Aug 28, 2024 4 min read

VPS Servers: All You Need To Know

A Virtual Private Server, more commonly known as a VPS server, is recognized to act as a dedicated server within a shared hosting environment. Due to this, it would offer the extensive resources of a dedicated server while being as affordable as shared hosting.

Experience traffic surges that shared hosting can't handle.
Need advanced customization and enhanced security controls.
Want to prepare your website for scalable growth and ensure consistent performance.

A Quick Sum-up of What a VPS Is and What It Provides

A VPS delivers the essential infrastructure and dedicated resources required for smooth operations, making it ideal for expanding businesses, passionate bloggers, high-traffic e-commerce sites, and data-heavy platforms.

Hosting providers offer various VPS packages, each tailored to different user needs.
A VPS server provides privacy, enabling customization of your hosting environment, installation of preferred applications, and root-level changes.
Users can request additional resources from the provider if they exceed their allocated VPS resources.

How Does a VPS Work?

VPS utilises advanced virtualization technology to divide a single physical server into multiple virtual servers. The term "virtual" is used because these servers exist only online. One physical server supplies resources to all the virtual servers.

Each VPS has its own Operating System, and users with access have full control over it; this would usually be the customer. This OP-level access gives the user the power to install almost any software onto this machine that they need.

This also adds a “private” layer of protection, as each user has their own resources assigned to their own cell. Other users cannot access resources that they do not have rightful access to.

Why Would People Choose to Purchase a VPS server?

You can use a VPS server to run pretty much anything that you need to. Here’s a quick list of things you can use your VPS server for:

VPS for Website Hosting: hosting a website on a VPS promises higher performance and reliability compared to shared hosting.
VPS for Game Servers: to host multiplayer servers with better performance and control, such as Minecraft, CS:GO, and Rust.
VPS for Backup and Storage: Using a secure place for storing any files or backups, basically a virtual hard drive.

Important note: A VPS may be affordable and cheap, however, without the knowledge on how a variety of specifications on a machine can cause the performance to differ, problems could arise, and so your average person may be vulnerable to overworking their machine, causing not only performance issues but also unnecessary amounts of stress.

Dedicated Servers, What’s So Good About Them?

A dedicated server is the physical server dedicated to a single user or a organisation, so unlike shared or VPS hosting where multiple people share the same server resources, a dedicated server provides exclusive access to the entire server and its provision of resources.

So, how does that work? This physical server is made up of different hardware components, including CPU, RAM, storage, and network interfaces. All this hardware is housed within a data center, providing reliable power, cooling, and internet connectivity. And since this entire server is dedicated, it provides whomever is using it with a lot more configurability and performance output.

However, all these extra benefits of performance and privacy come with a hefty cost. The average dedicated server costs around 70 EUR/month on hosting websites, meaning if someone needs these extensive resources then they’d need to calculate if it is worth their money over cheaper and similarly functional options.

Comparing Dedicated servers to VPS servers, What are the Big Differences?

To make it short and sweet, the pros and cons of a dedicated server rather than a VPS server are listed below:

Pros

Performance: Dedicated servers offer superior performance as all hardware resources are available exclusively to just the single user, without sharing with others.
Security: As there is no sharing of resources with others, it reduces the risk of cross-tenant vulnerabilities and attacks.
Reliability: With dedicated resources, there are no issues related to resource contention, ensuring consistent performance and reliability.
Scalability: Dedicated servers can be scaled up with more powerful hardware or additional resources as needed, though this might require physical hardware upgrades or migrations.

Cons

Cost: Dedicated servers are significantly more expensive than VPS hosting due to the exclusive use of hardware and the associated infrastructure costs.
Management Complexity: Managing a dedicated server requires more technical expertise for configuration, maintenance, security, and troubleshooting, often resulting in the need for dedicated IT staff.
Provisioning Time: Setting up a dedicated server can take longer compared to a VPS, which can be provisioned almost instantly.
Flexibility: While dedicated servers offer extensive customization, they lack the inherent flexibility of VPS environments, where resources can be more easily adjusted or resized based on demand without having to change hardware.

Why Anonymity is Better When Signing Up for Server Hosting

Being anonymous means that your identity and data are both kept hidden and disguised, giving you this barrier of protection to risks of data leaks when operating online. Not only would this result in personal safety and cybersecurity, but it can also reduce lashback when sharing an opinion freely or whistleblowing.

But How Can Anonymity be Beneficial For Customers In Need Of a Server or Domain?

No personal information has to be given to sign up to such a service, this allows any anonymous user to avoid their data being harvested from other hosting providers and domain registrars, as they often collect and store your personal information in order to use them for marketing their product.

Last but not least, anonymity when handling tasks to do with business that require a server also provides you with protection of your intellectual property, since the ownership of domains and server resources are kept confidential it will reduce the risk of theft and infringement.

Finally, server hosters that are dedicated towards keeping their customers anonymous and safe allow transactions to be anonymous too. These are payments done using cryptocurrencies that can help keep financial transactions private, which protects you from any financial surveillance and enhances your overall privacy.

Anonymous Hosting

If anonymous hosting interests you, the perfect provider would be Mynymbox, who accepts cryptos like Bitcoin, Lightning, Monero and others, and do not require any personal information from you when purchasing. Everything with the aim to keep you completely off the grid.

Summary

VPS Hosting is a virtualized environment on a shared server, providing a balance between cost, performance, and ease of management, with some limitations on resource availability and customization. Dedicated Servers offer full access to a physical server's resources, offering high performance, customization, security, and reliability at a higher cost and complexity.