires the provider to configure and provision new physical hardware resources.
The term “bare metal servers” is sometimes used interchangeably with dedicated servers, but bare metal providers often offer cloud-like features in their dedicated servers in minutes (vs. hours), hourly increments (vs. monthly), and graphics processing units. (GPUs) offering high-end hardware. See “Provisioned and Bare Metal Servers Explained” for a full look at the two options.
VPS vs. Dedicated hosts vs. Dedicated host instances
A VPS is typically understood as a single, virtual machine on shared physical hardware with other VMs. Dedicated instances and hosts bring another level of exclusivity, control and visibility to VPS hosting by placing virtual machines on dedicated hardware with a single tenant.
A Dedicated hosts It involves the leasing of an entire physical machine and continuous access and control of that machine, hardware and any software installed on it. This model offers maximum hardware flexibility and transparency, workload control and placement, and also offers some of the benefits of bring-your-own software licenses.
A A specific example It provides the same single-tenant isolation and the same control over workload placement, but is not tied to a specific physical machine. It is an example. So, for example, if a particular instance is rebooted, it can be launched on a new physical machine—a machine specific to the individual account, but a new machine, in a different physical location.
Dedicated hosts and dedicated instances differ slightly in their management options, pricing models, and visibility. For example, take IBM’s own host and examples:
(1) Host price includes core, RAM, local SSD and network speeds. Premium operating system (OS), storage area network (SAN) storage, and software add-ons are billed on an hourly or monthly model based on current pricing and licensing.
VPS and IBM cloud
IBM offers a full range of virtual server hosting options, including public, multi-tenant servers, as well as dedicated hosts and instances. In addition to virtual servers, IBM Cloud offers complete compute models with bare metal servers, managed Kubernetes services, PaaS and FaaS to support any application or workload.
IBM offers a wide range of support services in networking, storage and databases, as well as specialized services such as Watson and Blockchain.
Create an IBM Cloud account today to get started.
