What is a Virtual Private Server all about?

Many people wonder exactly what a virtual private server is all about considering not too many people hear about the term. If you are a hosting company who is trying to contain costs, having a virtual private server is a godsend because it helps the company save money on hardware. In some instances the hosting company can take the physical server and partition it in such a way to create individual dedicated servers. But at the same time, allow for them to deliver high-quality services to webmasters without given up anything in return. Hosting companies can even go a step further by giving resellers full access to the root directory as administrators. So exactly what were the reasons for implementing the virtual private server?

 

·        Bridging a gap: NTT/Verio, the company to first implement it, wanted to bridge the gap between shared hosting and dedicated hosting servers. This way future hosting companies could provide many types of businesses, especially small ones, the performance, security, and control they needed from a dedicated server, but at a fraction of the cost. 

·        No restrictions: A virtual private server eliminates many restrictions by providing administrative features that can only be found in a dedicated server. This way each VPS can be set up so the user receives their own set of services that they can customize anyway they see fit. And a VPS has its own file system, CGI-BIN, disk space, system resources, bandwidth, memory space, and more.

·        Performance Isolation: Each VPS is isolated from the others so any amount of heavy traffic or CPU loads will not affect the others in any way, shape, or form. Also, if one VPS has developed errors, those errors will not affect any other VPS.

·        Functional Isolation: One very important component to VPS is its ability to isolate itself functionally. Since a VPS is self-contained, users can install and customize their own software.