Six Revisions: A Complete Guide to VPS Hosting

Increased traffic to your website is great. . . unless of course your web host can’t handle it. Being on a shared hosting account right now I’ve been victim of lockouts because of traffic spikes. Sometimes it’s direct traffic from visits and sometimes it’s too many reference calls to my site that brings things down. It’s frustrating and I’ve considered making a change to a more robust and private solution.

My web host Prometeus.com offers a wide range of services including VPS – Virtual Private Server. I’ve used this before when I worked for a medical products company and helped to set up a web server on-site complete with dedicated T-1 lines and hardware firewall protection. That seems like a lifetime ago and I’ve needed to re-educate myself on what using a VPS entails and what the commitment will be.

Thanks to this article by Blue Derkin on Six Revisions I have a better idea of what to expect and what questions I have to ask my web host.

What kind of hosting do you currently have? Have you ever considered a VPS?

Tweet Mar 30 2010 by Blue Derkin | 73 Comments A Comprehensive Guide to VPS Hosting Web hosting is a tricky business – there are a wide variety of options out there designed to fit a wide range of needs, but like with most things, there are trade-offs. Shared hosting is usually cheap and easy, but the resources are limited. Dedicated servers are powerful and customizable, but a certain level of technical knowledge can be required to run them, depending on the hosting company you choose. What happens, then, when your site is too big and gets too much traffic for a shared hosting plan, but doesn’t require the resources (or expenditure) of a dedicated server? If you find yourself asking these questions, then you should look into VPS hosting. Virtual private server (VPS) hosting is a flexible, scalable, and economical hosting solution that can fit the needs of almost any kind of website. It’s a perfect solution for those who have outgrown their shared hosting plans but don’t really need to move to a dedicated server. One thing to note before we dive in to examining the features and benefits of a VPS –  the specs on a VPS vary widely from host to host. To see if a certain host offers a certain feature, make sure to ask the provider. So What IS VPS, Anyway? In answering this question, maybe it’s better to examine how VPS hosting fits in to the overall offerings of most hosting companies. Shared hosting is just that – your site is hosted on a machine with a bunch of other sites, and each of you share the same resources, including RAM, disk space, and CPU.  Your site uses what it needs if it’s available, and if it’s not – well, that’s the […]

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