Back in the days, it was either shared hosting because it’s cheap or dedicated hosting because it has more benefits though it costs more. People would either go for a shared hosting solution if they intend to keep small websites. 

If they want their websites to grow, dedicated hosting would be their choice. VPS hosting was later introduced which offers the benefits of dedicated hosting but at a lower cost. It’s mid-priced and shares similarities with both shared and dedicated hosting. VPS hosting has grown in popularity over the years and is of great demand in the web hosting Dubai sector.

Virtual is Where the Difference Lies

VPS hosting makes use of virtualization software to separate a physical server into multiple virtual servers. These virtual servers will be sharing the physical server’s hardware. A website will have its own virtual server and runs independently from the rest of the websites in the physical server, with its own allocated amount of resources. 

Each virtual server works similar to a dedicated server with a pre-set resources including memory, disk size, and network capabilities. The user will be able to customize and configure their virtual hosting environments to meet their software application and security needs. 

Your virtual server will remain unaffected by the operations of other virtual servers, which means if one virtual server crashes, it won’t affect the performance of other virtual servers. 

VPS vs. Shared Hosting

The ‘bad neighbor effect’ can be considered as the biggest drawback of using a shared server. If the neighbors (other websites sharing the server) start utilizing a lot of resources, that would leave your website in the same server with very limited resources. If one of those websites experience a serious crash, the server may have to be rebooted or could slow your website down considerably. 

There are no such issues in VPS hosting. Users are isolated from each other. They will each have their shares of allocated resources. Because of this, operations of other users won’t affect the performance of your website. 

VPS vs. Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting was the only available option before VPS hosting became available, when shared hosting users experienced performance issues. The dedicated hosting provider will have to invest a lot to purchase the hardware necessary for each client and then configure the hardware based on client needs. This is why dedicated hosting demands a high fee.

But when VPS hosting became available, it changed the cost model of dedicated hosting providers. They can now provide a hosting service of quality similar to that of a dedicated hosting solution using just shared hardware, considerably reducing power consumption and network connections. So they deliver the service to clients at rates lower than that of dedicated hosting packages. 

The next point deals with ‘hardware refresh’. A dedicated server model generally has be refreshed for new hardware after a couple of years’ use (the hardware ages) primarily to reduce the risk of failures, and improving the processing speeds. The cost of replacing the hardware with better ones is borne by the clients as a new hardware set-up fee.

For a VPS, this won’t be an issue as the cost of replacing the hardware will be borne by all the shared users of the server. So individual costs will be significantly less throughout multi-year contracts.

Conclusion

The virtualization technology is now getting adopted not just by hosting companies but also by large IT companies, which makes its potential evident. Though dedicated hosting will still be a necessity for complex hosting needs, VPS will keep on being a good alternative to shared servers, owing to its resiliency and performance support.