Robert Cichon of CrystalTech wrote on theWHIR blog about getting ready to start up a VPS solution for his hosting company. He asked “Are we making the best choice for what the customers will want?”, and tried to explain what VPS is for.
I mean it’s pretty obvious why some would want to buy VPS; for the value of course compared to true dedicated server offerings. It’s just a perfect next step from shared without having to incur all the expense of a dedicated. (Emphasis mine)
Is virtual private server the “perfect next step from shared hosting”? Is VPS the logical step-stone between $10/month shared hostings and $100+/month dedicated servers? Is it something you buy when your hosting company kicks you out for resource overage, and are too poor to buy your own “real” server? What do you think?
One thing I found interesting is where is VPS marketing at. If you are a hosting company, and are selling both shared hosting and dedicated servers, what will you put on their specification pages?
| Shared Hosting | Dedicated Servers |
|---|---|
|
|
It is very obvious that these two products are for two completely different markets. You don’t see a lot of shared hosting company boasting about their RAID10 disk arrays and quad-core Xeons, nor many dedicated server companies see “unlimited domains” and “blog software included” as necessary in marketing their products.
Now, go down to the VPS offering section of WebHostingTalk, and check out how VPS providers market their products. Now tell me which side of the table above resembles the VPS specifications?
From my own understanding, VPS is more of a “small dedicated server”, than a “big shared hosting account”. It is intended for those on dedicated servers to scale down (server consolidation, for example), than for those on crowded shared hosting to scale up. It has all the characteristics of a dedicated server — more so if the provider is using hardware/para-virtualization. It also requires similar commitment as a dedicated server. Application installation, security, administration, system tune up/optimization, etc.
Personally I find it is a perfect hosting solution for me, who want the power of root, but don’t want to pay for (nor require) the whole box.
However, I have seen VPS frequently recommended as the next level up from shared hosting to novice who happens to have a busy website. Because of the required server administration skills, people either come back 2 days later complaining how crappy VPS is, or they ended up purchasing cPanel + 256Mb extra memory + managed service in order to make that VPS “functional”. I think that is just so wrong.
No, I don’t think VPS is a suitable candidate for hosting resellers. VPS is one level down from dedicated servers, but one level up from shared hosting should be managed shared hosting with cluster servers instead (MediaTemple’s Grid Server and Rackspace’s Mosso for example). You don’t need to be a shell whiz-bang to use them, and the cluster servers, if implemented correctly, should easily scale up when the traffic soars.
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For me, VPS is expensive shared hosting for people who need full access with root access. I’m now hosting personal blogs on a Ubuntu VPS, to match my Ubuntu home desktop.
Great article, just posted it on the blog. I agree, I think of it as a small dedicated server with protected resources. Gets people away from shared hosting that might be overloaded.
Hi Ben!
What I was trying to say actually, is that a VPS/VDS is not necessary the natural step forward to move away from crowded shared hosting, because of the amount of involvement in server administration. If all you want is to have your growing website staying online, and don’t want the hassle of administrating a Linux box nor the expense of a dedicated server, the better approach is to move from a crowded shared hosting to a less crowded shared hosting.
A host with less customers on a server. Less oversold. Or a cluster solution that can dispatch requests to multiple servers.
It makes me cringe when I see hosts loading a 8Gb server with 20 VPS all running their own instance of cPanel because they are resellers. Aargh! When the server control panel is taking over 50% of the available resource, you know there is something wrong with it.
Or maybe it was just me.
Or maybe it was just me.
No, it’s not just you. I’ve NEVER fully realized the benefit of a VPS/VDS. Why? If you need shell that badly, find a host that will give it to you (Textdrive, etc.), on a shared system.
Speaking of, I do like the clustered approach that MediaTemple and others are doing. I’m at Textdrive right now and they are moving away (as we speak) from a shared setup to a clustered Solaris system.
VPS? Don’t see the appeal.
Chris — I think TextDrive is just moving their shared users from their FreeBSD boxes to their “accelerator” VPS, i.e. Sun containers. It is still going to be shared hosting I think. Don’t quote me though as I am not a TxD user :)
As of appeal of VPS, sometimes you just need something that a shell user can’t do. Not all shell hosting providers allow you to run multiple persistent processes, let along daemons that actually bind to a port. AFAIK, none of them will give you access to root account as well.
For example I’ve seen many people getting VPS to run Asterisk. It has nothing to do with web hosting. You can’t do it on usual shell accounts. And the CPU power required does not warrant a dedicated server. VPS sounds like a perfect fit here.
I guess I would be the one to state that I have argued in both directions. VPS in a smaller, very protected, true instance enviroment like VMWare or wider spread on Virtuosso. I originally thought VMWare or smaller instance enviroments was the only option to consider. WIth DC space (and power) getting really expensive, looking for a model to contain our growth costs was critical. I assumed clients would only be interested in true VPS solutions with maybe a max of 4-6 with a fair amount of resources.
The main argument I got on this notion was not from others in the tech community, but actually the ones knowing the customers the best. As per my blog, it was obvious there is a strong notion in the “more per server” style VPS as well.
I have to also face the reality of the dedicated server costs to customers. We have $69.95 true dedicates. This is hard to match for price in any VPS style solution. We would almost, after software costs, hardware investment and resource time, have to charge almost as much as the actual dedicated.
All in all, here is what I truly think: There is room for both and maybe its a multi-step graduation. We are more willing to start out with a higher per server VPS plan type and then, as we learn more, role out the higher line, more expensive plans.
Also, I love the conversation and thanks for the thoughts. (This is the stuff that makes the Internet great!)
Bob,
Thanks for commenting!
I think my argument is, VPS will gradually eat up a portion of the dedicated server market. It will still take away users from shared hosting because of its price, but we shall see more dedicated server customers switching to VPS, than from shared hosting to VPS, proportion wise.
While the $70 dedicated server looks like a better option than managed VPS today, it might not be in the future. First of all, servers are going to get faster and faster, but customers’ need might not move at the same pace, especially if they are on some legacy system. Sooner or later they will realise even $70 dedicated server is too powerful for then (maybe you’ll get a quad core with multi-Gb RAM for $70 in a few years time), and they will be happy to go with $35 VPS that is fully managed.
For me VPS is several things. It can be the next step from shared hosting due to either custom system requirements or higher resource needs, but in many situations a dedicated server would also be the right choise here (specially when you move due to a higher need for resources).
However, VPS is also often an easy way to get started with learning to run, configure and maintain your own server. Some providers offer you easy recovery of the system, which means that you can’t really mess that much up.
Sune,
However, VPS is also often an easy way to get started with learning to run, configure and maintain your own server. Some providers offer you easy recovery of the system, which means that you can?t really mess that much up.
I fully agree. VPS is fun. And even if you FUBAR the system, a few button later you can restart from fresh again. It’s something that is costly on a dedicated server. Great if you are learning admin your own server.
However most users prefer to have something stable and something “just works”. They just want to keep their busy forum online — a good load balancing cluster-backing managed shared hosting would work best. Telling them to tune Apache/MySQL, installing PHP code cache, etc won’t really help :)
I think for users who need the raw power the low end dedicated servers are a great deal (proxies, tor, torrents, high usage forums, game servers, etc). What I see though is most don’t need all that power, BUT they do like the benefits of a the VPS technology (reinstall, repair, backups, instant upgrades, etc) along with the fact they are on an “enterprise” grade server as long as the provider is indeed providing a good service. I see two major deciding factors by a consumer looking at that $70 VPS or $70 dedicated server — RAID is standard across VPS providers and (easy) backups. Hardware replacement is also a key issue that I doubt most consumers consider, but I know it is crucial. We go through different variations of hardware node configurations, but by keeping a cold spare on site even if a motherboard completely fails we can just swap the disks into a spare server and have everyone back up quickly. Management is an entirely different subject as offering “managed” services across VPS’s is less expensive for the customer and very easy for us to provide (therefore the reason it is less expensive).
A trend I’m spotting in the dedicated arena is the focus on only middle-grade servers. For example NetDepot is only offering Single or Dual dual-core processor servers.
And then as far as power and rack space… our current hardware nodes use about 1.3-1.5A at peak load. How much does a Pentium D (sold as a dedicated) use? 1.5-2.0A. Both also use the same amount of rack space and as everyone knows DC space is only going up these days.
Matt — thanks for stopping by.
I agree that with raw CPU power requirement, dedicated servers are still preferred, although at comparable price point, the dedicated servers will be too “raw” for many customers, i.e. no management, desktop hardware, etc.
I am also wondering, with CPU vendors moving towards more-cores-on-die, whether it would be more feasible to also sell CPU intensive hosting on a VPS.
For example, instead of selling 8x low-end Pentium 4-based dedicated server, you’ll get a dual Clovertown with 8 core in total. Set up CPU affinity so each VPS has its own “dedicated” CPU. It might not be that cost effective as Clovertown Xeons are relatively expensive, but when you factor in the ever-increasing power and DC cost, it might make more sense in the long run.
That should pretty much eliminate all the low-end dedicated server market, isn’t it?
Disk I/O is still an issue in that scenario, but yes.. the end result will be that budget dedicated servers are just not worth offering unless you happen to have a lot of excess power and space. I know I/O QoS is being worked on in Virtuozzo (OpenVZ has I/O accounting, which will later be used to enforce).
Well a VPS is a hybrid of shared hosting and a dedicated server. VPS users don’t have to worry about getting kicked off for resource usage and the host does manage certain updates through the host VPS like kernel updates.
A VPS can be just a network drop and shell access - here you go sir! Or it can be a fully managed solution where you have the admin/host manage everything for you much like managed hosting.
A VPS is much more secure than a shared environement as well. With all the security issues like CGI and PHP based shells, anyone today can seemingly snoop into other users accounts on the same server and view things like database passwords and anything else in your /home/user directory.
To me, it’s a combination of things that make them a great new option. As with any hosting provider, make sure you select one that’s reputable and does what you NEED, and don’t just buy it on price and storage space.
so the consensus is that VPS is clearly not a move up from shared hosting, that a more appropriate “move up” would be to shared but clustered servers, presumably either SAN’d or replicated content and clustered database servers? I would be concerned about complicated hosting offerings - if a hoster offered shared, shared/cluster, VPS (openVZ / Jails / Solaris Zones ie user-space virtualisation), VPS (Xen so kernel-space virtualisation) and then levels of dedicated .. can they really support all of the options?
I should say though that personally I would actually have more of an issue with someone who said they could support twenty different Windows hosting packages and twenty different Linux packages, rather than a complex mix of basically similar offerings across a *nix family (or indeed, a complex mix of Windows packages)
So does anyone have a “wishlist” for VPS hosting, or more interesting a “hatelist” for same? Views on Xen vs OpenVZ/OpenSolaris Zones? (Actually, anyone out there work for a hosting company offering Solaris Zones?)
Well. I am only stating my point of view, but clearly many in web hosting community see it differently.
For me there are really only two types of hosting.
Both can scale up and down. Obviously for unmanaged, the smallest unit you can get is a small VPS. On the other hand, if you want a managed solution, you do not really need to understand the differences between single server, clustered server, VPS, dedicated server, etc — as long as the provider can get your sites up and running smoothly.
As of “wishlist” and “hatelist” — maybe we need another thread to discuss that :)
VPS’s can be quickly rebuilt, backed up or restored. They are perfect to learn administration, or perfect for those individuals who are writing software. You can install a compiler and write your own software, which is important in some cases where custom cgi’s are used.
Many of our clients run game servers, which isn’t cost effective at all since they don’t resell them, they simply want to have fun with their friends. A VPS is perfect for this.
I think conceptually a VPS is a small server that is very easy to manage and tends to be more reliable than a small dedicated box.
Automated installs, backups and restore operations ensure you can’t screw it up beyond repair - an important feature for those tinkering.
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