For showcasing our business on the web most of us invest our efforts on four basic things. They are:
- A visually brilliant website
- Content developers
- A top-notch
SEO team for a better circulation of contents across the web - Digital marketers.
Most of us act as an average Joe and believe that these are cardinal rules to the success. Thankfully, the list above isn’t complete. If the overall performance of your business website is under a scanner, then you cannot ignore the performance of your web hosting service as it plays a crucial role towards your successful venture.
Let’s say that your business website is hosted on a shared hosting server which comes really cheap and you are pretty happy with that. Over time your business will grow and it will pull enough users to make that shared hosting server chug as the shared hosting will not be able to provide that extra RAM and bandwidth for handling that extra load of traffic. Gradually, the rising index of your hard earned success (more traffic) will blot out your happiness as the uptime of your website will face a big slow down if you stick to that shared hosting service.
So, what’s the solution? Is it a dedicated hosting which can deliver all the server resources only to your growing website or a VPS hosting which falls in the midway between a shared and a dedicated hosting?
Hiring a dedicated hosting is decidedly a pricy issue for small or entry level businesses. Also, at times it’s really kind of overshooting for your specific requirements.
Thankfully the alternative is VPS hosting.
#1. VPS hosting is the key
Technically, VPS (virtual private server) hosting is the next step up of shared hosting and a step down to dedicated hosting. Virtual private servers are actually compartmentalized servers which can run independently with every server resource, on a physical host server. Today’s virtualization technology made it possible to create simulated or virtual hardware on a physical or host hardware, which can run its own server operation system.
In a shared hosting ecosystem, as a hosted website owner you get,
- a shared CPU
- a shared RAM
- shared disk space.
Consequently, in a VPS hosting you will get,
- A dedicated RAM
- Shared CPU
- Dedicated Disk space.
The schematic diagram below will surely help you to grab this difference quickly.
As can be seen on the image, those in shared hosting a large number of websites are hosted and all of them share every resource of the physical server, simultaneously. That’s why resources are pretty limited for each of them. On the contrary, in a vps hosting every virtual compartment acts as a private server which operates independently as each of them runs on their own server level OS with dedicated physical hardware resources.
Generally, most of the VPS plans can be segregated by their own nature and the operating system of their hosting. Namely, Linux VPS, FreeBSD, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu and more. If you are looking for the best vps hosting, then Linux VPS services are more lucrative than others if pricing and other functionalities are concerned. You need to choose your vps hosting provider wisely as it’s going to be the first step towards your business’s online presence.
Now, we should shift our concern to the focal point of this article which is about how hosting benefits online business by lifting up the performance of a website. These following discussed factors can portray the main concept in a better way.
#2. Independent resources of a VPS
As discussed earlier, a vps executes independently. That being said, a vps comes with dedicated RAM and disk space. If your website continuously handles large chunks of databases then you will need a bigger disk space to encase those databases. Only a vps or a dedicated server can offer you this as shared hosting lacks this freedom. Added to this, unlike shared hosting you will get a dedicated RAM for a quicker data processing speed.
Admittedly, it’s a negative side of a vps hosting that it runs on a shared CPU. Although, the process of this CPU sharing varies with different hosting services. It’s also true that web servers tend to use the CPU in a minimalistic way. So, a shared CPU is a pretty less factor than a shared RAM.
Moreover, the cutting edge SSD (solid state drives) technology accelerates the overall disk I/O speed to a lightning fast level. Lately, most of the vps hosting services have integrated this hardware technology to offer a higher data execution speed thus, diminishing the page loading time (from an existing 20 milliseconds to 0.2 to 0.3 milliseconds).
#3. Server root access – more customization
Shared hosting lacks this opportunity. For a geek, more freedom in customization is equal to more power in hand. In VPS hosting users are able to execute server level customization like selection of distribution OS, choice of management tools (cPanel or else) and application of other user specific softwares (LAMP, Debian distribution).
Are you fond of cPanel? If the answer is affirmative, then you should look for a Linux vps hosting service as it’s better than others for this.
Consequently, if you are going for an unmanaged VPS hosting with these aforesaid customizing abilities, then you are sole responsible for all the hosting related performance issues.
Painless? No.
Worthwhile? Obviously.
Thankfully, smarter users take this as an opportunity as it delivers the full freedom to them. On the contrary, if you want to do things in a painless way, managed vps hosting plans are your cup of tea. In a managed vps hosting, the service provider will always be on his toe to serve your every call. Typically, you will get a round the clock full-fledged tech support. In either way, you have more controlling power over your hosting service.
#4. Sudden traffic surge? No prob
Most of today’s VPS hosting service providers are integrated with a beautiful feature. Namely, burstable memory management. Typically, it’s a bunch of reserved and unused RAM for handling sudden traffic surge disasters. Let’s say that, momentarily your website gets a high traffic surge which is an obvious logical possibility. In most of the shared hosting existing amount RAM will fail to handle that traffic surge. Then comes the role of the burstable RAM. In a sudden traffic surge, along with your existing RAM, burstable memory will integrate a herd of reserved memory to quench the needs of that temporary traffic rush.
You can say that this facility is also available on dedicated servers. So, where’s the specialty in vps? I bet, there is one. Admittedly, on dedicated servers this extra memory is always available. No issue, but it’s darn pricy. Moreover, every single moment your website possibly may not face a sudden traffic surge.
So, cross the bridge when it comes to it. VPS hosting follows this rule. Precisely, it will employ that shared burstable memory on that instant when it’s needed. Smart. Right?
In the light of all the discussed technical factors above one thing is for sure – that hiring a VPS hosting is a must when you have:-
- a large amount of files stored
- multiple sites hosted on a server
- dynamic contents for users
- a sizeable volume of traffic.
Lastly, re-examine your requirements and choose wisely.
If you have any experiences of VPS hosting you’d like to share please do in the comments below.
Images: “VPS Concept/Shutterstock.com“
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