Upgrading To A VPS From Shared Hosting Environment
Upgrading from a Shared Hosting to VPS Hosting or a Semi-Dedicated server is sometimes a little intriguing. Its not difficult, if one knows the difference between the two environments. Here is an explanation of the hosting environments.
Shared Hosting:-
As the name itself suggests, shared hosting is an environment where several websites are all hosted on one webserver. Each website account gets its own limited share of disk-space, bandwidth, email accounts, FTP accounts, databases et.al. No server administration, security administration & other system tasks to be performed. Its “plug-and-play” .i.e. buy an account & start using it. This only caters to small websites or individual users.
VPS Hosting:-
VPS Hosting or Virtual Private Servers is the technology that separates one physical server into several independent virtual servers parts, each isolated from the other. That is why these are called “Virtual Private Servers”. Each VPS has its own set of processes and resource management, and behaves exactly like a stand-alone server. It allows you a larger amount of resources available for use. You also get full administrator level root access & RDP rights for your linux / windows vps respectively. With VPS Hosting, you are under control of all operations & processes running on your server. Thats also the reason why you are responsible for the overall day-to-day administration of the VPS.
Its a perfect balance of a shared environment (on an average about 12 to 15 VPS are hosted on one server node) & a completely independent hosting environment (dedicated servers). Technical Support is still there to help you with critical issues & problems.
Do not cancel your existing account till the time all the websites start resolving from the VPS.
The Actual Difference:-
The data would already be there for you, unless you specifically asked not to move the files. Once you have verified that everything is correct, then you start off using your vps. First-up, ensure that you have the nameservers in place. Depending on your VPS plan, you are allotted a specific number of dedicated IP’s. You would have to change the nameservers for your domain name in your registrar account. Have the same DNS for all your domains hosted. You may now go ahead & set the hostname for the VPS. Once all the sites have the correct nameservers, you just have to go on adding more websites, everything would be done.
The step-up is when you have to take care of administration tasks. System processes (management), repairing the VPS, backing up data & storing it, vps reinstallation, reboot & overall management. Basic knowledge of linux / windows OS would be a plus point. SSH access & Remote desktop connectivity helps you to actually login to the virtual server & perform tweaks, operations or installations. You may install any application or software which is compatible with the VPS OS. It is always a good idea to ask the technical support staff about the compatibility if you are not sure about it. They would advise you accordingly. One has to remember though that since the applications & softwares would be externally sourced, the technical staff wont support issues arising out of them. This is true for most hosting providers.
A plain VPS works just as good as a VPS with a control panel software. The hitch comes when you want to add more websites or create mail accounts & other related activites. Linux / Windows know-how is essential if you have a plain VPS. Often clients complain when they learn that control panel is not default with the VPS. Each VPS comes with its own control panel license & OS.
There is also a difference between “Guaranteed RAM” & “Burstable RAM”. Guaranteed RAM is what you will always have available for use on your vps. However, you might have occassions where your VPS would require more than the available quota of RAM for the system processes & other applications to be functioning. That is when you use the “burstable RAM”. This is not a resource which is guaranteed. It is something which would be available on the server node to be used whenever there is a short time requirement. However, this is subject to the usage of other vps’ hosted on the node. Abundant amount of resources are almost always available on each server node. But the burstable RAM is not something which would always be available. If your VPS happens to use up the additional RAM available on the main node, it would start hampering the performance of other vps’ hosted on the same server.
That’s when you are asked to either move up to a package which has more amount of guaranteed available resources or a dedicated hosting solution.
