Shared hosting vs vps hosting

Ever since the advent of internet, it is becoming increasingly important for every business to maintain a presence online. Hence it follows that all entrepreneurs big and small need their own websites with a server that connects them to the internet and puts them online 24/7. Big companies manage to achieve this but for many small scale businesses, the cost of owning and maintaining their own server is too high. Servers are costly and moreover, to maintain them one needs a team of qualified personnel. Therefore, they purchase bandwidth and disk storage space from the many web hosting companies that provide these resources.

Web hosting companies provide the resources and make the necessary arrangements online and provide you a sort of data center that stores your images, your data, your videos and other things you need to be shown to the visitors to your websites. The companies that do this are called web hosts.

There are many web hosting companies offering these services, and they are offering these resources widely and publicizing them. A non-technical person can get quite confused on which one to pick. The right choice depends on several key factors. You need to ask yourself what you really want.

Do you need to have complete control over the site? If you have technical skills you can opt for this. However if you just want to look after the business aspects and not the technical side, you can opt for not having this control
Operating System.
Scripting and Data base software.

A virtual dedicated server is the right choice for you if you want complete control over your server environment. It gives power and it gives you the choice on how to manage the day to day running of your website. If you have an internet store that gets heavy traffic, or you run complex programs, you would need a dedicated server.

However, often in the current economic conditions, the high cost of having a dedicated server act as a deterrent to migrating to a dedicated server. In such a scenario, a virtual dedicated server should serve the purpose since it is cost effective and gives you the advantages of a dedicated server at the lower costs of shared resources.

It’s important for you to be clear about the product that you will buy. Many people including web hosts use Virtual Private Server and Virtual Dedicated Server synonymously, even though both these systems are vastly different. A VPS creates a partition in a shared server to give the user a feeling that they are on their own server. It protects all the people using the same server protection. They will not be impacted at all by anyone website having heavy traffic or using too much of the resource. In case a website goes down, the rest of the users is not affected. In many cases, this is an excellent option, but there are limits and in many ways VPS is just a better version of shared web hosting.
However, if you cannot afford a virtual dedicated server, VPS is a good option. Since the server is sliced to give you a completely secure environment in which your website will be hosted, you have a complete protected environment that is not disturbed by other users of the server. Each partition is completely isolated from the others and this is good for the performance and gives security. While choosing your virtual private server hosting company, ensure that you are totally clear about the level of access you are able to enjoy.
Rest of the qualities you would have to look for in your virtual private server are
1.Operating system, either Linux or Windows
2.Single or dual processor
3.RAM
4.Storage space
5.Bandwidth allocation
6.The most important thing – service. Check the kind of support your host offers. Suppose you have a problem at 2 a.m., will you get a human being to help you or a voice mail box? Do they have technical support on site? What kind of back end support do they provide? If you are satisfied with the service they provide, sign on with them. Remember that once you join a program, you cannot opt out in a hurry. Do your research and evaluate your options carefully. Your livelihood depends on it.
7.Extras, like load balancers, firewalls, managed back-ups and network attached storage.
A virtual private server is an excellent and economical way to get the best advantages of dedicated servers like power and flexibility. However, this is not a “one size fits all” kinds of solution. You have to evaluate your options, find a host that you are comfortable with and can deal with, and then host your business with the one you find best.