VPS Faqs

What is VPS?

A Virtual Private Server or VPS (also known as a virtual dedicated server, a VDS, or virtual server) is a method of partitioning one physical server into multiple servers. Each one of these servers has the appearance and capabilities (with it's own allocated resource) as it if were running it's own dedicated server. Each VPS can run its own full-fledged operating system, and each server can be independently rebooted.

A virtual private server is the most economical way to get "guaranteed" resources for your web hosting environment.

Why should I consider VPS, when I can buy or lease a dedicated server?

VPS (Virtual Private Server) allows for better hardware utilization via lesser power utilization than a physical server.

However, maintenance of VPS servers may be marginally expensive. It might be difficult to make backup of one arbitrary software. Security issues are more complex in VPS providers than in dedicated server providers. There are two layers of security : both physical server security and VPS security. VPS monitoring might be more difficult than dedicated server monitoring.

VPS requires more expensive drivers like multi-port network adapters and more physical connections than dedicated server. There are some more management problems since you will use more Ethernet cables and network equipment like switches.

VPS providers tend to need more IP addresses than dedicated providers. If you have only 100 physical computers with 20 VPS on each it is still 2000 IP addresses. Physical systems that have more VPSs might have very high number of packets per second (PPS) though network. It is difficult to manage large number of IP addresses, MAC addresses etc.

There are sometimes software licensing advantages when running VPS. Some software licenses are by number of physical processors or physical computers and therefore they are cheaper when you can divide its price by number of VPS on one physical computer.

VPS performance is better nowadays with overhead less than 5% using modern virtualization software like Virtuozzo. But, disk I/O performances might have bottlenecks due to more disk fragmentation.

All in all, VPS technology should be selected after careful study of its advantages and disadvantages.

Current VPS technologies in market?

Most Popular technologies in the market are Xen, OpenVZ, VMWare.

What is OpenVZ ?

OpenVZ is a complete server automation and virtualization solution.

OpenVZ is an Operating System-level server virtualization solution, built on Linux. OpenVZ creates isolated, secure virtual environments — VEs (otherwise known as virtual private servers, or VPSs) on a single physical server enabling better server utilization and ensuring that applications do not conflict. Each VE performs and executes exactly like a stand-alone server; VEs can be rebooted independently and have root access, users, IP addresses, memory, processes, files, applications, system libraries and configuration files.

What is Virtuozzo?

Virtuozzo is a proprietary operating system virtualization product produced by SWsoft, Inc. Virtuozzo creates isolated virtual environments (VE) or containers on a single physical server and OS instance.

• Intelligent Partitioning - Division of a server into as many as hundreds of VEs with full server functionality.
  
• Complete Isolation - VEs are secure and have full functional, fault and
  performance isolation.
  
• Dynamic Resource Allocation - CPU, memory, network, disk and I/O can be changed without re-booting.
  
• Live Migration - Business continuity capabilities including live migration
  ensure data is available and recoverable.
  
• Mass Management - Suite of tools and templates for automated, multi-VE and multi-server administration.