Virtual Private Servers (VPS)

 

 

 

 

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Virtual Private Servers

The Internet has become an inseparable part of our everyday life and more people are getting their own websites made. Even they start creating the sites on their own using one of the many free applications that are available on the Internet such as Joomla, Moodle and WordPress among others. Regardless of the particular website - it can be a personal or business, small or large, fancy or simple - but it needs a hosting service to get online and one such option is a virtual private server.

What is a Virtual Private Server?

Virtual private servers act as dedicated servers since they provide complete root access to the user and even the ability for remote reboot but they are sharing the hardware of a single server that is virtually, or in other words by means of software, divided into separate servers. Virtual servers (VPS) are suitable for many things and therefore are widely used. It is quite often that programmers and web developers use a VPS for testing purposes since they can see how the product deals with different configurations of the server. They are also suitable for websites that require specific server configuration that is not available under shared hosting packages but at the same time they do not need as much resources as a dedicated server would offer and thus it is not recommended to pay the higher price.

Types of Virtual Private Servers

Most certainly the first division should start with the operating system and with no doubt we can distinguish two very popular configurations for a virtual server:


  • LAMP - that stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP; as the key components are listed one can see why this configuration is popular since each individual component is popular on its own.
  • WAMP - the only difference here is the operating system: Windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP.


Virtual private servers can also be differentiated by the main use they are put to:


  • VPS for file hosting - often know as FTP server since files are transferred via the File Transfer Protocol and the server does not support HTTP or in other words there is no web server installed. It is mainly used for data backup, storage and sharing.
  • Virtual private server for e-mail hosting - if you wish to have a secure e-mail server without any limits on the number of incoming or outgoing messages, the size for attachments, etc, it is best to use your own mail server. But if your needs do not require an entire dedicated server, you can also use a VPS to do that for you.
  • Virtual private server for web hosting - both LAMP and WAMP configurations that we reviewed above fall under this category since they both provide a web server - namely the Apache - and thus are suitable for hosting a website.
  • Virtual private server for reseller hosting - some resellers prefer getting their own dedicated server or a VPS since that will allow them to modify the server configuration in case a client of theirs has any specific requirements and also that allows them to skim down prices even more, provided they have enough clients for a VPS or even an entire server.