Virtual Private Server and Hosting

July 24, 2008

Virtual Private Server is a new technology implementation that is being incorporated by some hosting companies for its obvious benefits and offers the latest advancements in the ecommerce web hosting technology.

Traditionally, most ecommerce web hosting services have been based around the sharing of server resources and hence the cost savings that can be passed on to hosting customers due to the scale of economy. However most users had to share applications on the server and accept standard configuration, shared web server, shared FTP services, shared mail server, and shared databases. This sometimes resulted in poor server performance as well as potential security threats.

The Virtual Private Server offers an environment whereby the resources are sliced into virtual servers that each operate independantly. In a VPS ecommerce web hosting environment, the user can install applications and configure it as necessary and also create an independant secure environment.

VPS is like having a dediated web server, with dedicated mail services, dedicated database platform, dedicated FTP server, security monitoring, dediated SSL certificate for encryption, and hence more control of your hosting.

The VPS utilizes the OpenVZ virtualization platform to allow it to act as a dedicated server (hence sometimes referred to as VDS) that operates much like a stand-alone server for its users. The VPS can have its own root access, own users, IP addresses, its own root access, memory, processes, applications, files, directories, system libraries and configuration files.

The OpenVZ solution for virtualization is a great choice for application servers with live mission-critical application enviroments. Since VPS runs on its independant operating system, users have superuser-level access and can install almost any software that runs on the operating system.

Some software applications do not run properly in a VPS environment, including firewalls, anti-virus clients, and virtualization software themselves therefore forcing some VPS hosting companies to have many restrictions in place, such as limited processor time, memory alloations, and disk space.