How to Choose the Right VPS Hosting

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Sitting between shared hosting and dedicated hosting, Virtual Private Server (VPS) is suitable for both website owners and web developers. VPS can ensure the resource allocation without the kinds of restrictions comparing to shared hosting, approximately provides all the functions like dedicated hosting offers. Comparing with dedicated hosting, VPS is easier to operate and maintain so even beginners can quickly get started with it, while the prices are much lower. Then how to choose the right VPS hosting perfectly suit to your site from numerous providers? For website owners, the simplicity of use is generally their first consideration while performance is the priority of web developers, besides the cost performance. Further more, we should take the virtualization technology into account (e.g. Xen or OpenVZ). Choosing a suitable VPS hosting is actually not an easy job that various factors need to be considered. If you have no clue as there are many VPS providers in the market or you are suffering from frequent migrations of your VPS hosting, this article will try to guide you how to choose the right VPS hosting.

Virtualization Technologies

When choosing VPS hosting, some people first focus on CPU, RAM, prices, storage, bandwidth and more. Nonetheless, you may find it is difficult to make a decision as all providers are similar in terms of the above factors. It should first make sure which virtualization technology is the hosting based on. Virtualization will influence the way your hosts performance, resource allocation, resource utilization, as well as the available control panel. Let us first demystify the virtualization technologies.

A single physical server can be virtualized to multiple virtual servers. Each virtual server is isolated from the others and can run its own operating system. Customers have total control over the OS and the software on it just like using a physical host. All are realized by virtualization technologies. Typically, a VPS is priced significantly lower than an equivalent physical server, with more availability and scalability. Some of the current mainstream virtualization technologies are: VMware ESX/ESXi, Xen, KVM, Microsoft HyperV, Parallels Virtuozzo/OpenVZ (open source version of Virtuozzo). Xen, KVM and OpenVZ often support a mixed combination of Linux as they are open-source themselves. Parallels Virtuozzo is also commonly used by VPS providers. Below are introductions and comparisons of different virtualization technologies.

• Xen and KVM provide similar prices and performance, while both work efficiently to guarantee available resource.


• Parallels Virtuozzo/OpenVZ has relatively weak performance and OpenVZ makes it easy to oversell a server for providers. You should consider the public evaluation of providers to avoid the system overload which may cause them not able to assure enough resource available.


• OpenVZ is priced lower than Xen and KVM. For Virtuozzo is a commercial VPS, the price plans are higher than others.


• VMware ESX/ESXi and Microsoft HyperV often be used on enterprise-level Windows server, rarely appear on Linux server.

So if you do a lot of developing work and have high demands on performance and stability of a VPS, we recommend Xen and KVM which will guarantee enough available resource. If you are using WordPress for blogging, Parallels Virtuozzo/OpenVZ is perfect option if the provider has a good reputation. Especially Virtuozzo comes with an excellent control panel.

Control Panel

Having a suitable virtulization technology selected, you should choose a control panel. If you are a developer or geek who prefers to use command line, you can ignore the control panel. However, control panel is very necessary for most of us who rely on a graphical user interface. By using a GUI, complex server management tasks will be simplified and turned into user-friendly processes. Below we will provide information of 4 dominant control panels: cPanel, DirectAdmin, Parallels Plesk and SolusVM. Different control panels support the virtualization technologies and OS are distinct from the others.

• cPanel came very first on the market. It is the most widely used and fully functional control panel and still very popular for its perfect design, logical classification, and friendly UI. Supported OS: CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and CloudLinux. cPanel supports all the virtual environments.


• Having a history over ten year, DirectAdmin is also filled with functionalities and have a fluent interface, yet the UI is too simple to take some time to get used to it. Luckily it has a cheap price. Supported OS: RedHat Enterprise, CentOS, FreeBSD, and Debian. DirectAdmin supports all the virtual environments.


• Parallels Plesk often be used with Virtuozzo, and the interface is modern and user-friendly. There’s also mobile apps on both Android and iOS available with a full function. Parallels Plesk can work with native support for Windows Server, as the unique selling point. Supported OS: CentOS, CloudLinux, Debian, openSUSE, RedHat Enterprise Linux, and Ubuntu. Plesk supports all the virtual environments.


• SolusVM is developed with simplicity however the function is limited. Supported OS: CentOS, RHEL, and Scientific Linux. Supported virtual environments: OpenVZ, KVM, and Xen.

Performance

Undoubtedly, performance is the most focused factor of choosing a VPS hosting. Especially in developer’s view, more CPU cores and more memory mean much better performance, making the developing tasks handy with facility. However, for general bloggers and businessman, the basic VPS plan can provide enough performance possibly to meet their demands. For example, DigitalOcean‘s lowest plan of $5/mo（512MB/1 CPU/20GB SSD Disk/1T Transfer) will allow a WordPress site easily handle 10,000 visitors in a day (come evenly over a 12 hour period, there are only 800+ visitors per hour or 13 visitors per second). If you have are interested in performance benchmarks, you can go to ServerBear for a variety of benchmark reports on various prices plans of different VPS hosting providers.

SSD and RAID Configuration

Even till now, SSD has not been a widespread exist in desktop computers for its high price. Whereas in web hosting industry, SSD plans have brought out by many provides with an affordable minimum price of $5/mo, stimulated by DigitalOcean. Opting for an SSD VPS, your site will be improved dramatically in terms of the disk I/O performance, specially suited to those read/write heavy site. Furthermore, you may notice that some providers advertise their web hosting as the highlight of RAID 10 Storage, which is a data storage virtualization technology to guarantee stability and security of your data for greater protection. Just remember that RAID10 is better than RAID5 or RAID6.

Managed or Unmanaged

Managed or unmanaged VPS hosting? If you are comfortable to manage a Linux server, you can choose an unmanaged VPS. If you are using a managed VPS, you can have more freedom to focus on your content and business. It depends on you.

Brand History

Web hosting is a competitive industry for its low entry threshold. It is easy to start a VPS hosting company by hiring a dedicated hosting and installing virtualization software. Although there are many VPS hosting providers, few companies can stand for over a decade to be an old brand, such as Linode and Media Temple. There are dozens of new providers open new companies and dozens of companies close down every month. Relatively speaking, historical brands provide more guarantee of both technology and company strength, except BurstNET, which was found in 1991 and closed in July of this year. You can check the testimonials from their official accounts on Twitter or Facebook before you make a decision on VPS providers. Of course, there are minority new outstanding providers which have existed around 2 years, like DigitalOcean and RamNode, worth of trying out.

Cost and Others

The last, we should consider the price. Under the above conditions, you may pick out several providers that can meet your requirements. You can finally choose the most cost effective one. If they have the same price, it is advised to opt for the one which provides more storage or bandwidth, as well as overall considering the specifications and add-ons.

Conclusion

Remember the principle: suit is best. If you are not a developer, do not just go for high CPU Cores and RAM. If you don’t have a read/write heavy website, it is wise to take into account the traditional HDD storage to lower the cost. HDD+SSD Cache is another very cost-effective option with good read/write performance and lower prices. You don’t have to choose either Xen or KVM. If the providers have good reputations, the combination of Virtuozzo and Parallels Plesk is ideal so that you can easily manage your VPS hosting. Though OpenVZ hosting has the lowest price, we don’t recommend it to be the major server. Instead, you can take it for a backup server, testing server, or even VPN server. Above all, hope you will choose the right VPS hosting with ease.

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