VPS is the state-of-the-art technology that enables many small to medium businesses to host their site on a personal environment server like dedicated server but with the price of shared server. In VPS, the server is split in different partition of virtual servers allowing more freedom and control for users to utilize independent space, resources and personal operating system. This creates better convenient for web designers and developers to manage all accounts in one place and customize the website and applications that require side settings.

With personal space provided, VPS user can install as many software as they want and make personal settings to the server. As VPS partitions are created virtually, it also provides better security to prevent curious neighbor that reside on the same server to pass through your VPS thus preventing potential external threats. In addition to better security, every VPS has its proprietary guaranteed resources. This means VPS site can expect a dedicated resource that would always be available for it. Without sharing resources like shared server, a site is unaffected by other VPS tenants and give more consistent uptime and reliability than shared server.

And in some cases, VPS servers provide burstable RAM to use once it has finished using the guaranteed RAM. Burstable RAM is the extra RAM of similar amount to the VPS RAM provided in a VPS server’s remaining RAM. This however is not a recommended practice as it can affect other VPS hosted on the same server and it only works in Linux server. The burstable Ram is only acceptable to be used in critical situations.

With the benefits mentioned, it’s sensible to consider some of the downside of VPS to determine if it’s really the right choice for everyone. The guaranteed resources that one can enjoy may also means limitation for a site that has the potential to overuse the resources unexpectedly, especially for a site that access database frequently. A website that has a lot of activities might need higher VPS specification. The expected requirement of resources of ram, bandwidth and diskspace must be considered thoroughly.

Users should also be aware that the splitting of VPS in a server may not necessarily be equal in some hosting company and that other VPS users who use burstable ram too often can bring down the performance of the whole server. This causes other VPS not able to receive enough of CPU resources to process request and as a result causing the site not being able to respond. Such risk could potentially be higher during peak periods.

Another important factor to consider is to find out if your VPS provider issues you a personal IP address. This is because other tenant of the same VPS server who violated rules of search engines could get your site banned concurrently with other tenants.

The advantages of VPS may still outweigh the disadvantages, but hosting on VPS requires some technical knowledge in order to manage the site, as the maintenance may be too troublesome with technological issues of software, security and update. As a result, users may need to outsource for an expert to manage a VPS server. A web hosting that provides a last mile application support would solve such problem. When choosing between web hosting providers you must iron out the definitive cost advantages in sharing a server provided by virtual platforms with some of the disadvantages that come with such solution. It should all be weighed in light of your goals, budget, operations and target public.