What is VPS
What is a VPS
It appears many people find it hard to understand what VPS is and how it works, so I just thought I’d make a small effort to explain a little bit.
Vps stands for Virtual Private Server
What is such a Virtual Server?
VPS is all about running multiple Virtual Servers within one physical server.
What does Private refer to?
Each VPS gets its own portion of resources, which are usually guaranteed to be available to that particular VPS. For instance, the host server may have 8GB of ram, and 256mb (for instance) could be guaranteed to be available to a VPS. That would mean that regardless of what other VPS’s on the same server use, that amount of RAM will be available to the VPS.
Also very important: each VPS runs completely independent of each other. Each VPS has its own file system so a VPS can’t see any of the data of another VPS server. Also each VPS has it’s own server load, can run its own Operating System, can be rebooted individually, and so on. Basically by the end user it can be treated as a dedicated server.
Do a VPS also have its own kernel?
Usually not, but it depends on the technology that the host uses.
Are VPS’s truly separated from each other, so no matter what happens they can not cause trouble to each other?
Under normal circumstances, yes. However in extreme scenarios, VPS’s can trouble each other. For instance if the host server has a 50mbit uplink, and one VPS gets a 50mbit DDoS attack, then it makes sense that all other VPS’s on the same server are also affected by it. It’s up to the host to ensure maximum reliability by monitoring everything closely.
I mentioned VPS’s on the same host server can each run a different Operating System. So could one VPS on the server run Windows, and another one Linux?
No, that’s not possible. It is however possible to run different Linux distributions on a Linux VPS server. For instance one VPS could be running Red Hat Enterprise, and another one could be running Debian.
Is it possible to run anything on a VPS that would run on a dedicated server?
As long as it doesn’t require kernel modifications, yes.
james said,
June 8, 2006 @ 10:18 am
Virtual Private Server technology presents multiple isolated server environments on a single physical server. It uses its own disk space, RAM, CPU, IP addresses and it can be rebooted independently. Each VPS performs and executes exactly like a stand-alone server. The factors like scalability, independency, flexibility and efficiency makes vps technology so unique.
In nearly every perspective you can see a VPS as if it’s a dedicated server.