It all boils down to what you want to use it for.

A cheap VPS plan will be no more powerful than an average shared hosting plan. Though it will cost you alot more.

If you have a site that is too large for a shared hosting plan then you're going to have to shell out for something more powerful.

A dedicated server can be had for £20 per month now with a 2.0GHz CPU, 1GB Ram, 250GB HDD.. that is a better spec than a VPS at the same price would be.

The industry seems to be moving away from shared hosting plans, some medium sized blogs are outgrowing the average plan and seem to be moving to either VPS or dedicated.

With the prices of some dedicated servers, VPS servers are becoming very expensive for what they are.

I have VPS on a dedicated server lol.

The big advantage with VPS is that you can easily move them to different boxes and the server is essentially just a file, makes it easier to do complate backups as well.

There is a small performance overhead compared to dedicated servers, and more flexibility than shared hosting i.e. you can install whatever you like.

Capacity and availabity will be lower than enterprise class shared hosting i.e. fully redundant with no single points of failure. Dual firewalls, load-balancers, multiple internet connections, redundant hardware with firewalls dual nics etc etc.

Security will be lower too as they are often just on the Net with no firewalls, intrusion detection or prevention systems.

When I say Enterprise class shared hosting I am talking about one and one for example, not someone who has bought a dedicated server and set up a hosting company. These companies are now offering VPS too, not sure what infrastructure they put them on.

A major thing to look out for is the contention ration i.e. the number of VPS per box and what is the spec of the box. Many do not give this info freely and if they are on enterprise class kit like 8-way quad like this Unisys | High End Enterprise Servers | IT Infrastructure Solutions it will be even harder.

I hope this helps

Tony

I think this is a very important point you touched Tony, quite a few VPS are just shared space on a dedicated server, they really should not be called VPS.
A proper VPS should be enterprise class. I used to have VPS with a company that does not exist any more on AS400 (Don't know if they exist any more either).

Originally Posted by tb987

When I say Enterprise class shared hosting I am talking about one and one for example, not someone who has bought a dedicated server and set up a hosting company. These companies are now offering VPS too, not sure what infrastructure they put them on.

If you go with a Xen provider then you're safe in the knowledge that you have the resources you were sold - its a kernel patch that stops the server from being oversold.

I don't own dedicated or VPS server but one of my company site was hosted on the VPS server (running on Virtuozzo) but we never got the good performance on VPS and we needed to move the site to dedicated server. The dedicated server costs more but we get better performance and stability with dedicated server. I think everyone are looking for uptime and statbility of the server .

Also the problem with VPS server is, if in case the main server goes down due to some reason your server will also go down and if the provider has not cofigure the virtulazation software properly then there is a chance that your server may compromise.

From the above, it doesn't mean that it is not advisiable to use VPS but this is my thoughts that I have sahred with you guys.

Regards,

Kailash

I use VPS and am very pleased with the Performance to Price Ratio. A VPS is well affordable against a Dedicated Server in my case because UK location is a non negotiable part of my requirements. Hosting prices are better in the UK than they used to be but still not in line. Also, I can have a couple of VPS accounts in different IP blocks and different data centres for the same price of a Dedicated Server.

VPS are good for using when testing new code or software before installing on a production servers. VPS are also good for hosting clients that require special needs. Vps are also good if you want to run beta software. Enterprise hosting will not allow you these needs because your on a shared production server. If I have a client that has special needs I will force him to get a VPS over enterprise hosting. This way I can work on the server and not have to wait for a tech to log in and try and resolve the issues. Think about how many times a client was mad at you because you were waiting for the tech to resolve the issue??

Originally Posted by temi

A proper VPS should be enterprise class.

Care to elaborate?