Selecting a proper web hosting plan is perhaps one of the factors that determine success of your online business to a great extent. Earlier, in most of the cases, small and medium sized businesses used to choose shared server web hosting plans as they are economical and serve the purpose. However, there was a bit of a snag. As businesses grew, the need for more powerful server was felt. And as Dedicated server is expensive not many companies could afford it.
With Virtual Private Server, an online business owner can enjoy the same benefits of a Dedicated Server while he has to shell out much less and has to pay as he would have for a Shared server web hosting plan.
Essential features of Virtual Private Server (VPS)
Virtual Private Server or VPS bridges the gap between Shared server web hosting and Dedicated sever web hosting thereby allowing webmasters to enjoy the best of both the server types.
Access
VPS allows full root access to webmasters. As a result, you can manage configuration files better. Also you enjoy the option of customizing the set up as VPS means that a portion of the VPS is entirely under your control. In fact the space you have been allotted acts as an independent dedicated server for you. Also customization is possible as per your need.
Cost of VPS web hosting plan
Since many clients or webmasters use the same server (but the separate partitions), the operating cost is greatly reduced. This allows users to enjoy cheaper or lower rates for web hosting plans.
Security
One of the biggest advantages of Virtual Private Server is that of security. Information related to online transaction, important data is safe. Also files are protected from online intruders like spammers, Trojans, worms, and bugs.
Usage of resources
As you have a portion of the server all for yourself, you can use your own resources without having to share with other websites.
Isolated operations
VPS or Virtual Private Server basically means that it is a sub-server operating inside a main server. So, in the event when your server is required to restart, it will not hamper the functioning of other sub-servers belonging to other websites.
Handling web traffic
As your business grows, you will experience greater web traffic. Managing a growing web traffic would not have been possible if you would have opted for a Shared server web hosting plan and Dedicated server would be quite expensive. Under such circumstances, VPS is the best solution and best bet too.
Computational power
Although Virtual Private Server web hosting has the above advantages, nevertheless, it has a drawback that if addressed can be overcome. In VPS, the server is a “subset” of the main server. As such each such “subset” has its own capacity of computational power. In the event when users need to handle high computations that include CGI calculations or scripting, the limitations of computation power of Virtual Private server may show up.
Since the server functions as part of the main kernel, only limited amount of RAM memory space and processor is allotted to the virtual server. This may interfere with the computational processes. However, if you want to overcome this problem, you can choose a plan that will cater to your requirement of computational power, bandwidth, and uptime.
