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How to Choose the Right VPS Hosting
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How to Choose the Right VPS Hosting

IWMHIWMH Member
edited August 2014 in Tutorials

Source: http://iwantmyhosting.com/choose-right-vps-hosting/

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 minute). 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.

Source: http://iwantmyhosting.com/choose-right-vps-hosting/

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Comments

  • J1021J1021 Member
    edited August 2014

    < Insert blog plug here >

    Thanked by 1ElliotJ
  • Shoaib_AShoaib_A Member
    edited August 2014

    Below we will provide information of 4 dominant control panels: cPanel, DirectAdmin, Parallels Plesk and SolusVM.

    Thanked by 2Floris TriDoxiuM
  • IWMHIWMH Member
    edited August 2014

    @K2Bytes said:

    I think you are using custom control panels such as Linode and DigitalOcean provide, right?

  • Shoaib_AShoaib_A Member
    edited August 2014

    @IWMH said:
    I think you are using custom control panels such as Linode and DigitalOcean provide, right?

    The problem is you do not even realize the difference between SolusVM & cPanel/Plesk/DirectAdmin.

    And no, I use cPanel on my server for hosting websites.

  • IWMHIWMH Member

    @K2Bytes said:
    And no, I use cPanel on my server for hosting websites.

    Would you please help to point out the difference between theme?

  • IWMHIWMH Member

    @IWMH said:
    Would you please help to point out the difference between theme?

    Maybe I should change SolusVM to SolusVM Client Control Panel. SolusVM is for dedicated server to manage the VPS. While cPanel/WHM works inside VPS to manage host web sites.

  • @IWMH said:
    Would you please help to point out the difference between theme?

    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/Plesk/DirectAdmin are for administration of the OS/server like configuration of your web server, email server, nameservers, managing other web related stuff like databases, backups etc where as SolusVM/Virtualizor are for hosting companies to install & configure a particular virtualization technology & deploy virtual servers. It lets their customers handle the start/restart/stop/reboot/setting reverse for their virtual servers. It is not upto the user to select SolusVM or Virtualizor when he has signed up with a particular host whereas cPanel/Plesk/DirectAdmin can always be your own choice no matter what host it is.

  • vdnetvdnet Member
    edited August 2014

    said: 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.

    You do realize that OS virtualization (Virtuozzo/OpenVZ) actually provides the best performance and the lowest overhead because it isn't attempting to virtualize the hardware and it uses a shared kernel which can share common resources. The only true statement is you should consider the public evaluation of providers as it is dependent on the provider whether they oversell and properly monitor their systems for abuse.

    I should also add, this "easier to oversell" is so outdated. Both Xen and KVM support overallocating resources and thin provisioning of disks now. There is nothing to stop providers from overselling with any technology.

  • Just remember that RAID10 is better than RAID5 or RAID6.

    lol

  • Not that i dont think your on a good start i think you should take your blog or make some sort of real world application. And i think you should deploy it on every vps host you can find and when i say that i really mean it. When you start looking at ads make a excle spreeed sheet with a score that you think they get feel free to use what ever process it is reading ad, reviews, creating support tickets and when your done after a month see how you still feel about that company and i think you will learn a lot about picking a vps host from that then anything else.

  • @vdnet said:
    it is dependent on the provider whether they oversell.

    What do you mean by "whether". Whichever host on this planet offers Virtuozzo or OpenVZ oversells, most do it upto 2 or 3x while there are lot of those as well who oversell 6x & offer ultra cheap prices. I am not against overselling if done in a well calculated way but to say not everyone oversells is pure lie.

  • IWMHIWMH Member

    @K2Bytes said:
    cPanel/Plesk/DirectAdmin are for administration of the OS/server like configuration of your web server, email server, nameservers, managing other web related stuff like databases, backups etc where as SolusVM/Virtualizor are for hosting companies to install & configure a particular virtualization technology & deploy virtual servers. It lets their customers handle the start/restart/stop/reboot/setting reverse for their virtual servers. It is not upto the user to select SolusVM or Virtualizor when he has signed up with a particular host whereas cPanel/Plesk/DirectAdmin can always be your own choice no matter what host it is.

    Really appreciate your explanation of the differences. I want to pint out that SolusVM mentioned is SolusVM Clinet, NOT SolusVM Admin or SolusVM Reseller. I think it's a common control panel for VPS guests. Many provides such as RamNode use SolusVM Clinet. As a VPS guest, the control panel is a GUI tool which can help manage the server instead of using ssh. Yes, SolusVM Clinet just provides very few functions such as reboot, shutdown, reinstall and so on, and can't manage host web sites.

  • IWMHIWMH Member

    @serverian said:
    lol

    Just lol? Your opinion?

  • said: 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)

    I suppose you mean 13 visitors per minute. I don't know if you can say a site will receive even flow over 12 hours. If it is a site that receives global views, it could be over 24-hours, if it is a site that receives more localized views, it could have a spike for 2-hours a day.

    K2Bytes said: What do you mean by "whether". Whichever host on this planet offers Virtuozzo or OpenVZ oversells, most do it upto 2 or 3x while there are lot of those as well who oversell 6x & offer ultra cheap prices. I am not against overselling if done in a well calculated way but to say not everyone oversells is pure lie.

    Sure, but I was more making a statement towards to OP who said it was easier to oversell and basically assuming it is done in general on OpenVZ and not other technologies. Overselling happens on every technology. Just because you offer KVM or Xen doesn't mean you can't or aren't overselling. The only logical reason for OpenVZ being more "oversold" these days is because an OS virtualized VPS takes less resources to run on the host, as it has less overhead.

    Even back in the Xen days before they allowed overprovisioning, there were way to oversell by loading up 32GB of RAM on a Core 2 Quad or 50 virtual servers on a single hard drive.

    It all comes down to the host to make things run smoothly, not the technology. Hardware virtualization works better for some, but for general linux web hosting, OS virtualization is a better way to go if you choose a reliable host. This is because with OS virtualization, you have near native performance and next to 0 overhead, so you can run virtual servers without losing any performance and can basically host the same amount of web sites on multiple virtual servers as you would be able to do on a non-virtualized host. This is not possible on a hardware virtualized system because you lose 10-25% of performance on near every aspect of the system, but it provides benefits to users who need custom installs, unix, windows, more control over the kernel, etc.

  • IWMHIWMH Member

    @wojons said:
    Not that i dont think your on a good start i think you should take your blog or make some sort of real world application. And i think you should deploy it on every vps host you can find and when i say that i really mean it. When you start looking at ads make a excle spreeed sheet with a score that you think they get feel free to use what ever process it is reading ad, reviews, creating support tickets and when your done after a month see how you still feel about that company and i think you will learn a lot about picking a vps host from that then anything else.

    I would appreciate if you could use more punctuations :)

  • IWMHIWMH Member

    vdnet said: said: 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)

    I suppose you mean 13 visitors per minute. I don't know if you can say a site will receive even flow over 12 hours. If it is a site that receives global views, it could be over 24-hours, if it is a site that receives more localized views, it could have a spike for 2-hours a day.

    Yes, 13 visitors per minute.

  • @vdnet said:
    It all comes down to the host to make things run smoothly, not the technology. Hardware virtualization works better for some, but for general linux web hosting, OS virtualization is a better way to go if you choose a reliable host. This is because with OS virtualization, you have near native performance and next to 0 overhead, so you can run virtual servers without losing any performance and can basically host the same amount of web sites on multiple virtual servers as you would be able to do on a non-virtualized host. This is not possible on a hardware virtualized system because you lose 10-25% of performance on near every aspect of the system, but it provides benefits to users who need custom installs, unix, windows, more control over the kernel, etc.

    Well if you use Ballooning, the customer can find out easily with a single command that you are overselling, thin provisioning, memory compression are something not supported by most common control Panels like SolusVM & Virtualizor so yes it is easier to oversell with OpenVZ & all hosts do it whereas with XEN/KVM it is not as easy as in OpenVZ and majority of hosts don't oversell memory or disk space. Butthese days the only thing I see XEN/KVM hosts over-allocating is CPU like hosting 50-70 VPS on a dualXeon L56xx & 100 or more on dual EV v2.

  • @IWMH said:
    I would appreciate if you could use more punctuations :)

    Make list of providers you would like to try.
    Score them before you try them.
    Deploy application and monitoring.
    See how you feel about them after a month or 2.

  • @K2Bytes said:
    Well if you use Ballooning, the customer can find out easily with a single command that you are overselling, thin provisioning, memory compression are something not supported by most common control Panels like SolusVM & Virtualizor so yes it is easier to oversell with OpenVZ & all hosts do it whereas with XEN/KVM it is not as easy as in OpenVZ and majority of hosts don't oversell memory or disk space. Butthese days the only thing I see XEN/KVM hosts over-allocating is CPU like hosting 50-70 VPS on a dualXeon L56xx & 100 or more on dual EV v2.

    Unless they have a pure SSD setup, disk I/O is probably oversold more than CPU. Like I had said before, you could oversell on Xen even before overprovisioning was possible because overloading a low end CPU with RAM or putting too many servers on a single disk, etc.

    You shouldn't judge a technology by the hosts that abuse it. If you installed a VPS with the same resources on Xen, KVM, and OpenVZ. The OpenVZ VPS would win in every test. That is just how OS virtualization works in comparison to hardware virtualization.

    You don't need anything special to oversell memory in KVM. It can overallocate by default. I haven't use Xen recently so I'm not sure about that, I know overallocation is possible and has been since ~2009. I don't use SolusVM so I don't know about what features it offers. I'm just talking about the virtualization technologies, not the control panels.

  • IWMHIWMH Member

    wojons said: @IWMH said: I would appreciate if you could use more punctuations :)

    Make list of providers you would like to try. Score them before you try them. Deploy application and monitoring. See how you feel about them after a month or 2.

    I couldn't agree with you more! But how do you make the list you like to try? You still need to choose first. How to choose?

  • @IWMH said:
    I couldn't agree with you more! But how do you make the list you like to try? You still need to choose first. How to choose?

    Honestly it depends on budget and application. If ur app needs 1gb ram and ur budget it 5$ Month a node that's where u draw the line. I would either just watch all the offers as the cone out every fee days or start with the lowendbox top 10

  • said: It is easy to start a VPS hosting company by hiring a dedicated hosting and installing virtualization software.

    Yes, hire softwares.

  • Raid 10 VPS hosting is best. It keep your data more safe.

  • IWMHIWMH Member
    edited August 2014

    @AlphaNinevps_com said:
    Raid 10 VPS hosting is best. It keep your data more safe.

    Yes, safe is the more important than performance for a VPS.

  • wychwych Member

    Jesus wept.

    Thanked by 1Lm85H4gFkh3wk3
  • How to Choose the Right VPS Hosting?

    Make sure you always watch the drama.

  • Shoaib_AShoaib_A Member
    edited August 2014

    @IWMH said:
    Yes, safe is the more important than performance for a VPS.

    Wrong, 1.0 GB/s DD porn is more important than safety & anything else for a VPS.

  • IWMHIWMH Member

    K2Bytes said: @IWMH said: Yes, safe is the more important than performance for a VPS.

    Wrong, 1.0 GB/s DD porn is more important than safety & anything else for a VPS.

    No wrong or right, just different opinions. My opinion: safe is the most important than anything else for a VPS.

  • IWMHIWMH Member

    @Imam86 said:
    How to Choose the Right VPS Hosting?

    Make sure you always watch the drama.

    Famous Chinese Saying: It is better to travel ten thousand miles than to read ten thousand books :)

  • @IWMH said:
    No wrong or right, just different opinions. My opinion: safe is the most important than anything else for a VPS.

    Couldn't detect sarcasm in my comment?

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