thanks
http://www.hostv.com

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.

For me there are really only two types of hosting.

1. Managed — you do not have full control, and every sysadmin task is done for you. Suitable for those who want to get the website up and running, no matter how big or small the website is.
2. Unmanaged — you have the full control, but there’s full responsibility as well. Suitable for developers to tinker, and for specialised applications that are not suitable in managed environment.

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 :)

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?)

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.

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?

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.

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 :)

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.