Dedicated Servers Versus VPS -

Web hosting us a complicated world with a lot of moving parts. Adding to the complexity, is a list of terms that can confuse consumers. Terms such as shared hosting, virtual private servers (VPS), dedicated servers, business productivity hosting, and many more. This article is designed to help clear up confusion between dedicate and virtual private servers. This article also gives you the tools and insights you need to choose the solution that is right for you.

Dedicated Servers

A dedicated server is hardware that is owned by the hosting company but is rented solely to one entity (individual or organization). These dedicated servers can range in power and capacity, but will not be impacted by other consumer activity. Think of this solution as renting out a house. Just like renting a house, the land lord (server provider) is responsible for physical maintenance and repair of the server. There are several pros to dedicated server:

Dedicated resources without being impacted by other consumers
Highly configurable (OS, Software, and Hardware options)
Reduced hardware cost compared to on-premises solutions
Specialized support available

With the pros, there are some drawbacks with dedicated servers in general:

Can be complicated to manage software aspects
More expensive
Not easily upgraded

Virtual Private Servers (VPS)

This solution is sometimes referred to as a virtual dedicated server. This solution is closer to renting an apartment in the tech world. Within a single apartment building, there are several tenants. A VPS has resources that are dedicated to each tenant. If a server has a 16 core processor, a set number of cores will be dedicated to a specific tenant. One issue that arises though is that tenants share the hard drive space, which is often a bottle neck of performance on shared platforms. There are some pros of a VPS:

Easily upgraded if a consumer requires more performance
More dedicated resources over a stand shared platform
Software installation and management tools (CPanel and WHM)
More cost effective than dedicated servers (providing resource capabilities matches consumer needs)

VPS is not immune to drawbacks, much like dedicated servers. Here are a few drawbacks to consider:

Several tenants exist on the same hardware, which may result in performance degradation
Limited configurability for hardware configurations
Can require a slight amount of technical knowledge to effectively manage

Which One is Right For You?

Choosing a dedicated server over a VPS comes down to what you are trying to accomplish, what performance needs you have, and how much technical knowledge you possess. A highly technical consumer with a need for low latency, high performance, and hosting a critical resource would benefit from a dedicated server. A less technical consumer, or one on a a budget, can experience some of the benefits of a dedicated server at a lower cost by choosing a VPS.

Dedicated servers are good for business infrastructure hosting (email servers, centralized storage, business application hosting, and recovery systems). As we previously mentioned, dedicated servers are not impacted by consumers outside of your organization. The server hosts a single tenant and all resources are dedicated to that tenant. The final question you may have is ‘why not house the server ourself?’ and that is a good question. Server hardware is expensive (often in the thousands of dollars) and you would be responsible for the setup, configuration, and replacement of the server throughout its lifetime. Renting a server places the hardware maintenance and some of the configurability on the provider, saving you thousands.

A VPS is great for non-critical systems that require low latency and high software configurability. High traffic websites that suffer during times of performance degradation would benefit from a VPS. Web designers also use VPS solutions to host websites for their clients; web designers may also become resellers. Lastly, a VPS is a good alternative to dedicated servers for application hosting needs. Consumers can host applications such as Django websites, video game servers, sim racing servers, and so much more.