Virtual Private Servers have become an increasingly popular form of web hosting due to their attractive hybrid-like attributes. Boasting the benefits of a dedicated server without the burden of a large price, VPS has provided a way for consumers to have their cake and eat it too.
The comparison of a cake actually provides quite a simple way of explaining how a VPS works. Similar to dividing a cake into slices to cater for a number of people, a VPS is segmented into partitions so that a number of users can have a personal server despite essentially sharing with others.
Through this segmentation, consumers virtually get their own private server, as the name states. However, due to still ultimately utilizing a shared server, they are not subjected to paying the price of the whole server, the same as purchasing a slice instead of a whole cake.
Provided you haven’t darted off to the kitchen due to the mouthwatering analogy, this article is a guide for those looking to host a VPS, and the considerations you need to contemplate when offering it to customers.
While you'll be keen to offer as much as possible to as many consumers as you can in order to maximum profit from the server, you may encounter a number of problems without deliberating over factors such as performance, power and security.
The latter of these is obvious necessity for your VPS, as the server will be being utilized by a number of users who won't want others having access to their sensitive information. Because of this, you should ensure that every private server operates individually and there is no way of them getting out of their virtual machine, or anyone getting in for that matter.
Distribution of CPU power and RAM is also a consideration in order to fully run each private server without draining the entire system. Keep in mind that each of these will be running its own operating system.
You should also discover what resources will and won't be used on each VPS. This way you can disable unnecessary services and free more RAM. While also investigating their resources, find out what type of sites each user will be running on their personal server in order to delegate more or less resources. Depending on the size of the website you may also need to recommend them to opt for a dedicated server if the VPS won't support their site.
Finally, heading back to the cake theme, remember that too many cooks can spoil the broth, meaning you shouldn't include too many users on one server. This will reduce resources available to your existing users and, by avoiding this, also give you some leeway if one user is consuming more than another.
VPS is a fantastic offering to your customers as it provides them a middle ground between a shared server and a dedicated server. Once the decision has been made to use this form of web hosting though, you'll need to keep these considerations in mind in order to offer an efficient and desirable service to your customers.
