Every hosting solution has its own advantages and is suitable for different stages of a business. But what is VPS used for? A VPS is good for businesses that are feeling constrained by their shared hosting plans but aren’t ready for—or can’t afford—a dedicated server. It’s ideally used for organizations that are seeking:

• More flexibility than shared hosting: With a VPS, you can customize your hardware and software configurations and run your own applications.
• Lower cost than a dedicated server: The hosting company can spread the cost of running and maintaining the server across all businesses operating on a given machine. Depending on your host, monthly fees can be as low as $20.
• Better security than shared hosting: Because you are not sharing space with others, their mistakes, faulty scripts or resource usage won’t affect the up-time or accessibility of your Web site.
• Independent FTP and POP access: Again, other users’s use of FTP and POP email don’t affect your access and speed.
• Root access: Because a VPS functions as an independent server, you get root access, which is what you need to configure and install your own operating system and other applications. Shared hosting only gives you access to a directory on the shared server, which does not allow for software customization.
• Lower technical knowledge requirement than a dedicated server: In most cases, you access your VPS through graphical user interface control panels, from which you install and configure your applications. Dedicated servers usually require manual configuration.

A virtual private server is a very versatile service with countless possible applications. Unlike shared hosting, the user gets full administrative or root access to the server. Although a certain level of server management experience is required to use a VPS successfully, it also allows the users to have complete control over the service they are paying for.

Therefore the server admin only needs to know how to implement the task at hand into the VPS, making almost any function that can be performed with the allocated resources possible for the virtual server.

Root Access

Root access that we have mentioned earlier opens several possibilities for a VPS owner. First of all, root access offers independence from the hosting provider in terms of software. While the hosting provider still manages the server’s hardware, a choice of software is on the user. 

It’s you, not your hosting provider, who decides when it is the right time to upgrade, for example, cPanel or MariaDB. We cannot say that this freedom is absolute, though, compared to the dedicated hosting plan. If a bare-metal server has a hosted hypervisor installed, its OS must be compatible with a guest OS. For instance, if a physical machine runs Linux, it’s impossible to install Windows as a guest OS.

A native hypervisor is compatible with any OS. Apart from that limitation (and apart from illegal activities, of course), VPS users can install whatever software they want. More than that, with root access, a user has full information about the server’s performance, knows when to upgrade or downgrade, and can check server logs of different kinds without reaching out to their hosting provider.

Isolation from Other Users

Having a shared hosting account – although cheap, is less secure. Suppose someone on a shared server becomes part of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack target or blocked for mass mailing. In that case, other accounts on the server will be affected as well.

Also, if a shared account abuses server resources, the whole server will be impacted. Using a VPS provides full isolation from what other users do on the server. You won’t be bothered no matter what your neighbours are doing.

Scalability

VPS hosting is a very scalable solution by its very nature. Virtual machines don’t depend on their physical server; as we have said, they don’t even recognize it exists. Suppose a VPS needs to be upgraded or downgraded. In that case, all a hosting provider needs to do is to adjust the limits for this VPS in a hypervisor

After the reboot, a guest OS will work like nothing happened, using new hardware quotas. This comes in handy if you cannot estimate the technical specifications you need before you run some tests.

Also, suppose you have a seasonal business (e.g., you sell beach equipment). In that case, you can choose to have a more powerful server during your peak demand season and a cheaper one for the rest of the year.

Snapshot Support

A great advantage of VPS, compared to both shared and dedicated solutions, is snapshot technology support. A snapshot is a state of a system at a certain point in time. It works like game saves in your favourite computer game. If a game is not going well, you can exit and start from a checkpoint.

A snapshot works the same way; if you need to go back in time, your system can be restored from a snapshot to its previous state. It is extremely useful in case of a system failure or simply running complex tests and wishing to save your progress.

Unlike a backup option that copies the whole system each time you run it, a snapshot contains only changes. This means that a snapshot takes less space than a backup and can be created/restored quicker.

It does not mean that you do not need backups, though. Backups are still life-savers in case of operating system failure. Don’t forget to store them externally.

A virtual private server (VPS) is a cost-effective way for a small business to gain more flexibility and efficiency than is offered with shared hosting without the expense associated with running a dedicated server. Most small businesses also don’t need all the power of a dedicated server, so VPS provides a good in-between option when you outgrow your shared hosting. Get the power and flexibility of your own server without the cost and complexity of managing outsourced hardware.

A VPS is basically a server running within a server. One physical server hosts multiple virtual servers, each isolated from the others. This is accomplished with software, called a hypervisor, that segments the physical server and keeps each segment separate from the rest.

Each VPS runs its own operating system, independent of the others, creating the illusion that it is actually its own independent server. Each VPS can also be rebooted independently.