COMPARE! Virtual Private Server vs Shared vs Dedicated: VPS BIBLE

Outgrown shared hosting? Under-using dedicated? Considering leaving managed to save costs? Need a custom solution? Or just want to set up your own virtual private server at a reasonable outlay?

So you’re considering VPS? But what is it, what’s the difference between managed and unmanaged and how does it compare with shared or dedicated hosting?

In this introductory VPS guide we’ll weigh up those differences, considering what to look for in a VPS solution, both managed and unmanaged.

What is a Virtual Private Server (VPS)?

According to Wikipedia…

“A virtual private server (VPS, also referred to as Virtual Dedicated Server or VDS) is a method of partitioning a physical server computer into multiple servers such that each has the appearance and capabilities of running on its own dedicated machine. Each virtual server can run its own full-fledged operating system, and each server can be independently rebooted.”

With a VPS, essentially, you can:-

• have root access, to build your own distribution, whether for:-
• • a website or blog
  • multiple sites and/or blogs
  • a mail server (integrated or standalone)
  • data storage (video/backup etc)
  • a proxy server for privacy & security
  • a slew of other web applications
• have managed or unmanaged hosting, as with a dedicated server. An unmanaged VPS is inexpensive and for most of us, it’s all you need.

VPS vs Dedicated?

A dedicated server is where you occupy the entire, unpartitioned computer. Like VPS, it can be managed or unmanaged or, put it another way, fully or partly supported. If you have a whopper site that ratchets up heavy processing, with many hundreds of thousands of database requests per day, you need a dedicated plan. Then again, many webmasters took the dedicated route when VPS was barely buzzword, and they can be high on costs, low on resources, and ripe for rightsize.

Also, poorly supported or low-budget dedicated boxes are less powerful than many VPS options. As is the case between poor VPS providers and quality shared servers, there is a lot of cross-over. Think Venn diagram. Here again, there is potential for many sites to move, improving on performance while saving on costs.

For sure, if you don’t have a huge CPU requirement but do need lots of RAM, then a VPS is an option and, particularly for unmanaged, heaps cheaper.

For some more technical pointers on the cross-over between dedicated and VPS, Scott Yang has an excellent article at HostingFu which is well worth a read, considering things like burstable CPU and I/O, redundant storage, and even the more eco-friendly VPS option. One point I’m pinching from Scott, because everyone hates downtime…

The VPS is generally better managed, even when it isn’t ‘managed’.

That’s arguable – it’s case to case – but if you have two web hosts, one with a bunch of VPS clients on a partitioned computer, the other with a single client on a dedicated box, which has the bigger incentive to maintain the machine? And with VPS, the virtualisation software has to be maintained anyway.

So what about a Shared Server?

With shared you occupy a server with hundreds of other sites and, for your site to perform well, rely on the others not to be overly demanding. They tend to have lots of goodies, most of which you’ll never use, slowing down the server. The again, they are the closest to a point-and-click solution, with a comprehensive control panel and webmail, and are cheap as chips.

.. So they’re great for startups. And often great for mid-sized sites too. But..

While there are those who sing the praises of their shared server web host, there are others that have problems, such as slow-to-dead-slow support. If you have an uncomplicated site, requiring few database queries per second, even with quite a lot of traffic, they can be a good option. THat is, until something goes wrong and you open a support ticket: then, all bets are off.

For example, I used to be a reseller for Lunarpages, and would still recommend them, tentatively, for simple sites with a small database, else little traffic. But for more demanding websites, no way. vpsBible’s sister site Guvnr.com, for example, with a growing database, the resource-intensive WordPress platform, various Web 2.0 scripts, expanding traffic and the occasional Digg, outgrew shared quite quickly. (Which led to me researching my own VPS options and, later, to writing this VPS stuff.)

The VPS Downside?

Whereas with many shared hosts you get unlimited space and transfer (or do you?*), with VPS, generally, you only get a set amount of each, although plans are expandable. Do you really need “unlimited” space and transfer?

These days, for most of us, the key item we need to host, other than a website’s core files, is the database. Video can be linked, say, to Youtube or Vimeo; images to, say, Flickr or Photobucket; with other assets similarly offloaded. Email can be POP-ped or IMAP-ped to your local machine (which apart from saving server space is also less demanding on your server resources than using SMTP) or you can use Google Apps, which is what I do to direct the maximum server resource to my sites.

So for many a limited server space is not so big a deal, after all, however good it sounds.

* In practise, that’s a red herring. What the cheap hosts don’t advertise is the limited number of database queries their plans tend to offer, and that is far more important for most website requirements. If you want to find out more about that, I’ve written about it here.

Managed vs Unmanaged VPS?

With a managed virtual private server, the definition varies from company to company, as is the case with dedicated hosting. Support will tend to perform core updates of, say, Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP, and likely will perform backups, and may even move your site for you. You would have to shop around, and pay extra, to find advanced options such as the Nginx web server (which benchmarks as a faster web server than Apache).

With unmanaged, you get a blank partition on a hard drive, a power cord and a network cable, plus a control panel with varying number of options. Plus maybe a wiki, some docs and a forum, and Google. And hey, me too

Unmanaged isn’t for the faint-hearted, even with clear, copy and paste tutorials. But if you find the time to invest in your solution, it will be less expensive and more powerful than the managed option, and fully customisable.

Follow the vpsBible documentation and you’ll learn that, say, to update your Linux server operating system is literally as simple as logging into the command line interface and typing “upgrade”.

Alternatively, have the best of both worlds; your customised unmanaged VPS plus a freelance administrator. Someone like me can set up your box for optimal performance, then manage your sites and content as well as the server.

Multiple Virtual OS Deployment and Xen

VPS providers need special software to deploy multiple virtual systems, partitioned within a single computer.

Whether for managed or unmanaged, Xen is widely considered the best performer. It’s reckoned to manage the multiple systems, from the single box, with close-to-native performance.

Here’s a handy list of Xen-powered VPS providers.

Why Linode? (IMHO)

Although the vpsBible tutorials can be applied to any Linux server build, whether unmanaged dedicated, VPS or even from under the stairs at home, I example VPS provider Linode quite a bit. I’m not a reseller, so why? *

* EDIT: Hands up, I am now. 8 months after writing the first draft of this I became an affiliate to subsidize my server costs, not least so I could hire and test more servers for vpsBible.com. They’re pretty darn tight, I’ll have you know, and pay no commission Then again, if you sign up through vpsBible, after three months I get a $20 credit for hosting. Please do sign through me .. the result will be more tutorials and benchmarking here at vpsBible.com. Right, you can carry on now ..

Through my research, two key names in the unmanaged VPS market came up time and again – Slicehost and Linode – so let’s compare those:-

• both are Xen-powered
• both have quality wikis and forums but Slicehost has more thorough in-house documentation
• Linode offers both 64 and 32bit Linux distributions, Slicehost has only 64bit **
• for the same money, Linode offers more RAM, transfer and space ***
• compared to Slicehost’s one datacenter, Linode has a choice of five, four Stateside and one in London ****

** 64bit operating systems use significantly more RAM than their 32bit counterparts. I wouldn’t run my mid-sized sites on 64bit. This makes for interesting reading.

*** Linode offers more RAM, transfer and space, for the same price. Respectively, 360MB, 200GB & 18GB as opposed to 256, 100 & 10.

**** Linode’s Newark, New Jersey, data center is handy for sites with core traffic both Stateside and in Europe. That’s the one I use.

With most VPS plans you can pay monthly with no setup nor cancellation fees, and no contract. Both Linode and Slicehost basic plans cost $20 per month.

So, particularly due to the 32bit option and the extra RAM, transfer and space, Linode won me over and I bought a basic plan to host this and other sites and blogs. Had Linode not existed, for the record, from the remaining field, I would have signed with Slicehost.

You can find some great comparisons of these two and other VPS players via the almighty Google. Here’s perhaps the best benchmark post, from David Welton’s blog, and is well worth a read.

A Bit More Spec

Here are the basic bullets for the two VPS front-runners, which can be weighed against other providers. Linode and Slicehost have other features detailed on their sites.

• 4-core servers running Xen virtualization instances
• Full SSH (that’s encrypted/tunnelled data flow) root access and rebooting
• Wide choice of Linux distributions
• Dedicated IP address with others available
• Private IPs for inter-linode/slice communication
• HA & clustering support
• Guaranteed CPU share
• Reserved RAM
• Control panel for reboots, software installs, stats etc
• Managed DNS with API (very handy)
• Ajax console access – if you lock yourself out of your command line interface

VPS vs Shared vs Dedicated

What is best for you will depend on your requirements, and whether to go managed or unmanaged will depend on how hands-on you want to be. Hopefully this article and links therefrom have been handy. If you want specific advice, or have some to give, please visit the forum.

Next Up

OK, that’s an introduction to VPS, comparing with shared and dedicated hosting, and with a few tips as to what to look for. In Set Up a VPS Linux Distribution we’ll get stuck in, setting up the blank box with a Linux distribution, and I’ll walk you through a typical VPS control panel.

Here’s the complete series index. I really hope you enjoy it. Drop by that forum and let me know.