Choosing the correct web hosting for your business could prove to be a big business turnaround. There are no good or bad when it comes to hosting; the ‘correct host’ normally narrows down to finding ‘what fits your business needs’. A few businesses do well with shared hosting - thanks to its cost-effectiveness - while some opt for the more state-of-the-art dedicated hosting servers. Massive capital requirements could be prohibitive of a firm’s dream of server migration, and acquiring its own dedicated server. One of the many things that these firms can consider setting up for their website is a VPS.
VPS stands for a virtual private server. Such servers are technically both shared as well as dedicated, and will work in many ways similar to how dedicated servers would, in a shared environment. This means that several clients will rely on the same server but with partitioned resources. The traffic on another server is, therefore, unlikely to affect your site’s performance, and has outshot shared hosting, wherein a traffic surge on the neighbouring website can inflict incalculable server downtime on all other servers.
Other parameters over which one can debate VPS’s resemblance and/or difference to the other two hosting types are:
Cost- Because you are still working on a shared server, you can expect a lesser capital investment compared to dedicated servers, but more than what shared servers would normally cost.
Server Management– Shared servers are almost entirely provider-managed, with hardly a bug left for the webmasters to hunt at their end. Virtual private servers are infamous for giving troubles starting day one of your hosting, much like dedicated servers. Some providers, though, offer server management, but for some additional charges, of course.
Flexibility– A server shared among multiple tenants will not be as flexible (to customization) as a dedicated machine. It’s a no brainer that VPSes are more open to customization than shared platforms, but not as customizable as dedicated hosting.
Server Performance– Dedicated machines are mammoth of RAID configurations, and there’s none competing with its performance even today. A virtual private machine performs comparably, though, its performance is often capped to how proficient are its webmasters. Nonetheless, VPSes are speedsters and load pages multiple times faster than a shared server.
Steadiness– Your site wouldn’t run into as many downtimes, with a Virtual machine, as you did in shared hosting. When it comes to server migration, downtime becomes a noble cause for the move.
With a VPS, potential downtime is under the aegis of private resource-set, evident enough for the fact that there will be a higher uptime availability. A virtual server, too, has its limits, and can only handle as much traffic as its resource is capable of handling. Any over-the-top traffic would run you into downtime and other similar problems.
Control– You have restricted to complete control over your Virtual Private Server based on the hosting provider and the subscribed plan. For a file hosting service, control can be a make-or-break factor while deciding the correct host. The preference for VPS, for many, is solely grounded on the control it has to offer.
Scalability– dedicated servers are like full-grown pine trees. To harvest more pine-oil, you need to grow more trees. Hence, to upscale a dedicated server, you need to setup a few more.
Virtual servers are analogous to budding plants. To fully leverage its plant-values, you need to water it till it grows to a tree. Hence, to upscale a VPS, you need to expand its resources. That’s it.
It’s plain sailing to say virtual servers are easier to scale than dedicated servers. It is easier to nourish a young plan than growing some new trees, after all.
Security- VPSes allow an increased level of security than its predecessor shared server. Private servers are, virtually, an island unto themselves, and hence safer against intrusions. The level of security in VPS is akin to what dedicated server offers.
Who should undergo a server migration to host a VPS?
A server migration would be a justifiable move in cases where:
- Shared hosting is being a roadblock, and you are planning to change but do not intend to invest in a dedicated server hosting anytime soon.
- The current server is, otherwise, incapable of handling network traffic.
- You want to dabble with dedicated servers without committing yourself into one.
- Shared hosts under-deliver and dedicated servers over-deliver the operational requirements.
- You are running, or are planning to run a domain that stores user sensitive info, and want to up the security.
- Authorization and control offered to you, as a network administrator, is not very satisfying.
- The webmaster is technically proficient, but not overly so, to manage the fuss of a private server.
- The business idea is novel that people aren’t aware of, today, but is revolutionary, nonetheless, and the brand isn’t very far from being a hit. Naturally, you would want a server that can be scaled in a snap. If it is so, you could do with the scalability of virtual private servers.
If any of the above points hold true, VPS is your thing.
Once you have decided to move to a VPS, server migration will become inevitable. Migration can be extremely painful, and at the top of it, you run the risk of losing all your data at once. You might as well want to know how to backup files to a backup server before initiating the migration.
Read, how a file hosting service will extricate complexities of migration.
To talk on a ‘short yet concise’ note, you will need to export your database and download site files. Now this downloaded data is to be uploaded to the VPS. Once done, have your IP to point to the new server or else your visitors will land to an unknown address.
Upshot
Shared hosting was once prolific among hosting, but the trend has undergone some changes in the meantime. While there is an inclination towards performance dedicated servers, the associated cost is exorbitant.
VPS is seen as the midway between affordability and performance. It wouldn’t be appropriate to say that dedicated, shared, and virtual private servers are similar entities altogether. A VPS, though very striking, is neither shared nor dedicated hosting, but a mix of both with characteristics that are medial to both shared and dedicated.
